Bob Jones University, YEC, and Gap Theory

It’s possible. As flood geology became less and less tenable (to the extent that it ever was), and both gap theory and day-age accumulated more and more disagreements with mainstream science, biblical literalists may have decided that they might as well go whole hog and reject science altogether.

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I think I see a doubling down on YEC by fundamentalist or some conservative churches. The Southern Baptists, already very YEC, got even more strict about what is acceptable. Likewise, the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod has made it clear to their clergy that a gap-friendly version of YEC is too liberal - it’s six days all the way down. I don’t know but I don’t think they are working in concert so much as this is a culture war thing. Getting very specific about YEC and not allowing any nuance announces that they are being super-duper conservative and “biblical.”

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I will admit to be somewhat flummoxed by this. I had expected to see that the ‘Gap’ statement had been up more or less since BJU created their website, as some form of institutional holdover. To have been long silent on this issue, then put this piece up decades after most of the Fundamentalist movement had migrated to YEC, and then take it down four years later strikes me as odd.

I’m sure there’s a story there, but I rather doubt if we’ll get to hear it. :thinking:

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Don’t we know the story? While most faculty at BJU recently are YEC, they recognized that part of their constituency, along with their founders, were OEC, and they sought to acknowledge that reality.

Then in 2014 Ken Ham lobbied fundamentalist colleges to take a hardline on YEC in return for his endorsement and sending his followers to their colleges.

BJU responded to this undue influence by abandoning their historical position and taking Ham’s deal.

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That would explain why they took it down, but not why they put it up so late in the first place. Their website had been up for more than a decade when they did so, and I would have thought that the OEC constituency would have been further diminishing during this time, such that the offense to their YEC constituency would more than outweigh any benefit from OECs.

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Perhaps that’s just what they believed in 2012 and it was uncontroversial till the new President came in and wanted to get them in bed with Ham.

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As a further piece of evidence, BJU was on the AiG-approved page from IA’s first snapshot, taken on 14 Jan 2016. This snapshot has 36 colleges (35 on current page), and lists many of their accreditations. SACSC-accredited Warner University appear to be the one that they dropped.

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Scratching around, I was able to find this companion piece, that seems to have existed (at least in some form) for the period (2012-2016) that the ‘Gap page’ was up: BJU Scientists Speak Out. (The actual “scientist response” pages are not unfortunately archived.)

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I’m late to the conversation, but I was tuned in to the virtual TriBeta Biological Honor Society student meeting for the South Central Region just a week ago. There were several ORU students presenting and I was fairly curious about this very thing. Several of the student presentations involved extensive phylogenetic analysis which suggested to me some direction by at least one faculty member that was accepting of the concept of common ancestry. This might be consistent with some views of Day-Age Creationism, but I (in an admittedly limited search) couldn’t find much more indication about an official or unofficial stance.

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ORU certainly hires OECs.

Yes, that is my impression as well, based upon some online scratching around. My results were however somewhat tentative, so I’m glad to to get some confirmation. :slight_smile:

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Some distinctions are important here.

Charismatic churches are not, actually fundamentalist, and ORU is charismatic . They do have YECs, but it isn’t a litmus test for them as it is for many fundamentalist.

The fault lines between charismatic and fundamentalists can be fairly deep, even both are “conservative.” Fundamentalists are resolutely opposed to any ongoing revelation, but charismatic emphasize and endorse ongoing revelation.

It is notable also that our large donor has been closely associated with the Assemblies of God denomination their entire lives.

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This statement would probably spark a discussion to provide nuance from folks in charasmatic camps. They get accused of goig too far with endorsing ongoing revelation, maybe sometimes fairly and sometimes not fairly.

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The charismatic movement has moderated substantially since it’s founding and wide spread acceptance as within the fold of broader evangelicalism.

On the otherhand, fundamentalism has grown more extreme, and has always been cessationalists, and have a troubled relationship with evangelicals.

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Charles Farah was a Professor of Theology and Historical Studies at Oral Roberts University from 1967. I gave a listen to this 1973 systematic theology lecture on Creation and/or Evolution. While subscribing to the common creationist distinctions of micro vs macro evolution and uniformitarianism vs catastrophism, he also accepts an age of the earth of at least millions of years, and the existence of pre-modern hominins, possibly contemporaneous with Adam. This would be absolute anathema to retrograde direction of current YEC. For its time, I think it is a pretty remarkable position within the charismatic tradition. You may be interested in his discussion from about 10:00 minutes in.

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Over how wide a taxonomic coverage? Many creationists, even YECs, accept phylogeny within families.

Ah, this is a good point. While I don’t remember the specific details at this point, I do remember distinctly having the impression that YEC views would have been completely incompatible, so I suspect it was probably broader than families.

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There were ORU professors involved in the Templeton/Biologos grant in which several of us were involved (ca. 2011-2013). They shared some in-house tension on what they can believe/teach about evolution. So, at least back then, it was sort of up in the air where the lines were drawn.

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That still leaves them miles away from BJU and Bryan.

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