MinistryWatch: 'Abuse Survivors Fear Too Little Has Changed at Bob Jones'

An entrance sign at Bob Jones University in Greenville, S.C. 

(Photo by John Foxe/Wikimedia/Creative Commons)

By Bob Smietana - Posted at MinistryWatch:

Published December 10, 2024

10 years after GRACE abuse report, BJU accused of ‘form over substance’ and ‘rules over people’

(RNS) — In 2012, Boz Tchividjian, grandson of famed evangelist Billy Graham, drove to the Lynchburg, Virginia, airport in his family minivan to pick up Stephen Jones, great-grandson of fundamentalist Bob Jones Sr.

The meeting, though planned, was highly improbable.

Known for banning interracial dating into the 21st century and having rules too rigid even for Graham, a former student who left after one semester, Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina, is typically wary of outsiders. So it was a shock when Stephen Jones, then president of Bob Jones, invited Tchividjian’s nonprofit Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment, known by its acronym GRACE, to examine the university’s handing of sexual abuse allegations.

The invitation came in the wake of the 2011 Penn State sex abuse scandal and amid nationwide conversations about institutional cover-up of sexual abuse. While BJU never stated a specific reason for hiring GRACE, survivors had approached Stephen Jones asking for a probe into the school’s handling of abuse, and he was a main driver behind the decision to hire Tchividjian’s nonprofit.

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For more information, please see:

• Leadership Tensions Continue at Bob Jones University – MinistryWatch
• Bob Jones University President Resigns Amid Battle with Board Chairman – MinistryWatch