69 thoughts on “The PCC Hillbillies”

    2. I’m still getting used to my tablet. That should read “lack of”, not “kackbif”. George is at work with me tonight.

      As I previously stated, I will be donating my butt cushion to charity. I can only sit on one at a time comfortably anyway.

      1. Actually, I think “kackbif” is a great word to describe their scholarship. I like the sound of it!!

      2. Kack-bif {n}: The entire body of scholarship that supports the theory that the only true, completely accurate, inerrrant, incorrupt Bible is the King James Version.

    1. Wow! I have never been so close to First! It’s kinda a rush! I think I might like it… 😉

  3. This is awesome, I haven’t heard this one since I was a Fundy in a BJU feeder church/school.

  6. I was always curious (having been there in the 90s and gotten surprised by the sudden lurch towards public KJVO teaching at PCC while I was attending), if PCC was always KJVO and just kept it on the DL until the 90s, or if they decided to transition to KJVO in the 90s?

    1. I don’t know about PCC, but that’s when my parents decided that KJVO was the way to go. We’d always had some other versions of the Bible on the shelf for “reference materials,” and they never mentioned they were “wrong” until sometime when I was in high school. Then they went full-on KJV crazy and have been ever since.

      Is it a coincidence that my Dad has worked for PCC for the last several years? Hmm…

    2. It’s even more delicious when you consider that Peter Ruckman behaves towards PCC on this issue exactly the same way that PCC behaves towards everyone else on this issue. Further proof that the potential for extremity is infinite.

      2. It’s pretty much the other way around. Ruckman is a nutcase, but PCC spend a lot of time preaching against him, especially considering he is in his 90’s or so, and has a congregation of maybe 200?

        Also, I love the non-ironic use of a Ruckman painting in this video 🙂

  7. When there is increasing competition for a diminishing number of potential students, the various Cxn colleges will turn on each other to show that they’re the only true way to Christ, and to truth.

    Hopefully before long, these schools will all be in agonal breathing as they’re in their death throes.

    1. If the KJVO crap is a sign of the death throes, I’m actually terrified of what the fundy landscape will look like when they are all in their death throes vying for the last dozen students who want to attend their schools.

    2. Yes, it is sort of “market share 101”. But in the long run it is positions like this that end up tearing the whole project down. It only takes maybe a day in a decent academic library and/or internet to find out the historical facts behind the texts of the Bible and to see right through PCC’s make believe. Of course, even diehard Baptist seminaries that outsiders would call fundamentalist (SBTS, SWBTS, DTS) recognize the facts of history surrounding the texts. But no matter, PCC invents a whole alternative history whole cloth as a means of product differentiation, and there are still some people who accept it without applying the basics of critical thinking skills. But the vast majority will wrinkle their foreheads and think, “Huh? I should probably check that out for myself.” And when they do…

      1. Although I would suggest (somewhat tongue-in-check) that many of the conservative seminaries you mention are in danger of becoming NASB-only. DTS is one that comes to mind.

        2. Eh – Southern Baptists are beginning to really like the ESV too. Although, since the Calvinists like it, I can see some of the strong anti-Calvinists in the denomination staying away from it out of pure stubborness. 😛

  8. Just missed being in the top ten…oh well…I guess I’ll go back to my lowly church pew……. 🙂

  9. This sounds a lot like my former IFB church. “We’re the cream of the crop. We’re part of the very, very select few that have it all right.”

    The problem is that a lot of people believe that. It creates an elitist atmosphere in the church that I can no longer stomach. Hence, I hit the open road…a drifter, you might say…but more free…

    1. In the United States alone there are approximately 25000 denominations, sects, splinters, associations, and independent variants of Christianity, each differing from the other in some point of doctrine they consider to be significant, and each believing they are led by the Holy Spirit into having “all truth,” while the rest are condemned to some sort of spiritual error.

      And of course, each entity says they “just follow the Bible,” that the clear meaning of the Bible is evident to those with a sincere heart of faith.

      So, my contention is that the Bible must not be clear, or that nobody possesses the “Truth” (This trademark fought over by lots of groups). The Holy Spirit can’t be guiding sincere hearts to different conclusions about what the Scripture says, can He? Yet this is the aggregate claim. If the Holy Spirit is actually guiding each group, then the Holy Spirit is a deceiver and schismatic.

      Using the “Leading of the Holy Spirit” and “Submission to God’s Word” as justification for what one believes is a cop-out of major proportions. It is only good for keeping the little people in their place as their MOGs fight to be the Masters of Grandiosity.

      1. I strongly feel that the missing elements in all this are humility and love, things the New Testament is constantly saying MUST mark the life of a believer. Without those things, no wonder there is so much division in the church.

        1. exactly…..The Love Chapter I believe ends with the fact we see things now dimly….humility and love are needed for Christian fellowship because we now only see things dimly.

      2. But we don’t all anathematize the others. At least two denominations that I know of accept any baptized Christian at the altar rail, and both denominations have a broad and inclusive statement of beliefs that people must accept as a term of membership. (In one case it’s very broad: it’s the Apostles’ Creed!)

        1. I attended an Anglican church on Christmas morning because none of the evangelical churches in that area had a Christmas morning service. One of the regulars came up to me before the communion time and whispered that I was welcome to partake, that not being from there didn’t matter. I’m glad they did and I’m glad I did.

        2. The church I grew up in came out of the 19th century Stone-Campbell movement, which was assertively non-creedal and used as a rallying slogan “no creed but Christ.” So it’s been almost a couple hundred years now since at least some of those 25,000 separate groups decided to get out of the business of appending a list of doctrinal requirements to one’s confession of faith in order to let Christ know who he ought to be saving.

        3. Yep. The Episcopal Church in America is generally quite open and nonjudgmental.

          Then, too, we have our share of the separatists. The subject of gay marriage and ordination of gay clergy (along with the ordination of women) became such a sticking point for the people in South Carolina that the entire Diocese separated from the Episcopal Church.

          I haven’t heard what is happening with the property issues. Generally the Episcopal Church tries to moderate the discussions and bring the dissenters back in. There is plenty of room for differences of opinion. There isn’t room for divisiveness or bigotry.

          The ones most likely to “separate” are the bigots, and when they go, they do leave the room feeling cleaner!

          But on a funny note, my wife told me about a point of bigotry she had seen in her IFB church. I looked at her and said, “Maybe I should remind you of a Scripture they have used often — Come ye out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, And touch not the unclean thing!”

          She laughed. She is still going there. But I didn’t get into trouble with her for my little jest.

      3. Highly recommend The Bible Made Impossible by Christian Smith. What you refer to is a logical if unnatural result of building Christianity upon modernist foundation and presuppositions. Smith explores a lot of the implications.

  10. Satan must be laughing his ass off at religion in America. Divide, divide, divide… no need to conquer just keep letting them divide until there is nothing left.

    As long as they are dividing their focus is on something other than Christ and the Gospel.

    So long as they are focusing on KJVO, pre-mil/pre-trib dispensationalism, or something like Calvinism -v- Free Will then they are not focusing on the Gospel, they are not focusing on Jesus Christ, they are only focusing on their flavor of religion.

    They are dividing themselves into oblivion and making their religion look foolish and inept. All in order to build their religious tax exempt empires.

    1. I couldn’t agree more. Power struggles and the desire for control over their particular congregation…and I’m talking about evangelical churches (in my own experiences), as well as fundamentalist churches.

    3. Dear SFL Reader:

      Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding!

      Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner!

      At the end of the day, the IFB movement [and many others, sad to say] is profoundly ‘off message.’

      Christian Socialist

  11. I’m curious: does anyone know if a digital copy of the “Leaven of Fundamentalism” videos exists? Been looking for that for a long time.

    1. Digital copy? That’s heresy!

      The purity of The Leaven in Fundamentalism can only be enjoyed in the original VHS.

      1. We had a missionary come to our church that would bring filmstrips.

        I also remember it being somewhat controversial when some missionaries started bring powerpoint presentations rather than God’s approved slides. I remember our pastor fretting over becoming a “church that uses as screen.” (As if we didn’t use the screen for the old fashioned slides.)

        1. I LOL’d at that one, DS! Isn’t it funny where the line between “old-fashioned and therefore acceptable” vs. “new and therefore not acceptable” gets drawn sometimes!

        1. Christian Socialist:

          No. As long as you go BACK in time to the wonderful age of nostalgia, where wimmens were in their proper place and chillins were bore to help around the farm.

          I believe 8 tracks are safe and sound. You’d be even better if you could put them on 33/45/78 LPs! Long live June Cleaver!

  13. The funny part was that Theodore Letis (the main speaker in the first video) was involved in a debate where denied the inspiration of Scripture a number of years before the series.
    He once told me in an e-mail that BJU was the “Christian Mafia”!!!

  14. “One of Dr. Letis’s benefactors was Pensacola Christian College. They once bankrolled an “outreach” effort on behalf of King James Onlyism that involved sending out videotapes to hundreds of fundamentalist churches. The tape was called “The Leaven in Fundamentalism,” that leaven being textual criticism. Dr. Letis was a featured speaker in this video. In it he seems careful to avoid explicitly denying the doctrine of inerrancy. However, that position is abundantly clear in his writings. It was in this video that I (along with many others) first became acquainted with Letis.”
    I found this at http://evangelicaltextualcriticism.blogspot.com/2006/01/theodore-letis.html .
    I am surprised that PCC did not check him out so well…….

    1. Maybe, but it seems to me that PCC was quite comfortable cherry picking both support and “enemies” based on a few sound bites or conclusion, while ignoring methodology, philosophy, presuppositions, etc. I think they were all too happy to have anyone help them out inventing their little isthmus of textual philosophy.

  15. Ah, the days of falling asleep to the sounds of “The Leaven in Fundamentalism” in the DHA…

  16. This is hilarious. I had the “leaven” video mailed to me by my alma mater (PCC) when it first came out.

    I also had had a fundy pastor direct me to play the music used in the parody video in church for one of his “special day” kind of things. I dutifully complied, as quietly as I could, and he came over and told me to “play it louder”.

    At least I gotta hand it to these fundies who have made the choice of embracing their inner hicktown hillbilliness.

  17. I remember that song. Someone in my fundy high school had a copy of it. Thank you for posting it, it’s very funny.
    All things PCC disappeared from my school after they showed us “The Leaven” video, at a recruitment presentation. The truly spiritual were sent to Greenville only, after that.

  19. Maranatha was getting pretty close to all this craziness in the early 1980s. I suppose it started in the late 70s. They used to have Dr. Donald Waite visit the school about once a year. He was as dry as dust. After Weniger became president, it became more or less a non-issue.

    As for Calvary Seminary in Lansdale, they are closing their doors. I think, like Northland, became a little too opened minded for some of their constituency. Their church and two churches in Sellersville, PA sent a lot of students to PCC, BJ, Maranatha, etc. Many of those students and their friends came to Lansdale for seminary.

    1. “It” at the end of paragraph one of my previous post meant the KJV issue. As I was writing, I figured it was implied, but pronouns do need an antecedent.

      1. I was staioned at NAS Pensacola in ’97. I remember going over to PCC to visit my friends from my home church. All I remember is that they had to scan some kind of card to leave the dorm, and if they had too many demerits, they couldn’t leave. Made me feel not so bad about being in the military.

    2. Here is a thread with some eyewitness testimony regarding MBBC’s early days and the KJV/textual issue. Lets just say some of the rather vocal KJVO Maranatha grads I know from the 80’s have rewritten the school’s past so they could take shots at Weniger for liberalizing the school. It was never KJVO, KJV preferred would probably be the best description.

      http://www.baptistboard.com/showthread.php?t=2871

      They are one of the only schools left in their peer group that haven’t torpedoed their constituency by either making radical shifts in philosophy (Pillsbury/NIU/Landsdale) or just being complete tools (BJU)

      1. The idea I get from my own experience, and from what I read from people like Dr. Bob over at the website for which you gave a link, is that this was really a non issue at the beginning. There were certain faculty members, especially Thomas Strouse (and the Hollowoods) who made it an issue. There was a Dean Burgeon society on campus in the early 80s. It think Dr. Cedarholm got caught up in the issue. He used to call all other versions perversions, but he was not vocal about this, I understand, during the early day of MBBC, which would be “Dr. Bob’s” time. Surely, Bob Griffin must have some knowledge of what went on in the early 80s, even though he wasn’t there then. Dr. Weniger made a lot of enemies early on in his administration there because of cuts in faculty that had to made, changes of school stances on certain issue and from the fact he was very typical in his leadership style of the fundamental Baptists. Early on, he was very domineering and “hands on.” I have heard that later on, he delegated more.

    3. Did Northland become too open-minded? When?

      One of my sons went there, and his report was that, of what mind they actually possessed (which wasn’t much) they were very close-minded.

      Oh, they were a little more relaxed than BJU, and their academics were, uh … unworthy of the title. But is hardly call them open-minded.

  20. Yeah. BJU is sooooo worldly on this issue 🙄 That’s why they have the infamous plaque screwed onto their pulpit that states that only the KJV can be used from that pulpit.

    I remember my youth pastor, a PCC grad (and clone), once explaining to us why PCC was superior to BJU even though my friend (and future wife) who was planning on attending there pointed out to him that BJU was KJV-only in their chapel services and classes. He nodded smugly and said, “ah, but do they require all their professors to use the KJV in their PERSONAL Bible study??? That is what truly makes the difference.”

  21. I’m glad I got out early and missed all that. 😉 I was so far gone that I didn’t even know this was happening…and I bet it passed by most of the rest of the world as well.

  22. I have a personal friend who graduated from PCC in the early 80s who told me that most of the profs there at the time used the NASB. He also said that while he was there the administration decided to change from the NA to the TR for Greek classes.

  23. What does it mean that at the end of this video, one of the links to another one was the Miley Cyrus and Katy Perry kiss?

      1. Ha ha! Maybe so, if you define interesting as “funny cat videos” and Tim Hawkins. Oh, and some Yale political science lectures that were homework. But not pop singers…weird.

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