Evangelist Bob Jones Sr. founded Bob Jones University out of concern with the secularization of higher education. BJU has had seven presidents: Bob Jones Sr. (1927–1947); Bob Jones Jr. (1947–1971); Bob Jones III (1971–2005); Stephen Jones (2005—2014); Steve Pettit, (2014–2023); Joshua Crockett, (2024–2025); and Bruce McAllister, (2025–present). Its religious influence, its past race relations, and its political influence have generated significant controversies.

Religious influence

Billy Graham

One of the earliest controversies to center on BJU was the break that occurred in the late 1950s between separatist fundamentalists and neo-evangelicals represented by the newly prominent evangelist Billy Graham. Graham had briefly attended Bob Jones College, and the university conferred an honorary degree on him in 1948. During the 1950s, however, Graham began distancing himself from the older fundamentalism and, in preparation for his 1957 New York Crusade, he sought broad ecumenical sponsorship. "The Protestant Council leadership was made up largely of clergy who denied the virgin birth of Christ, His deity, His bodily resurrection from the dead...and virtually every other historic Christian doctrine for which Bob Jones Sr., his university, and other Fundamentalist leaders had fought....To further increase the breadth of his appeal, Graham began to accept invitations to speak at liberal seminaries in the Northeast—Union, Colgate, and other centers of American Modernism." (174) William Martin, A Prophet with Honor: The Billy Graham Story (New York: William Morrow, 1991), 98.

Bob Jones Sr. argued that if members of Graham's campaign executive committee had rejected major tenets of orthodox Christianity, such as the virgin birth and the deity of Christ, then Graham had violated 2 John 9-11, which prohibits receiving in fellowship those who do "not abide in the teaching of Christ." In the 1960s, Graham further irritated fundamentalists by gaining the endorsement of Cardinal Richard Cushing for his Boston campaign and accepting honorary degrees from two Roman Catholic colleges.

As was his policy, Graham ignored criticism of his campaignsLewis F. Brabham, A New Song in the South: The Story of the Greenville S.C. Billy Graham Crusade (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1966), 128. and, in 1966, claimed not to know why the university opposed them;"When Billy Graham arrived in Greenville for the March 1966 crusade, he issued a statement to the Greenville newspapers saying he really did not know what accounted for the split between him and Bob Jones University." but members of his staff openly accused Jones of jealousy on the grounds that Jones's evangelistic meetings had never been as large as Graham's.Graham associate T. W. Wilson, who had attended BJC, wrote Bob Jones Sr., "What is the matter? Many times I have heard you say, 'I have preached to more people than any man in America.' Now that you can say this no longer, could it be that you have actually let the green-eyed old Monster of Jealousy creep into your heart?" Wilson to Jones, May 21, 1957, quoted in Graham's father-in-law, L. Nelson Bell, mailed a fiery ten-page letter to most members of the BJU faculty and student body (as well as to thousands of pastors across the country) accusing Jones of "hatred, distortions, jealousies, envying, malice, false witnessing, and untruthfulness."

In what seemed to the Joneses to be a deliberate affront, Graham held his only American campaign of 1966 in Greenville, South Carolina. Graham had only three campaigns scheduled that year: London, Berlin, and Greenville, South Carolina. Under penalty of expulsion, the university forbade any BJU dormitory student from attending the Graham meetings."No Bob Jones University dormitory student will be permitted to go to a single meeting of the Greenville crusade. No Bob Jones University adult student, if he is married or lives in town, may attend the crusade and remain as a student." Bob Jones Jr., Chapel talk, February 8, 1965, Mack Library Archives, quoted in . An exception was made for Bob Jones Academy students who lived in town with their parents. In a four-page position paper delivered to students in 1965, Bob Jones Jr., condemned Billy Graham's "ecumenical evangelism" as unscriptural and "heretical," noting that Graham shared his platform with Catholic priests and that one could not "be a good Catholic and a good, spiritual Christian." When Graham arrived in Greenville, Jones Jr. emphasized that the basis of the university's position was scriptural and not personal. "The Bible commands that false teachers and men who deny the fundamentals of the faith should be accursed; that is, they shall be criticized and condemned. Billy approves them, Billy condones them, Billy recommends them....I think that Dr. Graham is doing more harm in the cause of Jesus Christ than any living man; that he is leading foolish and untaught Christians, simple people that do not know the Word of God, into disobedience to the Word of God."Jones, "The Position of Bob Jones University in Regard to the Proposed Billy Graham Crusade in Greenville, A Chapel Talk by Dr. Bob Jones Jr., on February 8, 1965"; Greenville News, March 4, 1966, quoted in

The negative publicity caused by the rift with Graham, itself a reflection of a larger division between separatist fundamentalists and neo-evangelicals, precipitated a decline in BJU enrollment of about 10% in the years 1956–59. Seven members of the university board (of about a hundred) also resigned in support of Graham, including Graham himself and two of his staff members. By 1966, when Graham appeared in Greenville, BJU enrollment had strongly rebounded and continued to grow thereafter until the mid-1980s.

King James Version of the Bible

The university requires use of the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible in its services and classrooms, but it does not hold that the KJV is the only acceptable English translation or that it has the same authority as the original Hebrew and Greek manuscripts. "Statement about Bible Translations," BJU website . The King-James-Only Movement—or more correctly, movements, since it has many variations—became a divisive force in fundamentalism only as conservative modern Bible translations, such as the New American Standard Bible (NASB) and the New International Version (NIV) began to appear in the 1970s. BJU has taken the position that orthodox Christians of the late 19th and early 20th centuries (including fundamentalists) agreed that while the KJV was a substantially accurate translation, only the original manuscripts of the Bible written in Hebrew and Greek were infallible and inerrant. Bob Jones Jr. called the KJV-only position a "heresy" and "in a very definite sense, a blasphemy."

The university's stand has been condemned by some other fundamentalists. In 1998, Pensacola Christian College produced a widely distributed videotape, arguing that this "leaven of fundamentalism" was passed from the 19th-century Princeton theologian Benjamin B. Warfield (1851–1921) to Charles Brokenshire (1885–1954), who served BJU as dean of the School of Religion, and then to current BJU faculty members and graduates.Documents on the BJU-Pensacola controversy archived on a private website . Ironically, Peter Ruckman, a BJU graduate, has argued the most extreme version of the KJV-only position, that all translations of the Bible since the KJV have been of satanic origin.

Criticism of Catholicism and Mormonism The three Bob Joneses, especially Bob Jones Jr., sharply criticized the Roman Catholic Church. For instance, Jones Jr. once said that Catholicism was "not another Christian denomination. It is a satanic counterfeit, an ecclesiastic tyranny over the souls of men....It is the old harlot of the book of the Revelation—'the Mother of Harlots.'" All popes, Jones asserted, "are demon possessed."Philip Jenkins, The New Anti-Catholicism: The Last Acceptable Prejudice (Oxford University Press, 2004), 24. "Pope Paul VI, archpriest of Satan, a deceiver and an anti-Christ, has, like Judas, gone to his own place....[A] "pope must be an opportunist, a tyrant, a hypocrite, and a deceiver or he cannot be a pope....A pope claims to be Christ's vice-regent on earth; that is, he blasphemously and arrogantly claims to have the divine prerogatives to forgive sins, to assign his enemies to hell...and to speak on matters of faith and morals with the same infallibility as the Holy Bible."(1978)Faith for the Family (October 1978, 2, 4) In 2000, then-president Bob Jones III referred, on the university's web page, to Mormons and Catholics as "cults which call themselves Christian."Beliefnet.com Furthermore, in 1966, BJU awarded an honorary doctorate to the Rev. Ian Paisley, future British MP, leader of the Democratic Unionist Party, and Moderator of the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster, who has referred to the Pope as a "Roman anti-Christ.". After the death of Pope John XXIII in 1963, Paisley held a rally objecting to the lowering of the Union flag at Belfast City Hall in conjunction with "the lying eulogies now being paid to the Roman Antichrist". Bob Jones III has argued that the university is not so much anti-Catholic or anti-Mormon as it is opposed to the idea that all men, regardless of religious beliefs, will eventually get to heaven: "Our shame would be in telling people a lie, and thereby letting them go to hell without Christ because we loved their goodwill more than we loved them and their souls…. All religion, including Catholicism, which teaches that salvation is by religious works or church dogma is false. Religion that makes the words of its leader, be he Pope or other, equal with the Word of God is false. Sola Scriptura. From the time of the Protestant Reformation onward, it has been understood that there is no commonality between the Bible way, which is justification by faith in the shed blood of Jesus Christ, and salvation by works, which the faithful, practicing Catholic embraces."Sullivan County News; Greenville News, February 18, 2002

Sexual abuse study In 2012, following allegations of sexual abuse and the mishandling of sexual abuse reports, the university hired a third-party, Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment (GRACE), to conduct an impartial investigation. In January 2014, the university abruptly terminated its contract with GRACE a month before the results of the study were supposed to be published, then a month later rehired the group. New York Times, February 12, 2014;Washington Post, February 7, 2014; Religion News, February 25, 2014. Largely for internal reasons GRACE did not publish its 300-page final report until December,"Final Report" when it recommended the University take "personnel action" against former BJU president and Chancellor Bob Jones III, outsource future abuse counseling to secular organizations, offer free tuition to those who had left the university because of their treatment, and install a campus memorial to sexual abuse victims.

Board of trustees conflict In late 2022, during a period of tension between University President Steve Pettit and members of the university's board of trustees, a group called "Positive BJU Grads and Friends" organized to support Pettit. Although Pettit signed a three-year contract on January 19, 2023, he resigned as president in March 2023, effective May 5, citing an inability to work with board chairman, John Lewis. Lewis resigned a week later. In 2023, Vice President Alan Benson was appointed interim president, and in 2024, the Board of Trustees named Baptist pastor and alumnus Joshua Crockett president. In 2025, Crockett returned to his previous church, and the Board named Vice President for Ministry, Bruce McAllister, as the seventh president.

Race relations

Segregation