What started as a simple ultimatum — he goes, or I go — has now cost two top leaders at one of the nation’s most prominent Christian universities their leadership positions and thrown the institution into disarray.
Both President Steve Pettit (above left) of Bob Jones University and Chair John Lewis (above right) of its Board of Trustees have resigned in recent weeks over their struggle to shape the future of the South Carolina institution, which is popularly associated with its strict, fundamentalist rules about students’ behavior: It once had a strict ban on interracial dating. (It got rid of that rule in 2000 and in 2008 apologized for its racism.)
Such fundamentalist guidelines are at the center of the leadership schism, with Pettit acting to relax them and Lewis seen as opposing the effort. In 2018, Pettit relaxed dress codes, which now allow women to wear pants and not just dresses or skirts to class. He drew fire for music choices in chapel services, a fashion show put on by students, and who was invited to speak at university events and fund raisers.
But some facets of the dispute are familiar to veterans both religious and secular of college leadership. Pettit accused Lewis of overstepping his authority: for instance, by blocking an investigation into a board member’s comments about female athletes and whether their uniforms accentuate “boobs and butts.”
Pettit, the first non-Jones family member to lead the private university, announced his resignation — effective in May — two weeks ago. Less than a week later, the institution announced that Lewis himself had resigned from the board, giving no reason for his resignation.
It’s unclear how Lewis’s decision will affect Pettit’s decision to leave. Neither Pettit nor Lewis responded to requests for comment. Any decision about Pettit coming back would have to be made by the university’s board, said Randy Page, the university’s chief of staff.
What is clear is that Bob Jones University is now trapped in a vortex that many Christian institutions of higher education find themselves in: Do you move from your traditional approach, even slightly, and risk alienating your traditional student and alumni base, or stay tethered to traditional fundamentalist approaches and potentially alienate students looking for something different?
“I really hope Bob Jones doesn’t take a step back,” said Mary Tolesman, a late 1990s graduate with a son at the university now. Pettit “has been moving the school in the right direction. I’m afraid that’s going to change now. We can keep what we believe the same and not compromise on that, without going back to as many of the rules as there were when I was there.”
‘I Am Walking Down a Dark Road’
Pettit’s changes hadn’t been popular in all quarters. But when he was signed to a new three-year contract, in 2022, he thought the stresses of differing views on the university’s direction were over.
Instead, they got worse, he wrote, and Pettit became even more concerned about decisions Lewis was making. That led him last month to declare the ultimatum in a letter to the board, saying it was “not possible for me to remain as president of the university if Dr. Lewis remains chairman.”
Pettit accused Lewis of setting up executive-committee meetings at the home of Bob Jones III, the grandson of the university’s founder and a former president, not telling key administrators about the meetings, and storing documents about the meetings outside of the university’s IT system. Lewis also conveyed an “uncaring or cavalier disregard” toward information presented to the board about shortfalls in donations and enrollment numbers.
That wasn’t all.
“The chairman has taken actions in the past few weeks to thwart the trustees’ decision in February to report a matter to the university’s Title IX coordinator as required by law,” Pettit wrote. “This followed months of ignoring, minimizing, and delaying consideration of the issue, which arose from one trustee’s alleged public comments to an alumnus in the presence of a faculty member about whether female students’ clothing and female student-athletes’ uniforms accentuate their ‘boobs and butts.’ The alumnus’s letter of complaint to the board also alleged that the trustee may have taken unconsented photographs of female students.”
Pettit went on to say he didn’t know if the allegations about the trustee’s comments were true, but said they had to be investigated. But that was hard to do, he added, because Lewis had directed the university’s Title IX investigator to suspend the investigation and otherwise interfered with it.
Lewis also accused Pettit of working with an outside alumni group to “weaponize the Title IX process in a coup d’etat of the chairman,” Pettit wrote.
That group, Positive BJU Grads & Friends, told its followers in late March, before the board meeting in which Pettit resigned, that the dispute was hurting the university.
“These are not normal times at BJU. The board leadership needs to decide this week which direction it will take: continue on the positive path that Steve Pettit and his team have taken (with board approval) or persist in their plans to revert to a more ‘conservative’ style of standards and discipline.”
That all led to Pettit’s letter, which quickly made its way around the Bob Jones community and was posted on several websites and Facebook groups of alumni.
“The current direction is not sustainable,” he wrote. “I am walking down a dark road with no light ahead. The future of BJU requires the chairman and the president to work together. It is not happening now, and I can’t see it happening in the future. Normal communication and transparency must exist between the chairman and the president in order for the university to function daily. Right now, things are dysfunctional, and our working relationship is irreparably broken.”
‘It’s Not Enough’
Questions about what a Christian college should look like aren’t new at Bob Jones University. In fact, the university was established as an answer to those questions.
The university was founded by the evangelist Bob Jones Sr., who was upset over the direction of higher education in general — specifically Christian higher education, which he felt was becoming too secular. The institution he founded became known as separatist and segregationist.
Over the decades, the university has undergone periods where leaders either tried to “purify” the institution or to relax some standards, according to Adam Laats, a professor at Binghamton University and the author of Fundamentalist U: Keeping the Faith in American Higher Education.
In the 1970s, Arlin and Beka Horton, both Bob Jones alumni, tried to combat what they saw as a liberalization of the institution. Ultimately frustrated that changes weren’t happening, the couple founded Pensacola Christian College, in Florida, which positioned itself as even more conservative than Bob Jones University. That distinction continues today, with the college’s student handbook banning the dying of hair an “unnatural color” and requiring female students to wear dresses or skirts to class.
Similar debates rage on today, fueled by the prominence of fundamentalist Christian figures in conservative politics. Many institutions, including Grove City College, in Pennsylvania, are embroiled in disputes over how conservative they should be and how tightly that conservatism is tied to politics.
Bob Jones hasn’t really been in that national political conversation since George W. Bush spoke on campus during the 2000 Republican nomination campaign, Laats noted.
These conflicts have potentially existential stakes. Christian colleges are subject to the same enrollment headwinds as everybody else, and strict fundamentalist rules can be a blessing or a curse, depending on the student. Some institutions, like Ohio’s Cedarville University or Michigan’s Hillsdale College, that have stuck to their traditional core beliefs and practices have seen enrollment growth. A study published in 2021 showed that among Christian institutions, those judged the “least distinctive” — say, requiring the fewest number of Bible classes to be taken — saw high application totals, but colleges with more stringent rules had higher yield rates.
Laats said finding a market to recruit students could be tough for Bob Jones University. “It’s the grandfather of” conservative colleges,” he said. “Great history is great, but it’s not enough.”
What happens next depends on who’s in office to set the institutional direction, Laats added. With both Pettit and Lewis headed for the exit, it’s unclear what path Bob Jones will take.
“The top of both contending viewpoints is gone.”