Saturday, November 22, 2008

Quote of the Day


Stephen Jones, president of Bob Jones University, has issued an apology for the school's past racist policies. Let's see what he had to say:
We conformed to the culture rather than provide a clear Christian counterpoint to it. In so doing, we failed to accurately represent the Lord and to fulfill the commandment to love others as ourselves. For these failures we are profoundly sorry.

Source.
BJU's "culture conformity" included a policy against interracial dating that was in effect until 2000. According to The State:
The school had used the Bible to justify discrimination in the past, such as in a 1998 letter to a writer who questioned the school’s ban on interracial dating. Then, school officials noted that God had created oceans to keep men apart, as well as ethnic, cultural and language barriers.

I'm not sure which culture they were conforming to, since our culture was pretty clear about a need for racial equality beginning with the Civil War and culminating in the Civil Rights Movement, some 40 years before BJU ended it's anti-interracial dating policy. I guess Stephen Jones knew the time was right to issue the apology when his WWJD bracelet began glowing.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Nothing like givinig into the "cultural pressures" of a century ago over...this is strange indeed, and it would be safe, in my humble opinion, to doubt the sincerity of this decades belated 'apology.'