Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000 08:33:58 -0600 (CST)
From: Dr. Kevan C. Barley <kbarley@cbu.edu>
To: Nathan Barley <nbarl604@bju.edu>
Subject: My Analysis
Dear Nathan
On March 3, 2000, Dr. Bob III announced on "Larry King Live" that the
university had dropped the rule forbidding interracial dating and
marriage. Dr. Bob's interview that night has received such universal
acclaim that it surpasses anything the school has done in probably its
entire history. Offerings and emails are pouring in unsolicted, students
have given Dr. Bob a standing ovation, people previously unacquainted with
the school are considering sending their children there, opportunities to
witness of salvation through Christ have opened up and may be bearing
fruit. Practically every means of measuring it indicates that this is of
God.
I write to you, nevertheless, with a heavy heart. My distress is due to
two beliefs: (1) I believe Dr. Bob, whom I revere as I would a father, was
wrong and (2) I fear you may never understand it. I'm making my best
effort, though, to walk you through this so that you might rise above the
tide of emotion which has swept the campus and be able to see things as
they really are.
In order to interpret what has gone on in the past week, it will be
necessary to review a bit of history. As you know, when I was a child,
the South was racially segregated. The reasons for the segregation were
many, including distaste on the part of whites and differing standards of
hygiene between blacks and whites. Segregation was rife with abuses, but
it was a system that had evolved over many decades since the end of
Reconstruction and it was the only way my father's generation knew to
allow the two races to live side by side in peace and to touch without
colliding.
Central to the theory behind segregation was racial purity. There is
really no such thing as a pure race, even as there is no such thing as a
purebred dog. But there are dogs whose ancestors can be traced far enough
back to establish their identity as a breed, and the three major races of
mankind can be identified satisfactorily. When the civil rights movement
began to move for desegregation, white resistance coalesced around the
issue of sex. Close social interaction, it was believed, would inevitably
result in intermarriage. That, in turn, would lead America down the path
which other nations had followed when they intermarried with African
slaves. Africa had never accomplished anything which western civilization
admired, and the nations such as Portugal and Spain who had mixed their
blood with the slaves in South America lost their greatness and produced
backward and stagnant cultures which were no match for our great
civilization which had accomplished so much, including the winning of
World War 2. Among biblical Christians, there was also the self-evident
fact that God must have distinguished the races for a purpose, and
mongrelization would thwart that purpose.
I repeat, this was the ultimate issue for the whites; not crime, hygiene,
culture, the quality of the schools, or general distaste for the Negro
appearance. It always came back to the inevitability of miscegenation if
social equality were allowed. A famous book on the subject was written by
the governor of Mississippi, Theodore Bilbo, and was called Take Your
Choice: Separation or Mongrelization. That was how the South saw it.
This issue was never far from the integrationists' minds, either.
Intermarriage was considered the ultimate equality, and denial thereof was
considered the final hurdle which had to be conquered. In 1944 a
professor at the University of Chicago gained fame by publishing the
statement that the race problem in America would ultimately be settled in
the bedroom. Even now, as the issue has been revived and discussed in
every venue, a famous charismatic Negro pastor, Fred Price, has gone
public with a statement saying that he'd prefer to know immediately if a
Christian brother hates him, rather than to hear kind words until our
teenagers start getting eyes for one another and a white parent steps in
and says "no." Thus he equates antimiscegenation with hate and
demonstrates that he will never be satisfied until amalgamation takes
place.
Bob Jones College, naturally, inherited the social situation of the South,
so there was no way to start an integrated college, and nobody with any
sense criticizes them for that. Nevertheless, it is undeniable that the
founder and the administration which came into being were thoroughly in
favor of the separation of the races and the racial distinction which was
preserved thereby. When I entered BJU in the fall of 1973, there was for
sale in the bookstore a 1960 pamphlet by Bob Jones, Sr. called "Is
Segregation Scriptural?" The answer, of course, was "yes." The pamphlet
repeated the same arguments which were current among all Christian
Southerners at the time. Dr. Bob denied being a bigot and affirmed the
equality of all races, but believed that God wanted them to retain their
identities. Also he attributed the civil rights agitation and the push
for integration and intermarriage to modernists, liberals, and
one-worlders who wanted to "eradicate racial boundaries God had set."
According to Bob Jones, Jr., as I remember him saying it, the university
was willing to admit married Negroes sometime in the early '60s. Then the
civil rights agitation began pushing and shoving and shouting and singing
and whipping up violence while pretending to oppose it, and the university
responded by refusing to give in to a movement so obviously Satanic. Even
then, notice, it was only married Negroes whom they wanted to admit (but
didn't). There was to be no social integration between unmarried Negroes
and whites; social integration would lead inevitably to intermarriage.
While I was touring with the Academy of Arts in 1975, our team found out
from a Board member that BJU was going to abandon its whites-only
admission policy, beginning with the approaching fall semester. Contrary
to this, in the recent Larry King interview, Dr. Bob stated that BJU
admitted its first Negro in 1970. He may have made a mistake here,
because in their argument before the Supreme Court they stated that it was
in September of 1971 that they began admitting married Negroes. Whichever
date is correct, I never saw a Negro student anywhere on campus from the
time I entered as a freshman in the fall of 1973. The announcement in
1975 was a big deal. I wrote to the school that summer and offered to
room with a black student, just in case it might avoid a problem with some
other student who wouldn't like to do so. I was, indeed, assigned to room
with a new Negro applicant, but he turned out to be a hoax perpetrated by
someone trying to catch the school in discrimination; he didn't exist at
all. There was also a married town student admitted that year, who still
works as an announcer at WMUU: Willie Thompson.
It is a matter of record that the 1975 change in the school's admissions
policy was caused by the court ruling McCrary v. Runyon, which declared
it to be illegal to have a segregated school, even as it is illegal to
have a segregated restaurant. Since it was a question of obeying the law
or shutting the doors, the unmarried-whites-only policy was dropped.
But, to review, why did they have the ban on unmarried Negroes? Always
remember that the primary purpose for their segregation was the avoidance
of mongrelization: God wants the races to be distinct from one another.
After 1975, the school could no longer advance their belief by outright
segregation; but they could still be consistent with their belief by
retaining the rule prohibiting interracial dating and marriage, and that
is what they did.
All this time, the federal government was suing to have the courts revoke
BJU's tax-exempt status. There was a series of injunctions, suits,
countersuits, verdicts, and appeals from 1970 until the Supreme Court
ruled against them in May of 1983. Exactly what the arguments were is
crucial to interpreting the Larry King interview of March 3, 2000.
The attorney for BJU was the preeminent religious freedom lawyer in
America: William Bentley Ball. Although a Roman Catholic, he and most
other religionists were keenly aware that the cause of BJU was their cause
as well. Nobody agreed with BJU on race, but nearly everybody agreed that
they had a right to practice their religious beliefs, SO LONG AS THEY WERE
SINCERE. Of course, anybody could set up some illegal operation and claim
religious immunity; so the courts had ruled through the years that
genuineness was essential to a religiously-based argument.
Now we come down to the crux. In his 1982 brief before the Supreme Court
in Bob Jones University v. United States, Ball's opening words were,
Bob Jones University, a non-tax-funded pervasively
religious institution which had been recognized as tax-exempt
under sec. 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, holds a
primary religious conviction that interracial dating and
marriage are contrary to Scripture.
Ball explained later in his brief that this statement was a reiteration of
what had been already decided in earlier trials: this belief is a primary
religious conviction. That means it is not pursuant unto some
conviction, but is, itself, a conviction. A belief in short haircuts, for
instance, would not be a primary religious conviction.
Again, later in the brief, Ball said,
Bob Jones University is a pervasively religious ministry
whose raison d'etre is the propagation of religious faith.
Its rule against interracial dating is a matter of religious
belief and practice.
I cannot overemphasize this point. Still later in the brief, Ball quoted
a ruling from an earlier court:
A primary fundamentalist conviction of the plaintiff is that
the Scriptures forbid interracial dating and marriage.
Detailed testimony was presented at trial elucidating the
Biblical foundation for these beliefs. The Court finds that
the defendant (the government) has admitted that plaintiff's
(the University's) beliefs against interracial dating and
marriage are genuine beliefs.
Near the end of the brief, Ball tied all of his arguments together thus:
The issue is whether the exercise of a sincerely held religious
belief, by a pervasively religious private institution...shall
result either in the denial of its tax-exempt status...or the
compelled abandonment of an article of faith.
Need I drive the point home any further by quotations from the Supreme
Court decision itself? I think not. Nathan, there is not a trace of
ambiguity in this collection of history and quotations: for the first
fifty-five years of the school's existence, they held *sincerely* as an
article of faith that the Bible forbids interracial dating and marriage.
Even the secular courts believed them when they said it!
Now I take you to the Larry King interview:
KING: Why can't black kids date white kids...because you didn't
take black kids for a long time, right?
JONES: Well, 50% of American colleges as late as the mid-1960s
still didn't take black students, so...
KING: But you were late?
JONES: 1970, so we weren't that late. Furman University in our
town took their first black I believe it was in '65, Clemson
in '63. So, you know, we were not exclusive in this by any
means.
KING: But will you admit, as Jerry Falwell has said, you were wrong,
you should have taken them?
JONES: Yes, we do; we do; of course we do.
I genuinely cannot tell whether or not Dr. Bob believed this when he said
it. He seemed as sincere as one could be, and yet his voice trailed off
as he said "of course we do" as though he had caught the look of
condemnation in the eye of his father and grandfather as they watched him
deny with a straight face exactly what they had always affirmed until now.
The truth is, as I established at the outset, unmarried Negroes were
denied admission because BJU believed that interracial marriage was wrong.
Now, in a great reversal, Dr. Bob has said that denying them admission
was wrong! And the topping on the cake is that, in order to "save" the
school's testimony, he made as though the school had gotten in step with
the times in 1970, when actually the open admissions policy had been
adopted at the point of a government gun in 1975.
Now, on to the rule itself which banned interracial dating. You see from
the evidence marshalled above that this ban was affirmed by the
university, under oath in a court of law, to be a primary religious
belief. That was, of course, consistent with the school's entire history.
Why the rule? Because Scripture teaches that interracial marriage is
wrong; one-worlders, on the other hand, wanted to "eradicate racial
boundaries God had set."
KING: I'm trying to find out why you have the rule.
JONES: Yes, we have the rule because it was a part of a bigger -- it
was a -- it wasn't the rule itself. We can't point to a verse
in the Bible that says you shouldn't date or marry interracial.
KING: You can't back it up?
JONES: No, we can't back it up with a verse from the Bible. We never
have tried to; we've never tried to do that.
Compare that to what the Court heard according to the above quotation in
Ball's brief: "Detailed testimony was presented at trial elucidating the
Biblical foundation for these beliefs." Not only did they back it up with
Scripture in the earlier trial, they restated it (via Ball) in their
argument before the Supreme Court. The very founder of the university had
put it down in black and white (pun intended): "Is Segregation
Scriptural?" Dr. Bob's answer to King was radically misleading.
All the IRS wanted the university to do was to drop the rule. The reason
the IRS gave, and which the Supreme Court finally upheld, was that the
rule was too far out of step with the nation and "the government has a
fundamental, overriding interest in eradicating racial discrimination in
education." BJU could not conform, though; it was a matter of conviction.
It was not the conviction that the government should leave us alone; it
was the conviction, as stated repeatedly in their court documents, that
interracial dating and marriage was wrong. This rule was non-negotiable;
they had to have it.
Recalling the final quotation from Ball's brief, BJU argued that, since
the forbidding of interracial dating was a primary religious belief, an
unfavorable ruling from the Supreme Court could result in either (1)
harmful or fatal economic consequences from losing the tax-exempt status,
or (2) the compelled abandonment of an article of faith. For the
government to compel the abandonment of an article of faith would be
chilling, indeed, but that was what was on the line in 1982: an article of
faith. But does the rule which which the Supreme Court condemned have
that kind of significance now?
JONES: But let me tell you how insignificant this is: students never
hear it preached...
KING: But it's a rule, though; they know they can't.
JONES: It is a rule, but it's the most insignificant thing; but now
we are being defined as a racist school. I mean, that is all
the media talks about.... But I can tell you this: we don't
have to have that rule. In fact, as of today, we have dropped
the rule.... I said to our administrators, "You know, guys,
this thing is of such insignificance to us; it is so significant
to the world at large (the media, particularly). Why should
we have this here as an obstacle?"
By now, Nathan, there should be no question in your mind as to what his
own answer to that question was in 1982 when the case was being argued
before the Supreme Court, or in any of the previous years since the rule
was first adopted to deal with the Oriental/white relationship in the
'50s. "Why should we have this here as an obstacle?" The answer was
always, "Because the Bible forbids interracial dating and marriage." He
swore to it in a court of law.
Dr. Bob went on to say, "The principle upon which it is based is very,
very important. But the rule is not, so we did away with it." By
"principle," he did not mean the principle of racial purity; he meant the
principle of opposition to one-worldism. But that was not the real
principle in all those years. The real principle behind the rule was that
interracial dating and marriage are wrong; and the principle behind THAT
was to avoid "eradicating racial boundaries God had set." One-worldism,
indeed, wanted to eradicate those boundaries; but saying you oppose
miscegenation because you oppose one-worldism is like saying you oppose
burglary because you oppose organized crime. No, you oppose burglary
because it is wrong.
Thus, son, Dr. Bob successfully misrepresented our history to Larry King,
the nation at large, your fellow students, and you. He did it so well,
practically nobody has called his hand on it. Larry King could have
dumped Dr. Bob on his head, and nearly did:
KING: Partly, during the era--you know--the era of segregation,
segregationists said, "Well, we are not racist, we just think
the races should be apart; they should be treated equally,
but not together." And that was regarded as kind of a cop-out.
JONES: Yes
The videotape reveals plainly that King realized at this point that he had
backed Dr. Bob into a corner from which there was no escape. Without
question, the position to which King referred had always been the position
of BJU. Dr. Bob had no answer except for a quiet little "yes." But King
knew about the rule change and, genuinely liking Dr. Bob, he wanted to set
it up for him; so he instantly dropped his incriminating question and
said,
KING: Do you think, maybe--I mean, you could change that. You
think it is a stretch, maybe? In other words, have you
given thought to maybe that's taking it too far, down to
two people into a whole one-world concept?
Then Dr. Bob announced the rule change.
I could go on about some other things, but I want to touch on just one:
Dr. Bob said later in the interview that Alan Keyes had criticized the
school during his speech and yet "was very well received." He continued:
I got up afterwards and I told him I appreciate his frankness.
And when I got through, he came to the platform and *hugged me*,
and I hugged him. He was treated royally.
Dr. Bob's voice cracked with emotion as he said Keyes hugged him. He was
telling King that he and the school were not Catholic-haters; and, of
course, that's true. But up until that interview on Friday night, BJU had
on its web page a statement by Dr. Bob ripping Keyes to shreds as a
HYPOCRITE for being nice on campus, and then condemning the school two or
three days later. The statement was missing the next time I checked,
which was probably Monday. Why do you think that essay was yanked from
the site? Do you think it was because it was manifestly inconsistent with
the image Dr. Bob presented to the nation on "Larry King Live"?
There's no explaining these things, Nathan. Together they constitute just
one more example of how unreliable man can be. I never, never thought I
would have to say something like this about Dr. Bob. I can't speak for
him, but I think he just doesn't believe what his father and grandfather
did about race, and I think he lost sight of the irreconcilability between
his beliefs and theirs. Out of a genuine concern for the gospel, his
Yankee alumni, and his Yankee constituency, he abandoned the original
position on race; telling himself all the time that race wasn't the issue.
But the logic is inescapable: if interracial dating were forbidden by
Scripture (as they affirmed in court and out for all those years), they
could not allow it on campus. But they are allowing it. Therefore it is
not forbidden by Scripture (although they always said it was). Worst of
all, they are disguising their old position to avoid the reproach to which
it has exposed them.
I welcome your response, though I know you have no time to really interact
with all this. I love you, son; and I want you to be a man of integrity.
That's why I've written this to you.
--
Daddy