The IRS, Civil Rights, And The Right Wing 2006

Dr. Bob Jones, Sr.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5502785
Evangelical: Religious Right Has Distorted the Faith

by Linda Wertheimer
June 23, 2006 2:20 PM

... Let's remember...that the Religious Right did not come together in response to the Roe [Roe vs Wade on abortion] decision. No, Weyrich insisted, what got us going as a political movement was the attempt on the part of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to rescind the tax-exempt status of Bob Jones University because of its racially discriminatory policies.

Bob Jones University was one target of a broader attempt by the federal government to enforce the provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Several agencies, including the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, had sought to penalize schools for failure to abide by antisegregation provisions. A court case in 1972, Green v. Connally, produced a ruling that any institution that practiced segregation was not, by definition, a charitable institution and, therefore, no longer qualified for tax-exempt standing.

The IRS sought to revoke the tax-exempt status of Bob Jones University in 1975 because the school's regulations forbade interracial dating; African Americans, in fact, had been denied admission altogether until 1971, and it took another four years before unmarried African Americans were allowed to enroll. The university filed suit to retain its tax-exempt status, although that suit would not reach the Supreme Court until 1983 (at which time, the Reagan administration argued in favor of Bob Jones University)...

Then, if you doubt the segregationist attitudes imputed to some Southern "Christians" :
 http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2008/11/it-truly-does-old-atheists-heart-good_22.html

 The inset is from a message the founder of Bob Jones University delivered on April 17, 1960 in response to Brown vs. the Board of Education and its impact on the desegregation of all white colleges and universities. Plus, the fact that, like many whites in the south in the 1940’s, Bob Jones Sr. was a member of the Ku-Klux Klan.

When Dr. Martin Luther King was killed in 1968, the BJU student body cheered in chapel and Dr. Bob Jones, Jr. said he would not fly the university’s flag at half staff to honor this communist agitator.

The following paragraphs were taken form a 32 page booklet sold in the University’s book store in 1972 (when I was a student there) to support the Biblical bases for the University's stand on Biblical racial segregation, a point so strongly believed he even base the inspiration of the Bible on it:

“Now, we folks at Bob Jones University believe that whatever the Bible says is so; and we believe it says certain fundamental things that all Bible-believing Christians accept; but when the Bible speaks clearly about any subject, that settles it. Men do not always agree, because some are dumb-some people are spiritually dumb; but when the Bible is clear, there is not any reason why everybody should not accept it.” (page 1)

“Now, what is the matter? There is an effort today to disturb the established order. Wait a minute. Listen, I am talking straight to you. White folks and colored forks, you listen to me. You cannot run over God’s plan and God’s established order without having trouble. God never meant to have one race. It was not His purpose at all. God has a purpose for each race. God Almighty may have overruled and permitted the slaves to come over to America so that the colored people could be the great missionaries to the Africans. They could have been. The white people in America would have helped pay their way over there. By the hundreds and hundreds they could have gone back to Africa and got the Africans converted after the slavery days were over.” (page 10)

“I want you folks to listen-you white and you colored folks. Do not let these Satanic propagandist fool you. This agitation is not of God. It is of the devil. Do not let people slander God Almighty. God made it plain. God meant for Christian people to treat each other right. … Yes, Paul said, ‘God…hath made of one blood all nations of men…’ All men, to whatever race they may belong, have immortal souls; but all men have mortal bodies, and God fixed the boundaries of the races of the world. Let me repeat that it is no accident that most of the Chinese live in China. It is not an accident that most Japanese live in Japan; and the Africans should have been left in Africa, and the Gospel should have been taken to them as God command His people to do.” (page 13 - 14)

“If we would just listen to the Word of God and not try to overthrow God’s established order, we would not have any trouble. God never meant for America to be a melting pot to rub out the lines between the nations. That was not God’s purpose for this nation. When someone goes to overthrowing His established order and goes around preaching pious sermons about it, that makes me sick - for a man to stand up and preach pious sermons in this country and talk about rubbing out the line between the races - I say it makes me sick.

The trouble today is a Satanic agitation striking back at God’s established order. That is what is making trouble for us.” (page 15)

“Now, you colored people listen to me. If you had not been bought over here and if your grandparents in slavery days had not heard that great preaching, you might not even be a Christian, You might be over there in the jungles of Africa today, unsaved. But you are here in America where you have your own schools and your own churches and your own liberties and your own rights, with certain restrictions that God Almighty put about you - restrictions that are in line with the Word of God.” (page 22)

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