Wednesday, October 30, 2024

*** This is a rough transcript of today’s show ***

 

It is the 30th of October 2024. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org; I’m Dan van Voorhis.

 

There are certain names in history, ecclesiastical or otherwise that produce reactions- either from basic name recognition or from deeds famous or infamous.

And we have such a name today- one that is ironically very, very common but also easily recognizable- he was Bob Jones Sr.

That’s right- of all the Robert Joneses in the world today, we remember the patriarch of the Jones family that would become synonymous with a college in Greenville, South Carolina, and, perhaps… more. Bob Jones Co. would famously lose its tax-exempt status in 1983 for its position on racial segregation until Bob Jones III removed the offending statute in 2000. But the college and its namesake have a much larger shadow of influence in the history of 20th-century American Christianity.

Bob Jones was born in Skipperville, Alabama, in 1883. The last of 11 children, he was a sickly boy, forced by his father- an ex-confederate soldier- to memorize patriotic speeches. He owl later put these early oratory skills to good use. He would be orphaned as a teenager, by which time he was already making the rounds as a child evangelist (this isn’t a thing anymore, is it? It was a really strange fascination for some time in America- kid preachers who sounded like grown-ups). 

Bob was licensed by the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, by the age of 15 (why was it designated ‘South’? Well…).

He enrolled at Southern University in Greensboro, Alabama (today Birmingham-Southern College). He would attend for only two years. He would meet Mary Gaston Stollenwerk, and the two would get married. He began his career preaching at revivals and was soon amongst the most popular in America. In the 1920s, he became a beacon for many, warning against Godless communism and paganism. By 1926, his family moved to Florida, where they opened a college in his name in St. Andrew’s Bay near Panama City.

Between weather disasters and the stock market, the school would not be long for Florida. Barely avoiding financial ruin, Jones moved to Tennessee, where the Bob Jones College opened in 1933 and continued to grow- and outgrew its location by 1946 and moved to its now permanent location in Greenville, South Carolina, as Bob Jones University.

Jones was a friend of William Jennings Bryan, the 4-time presidential nominee who came to fame later for his role in prosecuting the Scopes Monkey Trial. Encouraged by Bryan, Jones made his school a center opposing modernism- the college adopted a “commitment to the Christian Religion and the ethics revealed in its holy scriptures, combatting all the atheistic agnostic pagan and so-called Scientific adulteration of the Gospel.”

But, as we know, the story “combatting” became the main theme of these Fundamentalists, and soon they began to silo off in groups like the World’s Christian Fundamentals Association and the American Council of Christian Churches (Jones helped find both).

Jones would famously feud with a one-time student at his college: the young Billy Graham. Jones, forever a fundamentalist of the original variety, disapproved of Graham’s mildly ecumenical urban revivals in 1957. Bob Jones would come to represent the old-school Fundamentalists as the new Evangelicals- more culturally aware perhaps- sought to separate and form their own institutions- see Fuller, Gordon Conwell, Trinity Deerfield, etc.

Bob Sr. would back away from the day-to-day operations of the University, and his son and grandson would become presidents and chancellors of the school as it had a high watermark of enrollment of around 5,000 in 1976. It also became a center for Republican politics, with the GOP making Bob Jones University part of its new southern strategy in the 70s and 80s.  

Jones’ school would be called “the most unusual University,” and while this fits for a number of reasons- the number of artists from the school and its cultural impact on Greenville and the surrounding area is not what you might expect from an old fundamentalist college with a theatre and film school, what’s next- a gambling institute?

Bob Jones Sr. would, rightly, come under fire for his segregationist views, and the school has done what it can to distance itself from the retrograde views of its founder. But we remember him not just as the founder of the school but as a significant cog in the Fundamentalist/Modernist controversy who helped set the stage for the coming fundamentalist/Evangelical split.

Born on this day in 1883, Bob Jones Sr. died in 1968 at the age of 84.

  

The last word for today is from the daily lectionary and Matthew 20:

29 As Jesus and his disciples were leaving Jericho, a large crowd followed him. 30 Two blind men were sitting by the roadside, and when they heard that Jesus was going by, they shouted, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on us!”

31 The crowd rebuked them and told them to be quiet, but they shouted all the louder, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on us!”

32 Jesus stopped and called them. “What do you want me to do for you?” he asked.

33 “Lord,” they answered, “we want our sight.”

34 Jesus had compassion on them and touched their eyes. Immediately they received their sight and followed him.

 

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 30th of October 2024, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man with a PhD from the Gambling Institute of West Lafayette, Indiana- he is Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man who wants to give a shoutout to his favorite Greenville residents: Chris and Emily White- go watch Electric Jesus! I’m Dan van Voorhis. 

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.