172. Fundamental Footprints - The Academic Powerhouses - BJU & PCC

We want to begin our episode today with a couple of personal testimonies from PCC and BJU. The first one is going to be from Micah Boosie. This is his words. I grew up in a faculty and staff family of PCC from the 1990s to 2010s. I went to both PCA, which is the Pensacola Christian Academy, and Pensacola Christian College for all of my education prior to med school. And I can honestly say that I received a quality Christian liberal arts education there at an affordable price, which allowed me to graduate debt-free from college. I can honestly say that there have been many people who sincerely love God and are passionate about raising the next generation to serve God in whatever career field they enter next. Now for the bad. The Hortons did create a very legalistic environment, mostly adapted from their Bob Jones University background, in which separation from the world and purity culture were taken to the extremes. There were the supreme authority of all students, faculty, and staff members. And it was important to remember that obedience to God meant subjecting yourself to their authority. All staff were required to sign a handbook every year for employment, which stipulated strict rules for how staff members had lived both at work and elsewhere. Examples included mandatory dress code for everything from shopping to dining out. For example, men had to wear long non-denim slacks if shopping anywhere except the hardware store. Limitations on TV or home video viewing. Only things rated G were permitted until around 2010 when PG was also permitted. Strict music standards, which prohibited the majority of Christian music. The King James only Bible translation usage based on their belief that the Texas Receptus was inspired, preserved, and fallible word of God. And the King James version was the only reliable translation from the TR. Toxic purity culture teaching were rampant and the rules reflected as such. For instance, women had strict dress codes to preserve PCC's definition of modesty. And it taught that women were responsible for not tempting men through immodest dress. Unmarried males and females were forbidden from any touching of each other unless they were relatives. And I could probably count on one hand the number of times I had touched a female in my life by the time I graduated college. To be fair, I never knew a single person who had a pregnancy out of wedlock. But I found their rules to be extremely harmful to developing a healthy Christian view of sexuality. The campus church at PCC was the required church for all employees and college students. And it was strictly controlled by the Hortons. Ms. Horton approved all music which was to be performed for many years. And Dr. Horton ultimately controlled all major church decisions including the pastors. When a pastor left or was fired, a new one was needed. A member had no input of the replacement. Following Dr. Horton's retirement in 2012, Dr. Shoemaker was appointed the new president. And in his personal opinion, Micah's personal opinion, he has been doing an excellent job slowly weaning the college away from its hyper-legalistic ways. The campus church is now a completely separate entity from the college under leadership of its pastor, although attendance there is still mandatory with attendance checks performed weekly. The dress and appearance code has been significantly relaxed. Students have much more freedom with their entertainment options and are giving much more adult freedom than I had, such as abandoning the strict 11 o'clock bedtime. Even the music standards have seemed to be relaxed in practice. Even if on paper they seem to be the same, for instance, multiple contemporary Christian music artists, worship songs arrangements have been featured on the college's latest Bible college album, albeit with no drum set or electric guitars. Overall, there are many things I would have changed and still would change, but I had a great education there, met some amazing Christian friends, and learned to love God and His Word. This next testimonial comes from Audrey Coates. I could not go off campus for dinner with my best friend from home. I was 19 and she was 22, but her boyfriend, who was also a sophomore at BJU, could. 30 plus years later, and I'm still salty about that. I will add that I got a great education there and was really thankful for the amazing teachers. Many of them cared about me as more than just a student and went out of their way to support me. Also, I heard a lot of great preaching and Bible teaching that stays with me to this day. The overprotective rules that did not help my spiritual growth, but did give me a bad attitude, were very frustrating. I found my freedom in you. I found a joy I can't lose. And thank God it's true. You wrapped your arms around me. And heaven broke through. From the moment you found me, I found my freedom in you. Welcome to the For Freedom Podcast. This podcast exists to bring the freedom of the gospel for everyday Christians with everyday issues. Now, here are your hosts, James Safer and Brad Martin. Welcome back to the For Freedom Podcast. What a great day it is to serve the Lord. Thank you for tuning in. I want to thank all of our listeners over the last several weeks. We have received great support, great response over this Fundamental Footprints series. And we're going to continue on in that later on. Today, we're talking about the academic giants, BJU, and Pensacola Christian College. And excited about the episode that we have lined up. Brett, we just came out of Mother's Day. And we just came out of spending. I got to spend time with my mom. My mom came to church this past week. She lives about an hour away from the church. And so, her and my stepdad drove up and came to church. And we went to lunch afterwards and hung out and had a great Mother's Day. Great service at the church. Attendance was up. We had a child dedication with several children. We were dedicating to the Lord. And just a wonderful time in the Lord's house. How have you been? How are things going there with you in Mississippi? Well, down here in Mississippi, things are going pretty good. We had a great Mother's Day as well. We had some people out. But at the same time, we still had a good crowd. We had kids that, you know, we've got a lot of moms in our church. And so, a lot of kids come to our church to go to church with their moms. And then we had some church members that weren't here because they were at another church with their mom. But we had a great day. It was a good crowd. And we had our children's church, which we just started. We started children's church on Easter. And we're still keeping it going. And we had a good response from it. And afterward, I had parents come up to me and tell me how great they loved it. We had something for their kids and how they want to help and be workers. And that's encouraging. You know, you got parents coming up saying, hey, I want to help in this. You know, because this is the future of our church. We're investing in the children. I'm super excited about it. And, man, things have just been going good. We recognize the oldest and the youngest mom, the normal things. We've got an offering this month for our crusade. We're taking an offering every Sunday this month because we've got an evangelistic crusade coming up in September with Alex McFarlane in our county, in our association. And so, man, it was just a good Sunday. Love it. Brett, did you deviate from your sermon series to preach on mothers? Or what did you preach on this week? You know, it's funny. We talk about this in our small group. I have the young adult, the college and career age guys, people for my small group that I lead. And we talked about how I don't deviate from my sermon series when it comes to Mother's Day. Father, I used to do that. I told them, like, years ago, when it's Mother's Day, I'm going to rip on those moms. And it's Father's Day. I'm going to rip on those dads. And one year I flipped it. Like, oh, it's Mother's Day. So, moms, I'm going to give you a rest. I'm going to preach on the dads. And then it came Father's Day and say, Dad, I'm going to give you a rest. I'm going to preach on the moms. I did that one year. But a few years ago, I just, you know what? I'll mention something about Mother's Day or whatnot. But I just keep on preaching on whatever series I'm in. So, I had just started the book of Jonah. And so, I just continued preaching on through the book of Jonah. And then we talk about it. The only time I deviate from that is Easter and Christmas. Like, Easter and Christmas all set the series up to where by the time we get to Easter or by the time we get to Christmas, it all culminates in – so, those are the only two Sundays of the year where I really kind of focus. Sometimes I do Thanksgiving, to be honest. I might do a Thanksgiving thing, but most of the time not. Most of the time, even Thanksgiving, Mother's Day, Father's Day, Arbor Day, Memorial Day, whatever day you want to say it is, I'm just going to keep on preaching on whatever series I'm in. I love it. Yep, same way. You know, I'm new to preaching every week, year and a half now in. And I just decided when I got here, whatever series I'm in, I'm just going to continue on. And so, Easter, Mother's Day, I'm just preaching through the book of Acts and just preaching through it. And so, this week was the end of Acts chapter 9, which was Aeneas and Tabitha, the healing of those two from Peter. And so, it was exciting to go through that because it actually did line up to talk about Tabitha. And how her legacy, and she was a maker of purple and linen and how she had died. And the ladies from the area honored her and loved her and showed her legacy. So, it did line up that I talked about a lady on Mother's Day, but it wasn't by plan by any means. It was just the way the schedule fell. And so, the Lord worked that out. And it was a great segue into Mother's as well. But yeah, it's always exciting to see what people do and how they change and what they preach on and talk through on Mother's Day and those different fun holidays that we have. I'll tell you that, talking about the book of Acts, one of these years, I'm going to preach through the book. I'm going to do it. I'm going to start. I have this vision of me starting in January, going all the way through December, spending the whole year in the book of Acts. I'm going to do it. But I have commitment issues when it comes to things like that. I don't like to stay in a series more than four or five weeks. And then I like to move on to something else. So, one of these years, I'm going to pull it off and I'm going to do it. So, John asked me this week, he said, are you still on track? And I said, Lord willing, I will. I'm going to take the summer off. We're going to preach through the Psalms in summer. I enjoyed doing that series and having a break in the summertime. And then we'll pick back up with the second half of Acts with Paul going to the uttermost and preach through that the second half of the year. And I will say, I was a little daunted about going through the book of Acts. You know, it's a big book. I took several, you know, 20-something chapters. And so, just preaching through that, I was a little leery and hesitant. But it's moved real well the way I've done it. And, you know, when you go through the book of Acts, a lot of it is narrative storytelling. And so, it's not a lot of, like, dragging verse by verse the way sometimes you go through. Like when I went through 1 Corinthians 13, you know, there was, I spent, like, 15 messages on. 15 verses. And so, it was a verse or even a couple of words that I preached on at that time. So, it was a little more daunting. This one, it flows a little better. I'm taking bigger portions. This week, I'm preaching through 48 verses. It's one story through chapter 10. So, it's just the way the narrative flows. So, it's been fun. I've really enjoyed it. I think our people have really enjoyed it. I've got a lot of great response. But, yeah, I was sort of the same way you. This is a big book. It's a big daunting task. You know, how do we break this down? How do we go through it? And so, I've really enjoyed it. So, Brett, we are at the time of this release of the recording. Man, we're 24 days from being able to see each other face to face. We'll be in Dallas. It's going to be an awesome time. We've got some great lineups of meetups that we're going to be doing. Some get-togethers in the evenings. And we're going to have some cigars to hand out from our For Freedom Cigar line that we're going to be giving out while we're down there. Daniel Wynn, Marcus Merritt, some of these guys have reached out to us. And we've got some lunches lined up, some dinners lined up. I am so excited about the convention, about some of the different things that are going to be going on. I think I'm more excited about just hanging out and getting away for a couple of days. For me, it's going to be like 14 days that I'm going to be away from the house and spending a week of vacation beforehand and just enjoying time with my family. We're going to the Dallas Cowboys Stadium, a tour of the stadium. But, man, we're just excited about getting over to Dallas and being with people. And so, we hope that if you're in that area, you'll reach out to us. I've got a guy that had reached out to me. He's from Allen, Texas, which is just right beside McKinney. We're going to be getting together and just reach out to him through the podcast. And, man, we have appreciated all the comments and feedback that we've gotten recently. And so, hopefully, you'll be there in Dallas or maybe you're in the area and you'd like to meet up with us. Let us know. Shoot us a direct message. Reach out to us on a phone call. We'd love to meet up and be together with you. We are also still going to Israel. That's still the plan. We've got our trip settled. We've got our dates. Our website is up. And we want you to come with us. And I guarantee that if you do decide you want to come to Israel, that'll be one of the best decisions of your life. It'll be a trip that you never, ever forget. You read your Bible. It'll come to life. It'll go from black and white to full color. These are places, historical places, that you read about in the Old Testament. You can go stand where David fought Goliath. You can stand where Elijah preached to the prophets of Baal. Me and James have stood there. And you can come and experience that with us. It is safe. It's one of the safest times to go to Israel is right now. And so, look, your registration is $450. And so, we want you to come on, pay your registration fee, see the payment schedule over the next year. You can get that paid down. And it's a really good price. Listen, it's $4,500 all in per person. But that's really one of the best prices you're going to find going to Israel. These trips, they run more than that. Some of them run up to $10,000 a person. And so, this is a really good deal, really good price. And so, if you're interested in coming to Israel with us, we would encourage you to come with us. And we're going to have a good time in the Holy Land. Absolutely. Man, I'm so excited about it. I can't wait. I can't wait to be back there with you and with some of our friends that have signed up. It's going to be an awesome time. We hope you come. Quick way for you to support the podcast. Many people ask, hey, how can we support? We don't do Patreon. We don't do any of those things. We want to provide you with some great cigars and some great things there. So, if you want to support our cigar page, you can go to that at 1689cigars.com. Backslash for freedom. And you can get out some great things there. We've got some fun things coming up into the summer. We're in production of some really cool items. But right now, we've got four cigar lines. And you can go and check those out. Grab you a couple. We've got a sampler pack. We've got five packs. We've got boxes of 20. So, we've got plenty of different ways for you to do that with Father's Day coming up. And honor some of your dads and grab us some great sticks. And in the same way, you're going to support the podcast and help out in a great way. Speaking of supporting the podcast, we were planning to go to G3 there in Georgia. And we had just been talking about it. And some horrible news came out of G3 and Praise Chapel. Hope that you'll be praying for Josh Boyce. He had some anonymous accounts and some anonymous emails and some anonymous substack accounts that he was hosting and slandering and just spreading rumors. And you can read those reports. It's been out there. But just horrible things that were said and done through that. And he stepped down from the president of the ministry. I think he resigned from his church and just seeking reconciliation, seeking some way of moving forward through the grace of God. But by all that happening, there were some people that he was slandering that were actually speakers at the conference that he was hosting, which is wicked to think about. And so they have decided to go ahead and cancel the conference this year, take a year off and restart that maybe next year or years in the future. So that being said, we're not going to go to Georgia now that I know of unless Brett just wants to go and hang out down there. And I'd be OK with that. But September is not going to happen for G3. We are looking at another possible conference or two to be able to go to and be able to hang out and share some of the information on our cigars. I have had experiences on Twitter and I want to ask you about this. And I don't know, grace, redemption, forgiveness. I understand that. And I'm for that. And I want that for him. But my experience of anon accounts is they're like the lowest form of human existence. Just standing behind a keyboard, keyboard warriors, just the cowardice. I mean, and just attack you when they're hiding behind their anonymity. And it's just, oh, I can't stand. I quit engaging them. It's like, dude, if you don't have the guts to show your face and I just I don't care about anything you have to say. And that's kind of been my experience with anon accounts. And so hearing this come out, it's so shocking because it's beyond my comprehension. Why you would bring these guys up on a platform and then publicly and then go behind their back and bash them online. Oh, man, I just don't get it. What are your thoughts on this? I'm saying, boy, I think this the social media age that we live in. It is it can be used for good and a lot of good. But man, with the ability to create an anonymous account and and do things through that, it's it's my mind goes to one verse of scripture. And I shared it with you before. A double minded man is unstable in all of his ways and having an anonymous account where you're bashing or talking critically about other people that you wouldn't do out in the open is the definition of a double minded man. And so we we need to be careful. We need to be careful of what we're saying and how we're saying things with public platforms. Man, lawsuits and different things can happen. But but but what does that say for the cause of Christ when we can't get along, when we can't talk face to face open? When I've got a problem with a brother, I'm going to go to him face to face and I'm just going to deal with it. I'm not if it loses a friendship, then it loses a friendship. But I'm going to go and I'm going to deal with it and talk about it face to face, front and center and just talk through things. And I think we need to be men of character and we need to step up and do the right thing. And it's just it's just a wicked, wicked world that we live in. Now, now I understand this is personal for you because you've been running Church McCrudden for years, right? Yeah, I don't even know who that is. Well, I've spent some time as IFB sermon clips myself. So, yeah, well, that's a joke. You know, there was a fun story, though, when we were in Idaho and social media was coming out me and I was actually talking to my buddy, Andrew Maddox. He just graduated from get this, Brett. He crammed a four year degree into 21 years. And I think he set a record. He said it was legendary to be able to do that. And not many people have been able to do that. But, yeah, 21 years. He finally graduated. Super proud of him. But when we were in Idaho, we were playing around and he came up with like a deacon something. And so I came up with a fake account. And we would be like in staff meeting and he'd like, yeah, ran 25 buses this week. 400 people came to church for our bus ministry. 380 of them accepted Christ. We had our cattle bins out. We're baptizing people. And we would just put random like weird fake stories up. And people get this, Brett. Pastors from the country would retweet it and reshare it. Like these guys are doing great things. And it was just fun, crazy things, made up stories. And I asked him, I was like, hey, do you still have that account? And he's like, no, dude, I don't even know how to get to it. It may still be out there, but I don't even know how to log in. I don't even remember how to log in for it. I feel I need to make a clarification here. I am not saying that all Anon accounts are horrible. Like, for instance, the IFP sermon clips and bad sermons, you know, that they're doing. I think they're doing the Lord's work and they may need anonymity for what they're doing. I don't know who they are, but they may need anonymity for what they're doing. And I got no problem with accounts that just come on and parody stuff and make jokes and have a good time. I got no problem with that. In fact, it's the Anon accounts that this guy was running that come on and just slander people and criticize for no reason. Those are the ones that I have a problem with. Yeah. And I'm thankful that G3, again, I don't do a lot with G3. I've had the opportunity to go to several conferences that I've never been, but we were looking forward to going this year. I was looking forward to hearing HB and some of those other guys speak and preach. But I am thankful that they didn't reveal the names of his anonymous accounts because it would have everyone would have immediately went and looked them up and saw what was done and said. And so to avoid even more slander and abuse toward that, they didn't even mention them, which I'm thankful for. Oftentimes, they would put a statement out, not them, but other companies or things would put a statement out and say, these are the anonymous accounts that he had, blah, blah, blah. But these are the names. And so I'm thankful they didn't do that because they're just trying to alleviate more hurt and pain that was done from the situation. Absolutely. I think that's a wise move. That's a good thing, dude, because you know what we're going to do. The first thing we hear, oh, let me go look it up. Let me get on there and see what he said. Let's see what he was doing and see what things. So, well, Brett, we've had a great intro here. We're going to jump into we're doing a series that we're calling The Fundamental Footprints, and we've discussed Howell's Anderson and Bob Gray and had a great interview last week with James Spurgeon. I'm about halfway through with his book, and just I'm laughing. I'm crying. I'm just enjoying. I'm like jaw dropping in some moments as I'm reading through his book, and I would send him a text and be like, dude, I can relate 100% with where you're at. And so we're discussing these institutions that sort of shape the independent fundamental Baptist movement, and we're jumping into it for better or for worse. And so we're discussing today two powerhouses. Who are we talking about today, Brett? So today we're going to turn our attention to two powerhouses with very different tones, and it's Bob Jones University and Pensacola Christian College show. So, James, I want you to take us back. Take us back to how did Bob Jones University get started? Yeah, absolutely. Let's jump in there because that's a big part. Bob Jones University was founded in 1927, so it's got some years. It's coming up on its 100th year anniversary. It was established by an evangelist named Bob Jones Sr., and this is what he saw. He saw theological liberalism begin to creep in to colleges, and he decided, I need a place. I want a place that's going to preserve the Orthodox Christian beliefs, and really what he wanted was a place to promote holiness. And so this is sort of his beginning of where we're at of establishing Bob Jones University. So it was his kind of reaction to what was going on in higher education at the time. Absolutely, yeah. And what happened was from the beginning, Bob Jones wasn't just a school. It was really, it was a movement. It was a movement of a place where he decided that he was going to train in the academics. And Bob Jones is a great academic place. They are, academically, they're up there with some of the best. But he also wanted a place where he could be what he called separated Christians. Now, when you say separation, I'm assuming we're talking about intense separation. Yeah, exactly. Just like our opening story with a couple of people, and we put this out there on social media of, Hey, give us some stories. Give us some things that your time and your experience. I didn't go to Bob Jones. You didn't go to Bob Jones. And so we're just trying to piece the puzzles together here. And it was intense as far as their dress code, the curfews, the chapel attendance. They had policies like their infamous interracial dating ban. It was lifted. It was there, but it was lifted until 2000, where they had a band. If you were of a different race, you couldn't date someone else that was of a different race. All the way up into the year 2000. And that caused a huge stir when George W. Bush spoke there during his presidential campaign. Yeah. And people are going to continue to talk about that. And they denied it for a while, but eventually they came out. And Bob Jones University has since rebranded. It's updated its image. And it's even softened some of its stance, but the roots of it all run deep. And that's where we began to look at it and then talk about it. And some may even ask, and I'm trying to remember this off the top of my head, Brett. Some may even ask, you know, how does Bob Jones even really deal with the Independent Fundamental Baptist? They weren't really Independent Fundamental Baptist. They were separated. And if I remember the story correctly, Bob Jones and Jack Howells were both on the board for a Bible translation, a new Bible translation that was going to come out. And then there was a riff there, and then they went their separate ways. But there was some connection to Jack Howells and Bob Jones. They were friends at one point until they began to disband and stop some of that friendship. And I may have that a little different, but if I remember correctly, that's sort of the connection there. And so, Brett, we're going to dig a little deeper into the culture of Bob Jones, what kind of environment it created for its students. Tell us a little bit about the environment that was there and around for the students. So think formal. Think structured. Think very, very controlled. There were, and in some ways still are, layers of rules meant to foster discipline. And many found it pretty stifling. The culture prioritized conformity and obedience over exploration or grace. So, as we look through that, and we're going to begin to talk through PCC in a minute, was it similar to PCC in some ways, or was it different? What were your thoughts there? It was, but Bob Jones kind of leaned more intellectual. They emphasized apologetics, the arts, and even drama, unlike many other IFB schools, which, you know, you say the word drama. That was, you know, that was a bad word. But despite that, the culture discouraged dissent. Questioning authority, just raising the question, you could be labeled as rebellious. Yeah, but wasn't Bob Jones, wasn't they also known for their interstellar or their insular in their leadership and how great it was? Well, for decades, it was run by Bob Jones Sr., Jr., and then the third. So leadership stayed pretty in-house. And as you know, that's kind of, for this vein, that's kind of a standard thing for people to do. And what that did is it kind of created an echo chamber where critics were seen as enemies and not reformers. That's interesting to think about because it's that hierarchy of, you know, almost kingdom mentality, right? Of the king's sons are going to be the heirs and they're going to take over and no one's going to be able to come in and change anything. Well, it's like a house of Anderson. I mean, the plan was for David to take the reins. Yeah. And David just had problems and couldn't help himself. And so what's the next best thing? Jack Scott. He was the next choice. So we see this all the time. Absolutely. But what about the student experience? I know we weren't students there. I know we didn't go there. I've got people in my church that went to Bob Jones. And we've talked to other people. And we're going to have an interview in a couple of weeks with someone who did an in-depth study of Bob Jones. But what have we learned as we've studied through the student experience of Bob Jones? So as we've done our research, we see that a lot of them felt spiritually manipulated. Like their worthiness was tied to performance. And though some had great academic experiences, I mean, there were so many of them that were left with spiritual wounds that took years to unpack and heal. Yeah. But, you know, I want to shift gears now to PCC. Right before we shift gears, Brett, I want to just mention about the Bob Jones side of it. There's been a lot of cover-up, a lot of spiritual abuse that happened and even physical abuse that happened. And there's what's called the Grace Report, the GRACE Grace Report that came out back in 2014. And we're going to have an in-depth interview with Rebecca, who led the charge in that. And so we're not going to spend a lot of time on that. We're going to spend more time on Pensacola here in a minute. But I just want to whet your appetite, per se, to do maybe some research and look into that and be ready for that interview in just a couple of weeks. And so, yeah, let's transition to PCC. I, when I was growing up and going to college, one of the choices that for college, there were three colleges that I was looking at. I was looking at Hiles Anderson. I was looking at Crown. I was looking at Pensacola. Pensacola was tempting to me because it was the closest one. Okay. And one of the things that we knew about it was that it was accredited. Well, that was, for my pastor, that was a strike against it. And strike one, it was accredited. And, of course, accreditation is the devil. Amen. Strike two, it was a parachurch organization. Didn't have a home church. So that was another strike against it. And then, you know, I guess my pastor didn't like it. So that was strike three. And so Pensacola was one of the colleges that I was thinking about going to. And what I got from our cold open was, like, the academic side of it was really, really good. And, you know, from my perspective coming into this, before we did our research, before we read the comments and did the cold opens, I always knew that they were good on the academic side. But we're going to shift gears and talk about PCC and its origin story. So, James, what can you tell us about the origin of PCC? Yeah. So PCC was founded in 1974. It's not super old. They just celebrated their 50 years. Is that 50 years, right? 50 years from existence? Yeah. So 51 years ago, they started by Arland and Becca Horton, which if you've heard that, you would get the name of Becca, which is where that come from. They were in Pensacola, Florida. It grew quickly and mostly because of the success of their homeschooling curriculum called the Becca books. And, Brett, a fun fact about Becca books is if you are, I believe it's east of the Mississippi. So from Mississippi, the Mississippi River to the east, they ship more Becca books in the east of the Mississippi than even Amazon does east of the Mississippi. They're the largest shipping organization for the last many, many years as they go through that. Yeah. You know, PCC was the engine behind that. They were the engine behind a Becca and a Becca books. The environment of PCC, it's intense. And the people that I've talked to that was from there were pretty intense as well. I know my wife's school, she was part of the Becca curriculum. And then a lot of the schools that she's taught at from since then have been a part of the Becca curriculum. And so we were very familiar with that. When I went to Bible college, Brett, just to let you know, I was a public school kid. And public school, we didn't teach grammar. I didn't know grammar at all. And so when we were part of that, the grammar side of it, I got to college and they did the entrance exam. And I completely failed the basic English. And I had to take basic English first, which didn't even give me a credit. And then I had to take English 101 because I was so far behind. So a Becca in their rigor standards was pretty good. And some of the ways that it was intense was that everything was monitored. You couldn't hold hands. You couldn't listen to most music that was there, that was out there. And even where you walked on campus was controlled. Now, we looked into this and you could actually get demerits for the wrong socks. Is that right? Absolutely. I've heard stories of people that wore the wrong dress code, wore the wrong socks, and because they didn't have the right socks on, they got demerits. And so they have this demerit system for all kinds of behavior. And a lot of schools that use a Becca adopted this demerit system. The school is highly regulated. They want to keep students on a tight moral track. And so, Brett, let's begin to talk about the culture, right? The culture of the daily life for students at PCC. Now, part of this has changed over recent years, and we'll jump into it. But give us the idea of what a daily life would be. So think about highly regulated. You could get expelled for holding hands, for attending non-approved churches, or even watching movies like Braveheart, which is so hilarious. Because that was a movie that got me in trouble at Hal's Anderson. I went to an off-campus house and watched Braveheart, and I got caught. And then the guy I was with turned me in. And so never trust anybody, man. It was crazy. But, yeah, that's what that, you know, you can expect that type of stuff in this environment. Wow, that's wild, Brett. But, you know, I've even heard of students, and maybe you've heard of this as well, but students getting kicked out for reading books by authors that the administration didn't approve of. A hundred percent. They had something called The Pathway. And it was a handbook detailing everything from skirt link to how you interact socially. And it's all about outward compliance. Wow. So, again, obedience equals godliness. Rule following equals righteousness. And that's sort of the standard they kept. You know, students learn real quick not to ask questions. And that's the difficult part of that is, you know, Jesus welcomed questions. Jesus wanted people to ask questions. And he loved when his disciples, when Thomas asked questions, when Peter asked questions, he welcomed it. He saw that as a way of growing. But this mentality at PCC and even Bob Jones and Howes and even Bob Gray, they wanted you to keep your heads down, not ask questions, and just submit and not worry about even going forward. So, Brett. Go ahead. And PCC does have something that a lot of these churches, these legalistic colleges don't. And they actually did offer strong programs. So, James, can you tell us a little bit about that? Absolutely. That's one of the things that was a big draw for PCC. Because they were accredited, because they were able to offer a higher rigor of standard, they had a nursing program or have a nursing program. Education and teaching, law degrees, business departments. They were top notch in their facilities. And they were able to offer things that a small Bible college could not offer up until really Liberty. Liberty changed the scene when you get to that point. Because PCC was, I mean, you could go to PCC and you could be a lawyer. And you could graduate PCC law program and go out and practice law. They were very high in their educational standards. But, James, my mama said accreditation is the devil. Yeah. For years, they also refused accreditation. Eventually, they joined what was called TRACS, the TRACS program. And it's still not regionally accredited, which means transferring credits and going to grad school outside of their network is difficult. But they eventually began to go through that process. So, they isolate academically, too, not just spiritually. Yeah. That was their reasoning for biblical separation. And the result was the bubble mentality and this, you know, keeping you in the bubble. My mind goes to that movie about the, I think it was called Bubble Boy, where the kid was in a bubble in a house because his mom didn't want to get germs. And told him that if he got germs, he would die. And never had physical contact with anyone. And then years later, like as a teenager and a young adult, the bubble got broken and he thought he was going to die and then realized it was all a lie. And that's sort of the mentality shift of we keep people in a bubble. And then they, you know, once he realized he could go and touch people and be out in the world, he just went crazy. It was almost an IFB mindset of how this was in the world. So, Brett, let's continue on. Let's talk about the leadership and the structure and maybe even the lack of transparency at PCC. So, it was very top-down leadership structure. The Hortons ran everything for decades. And now control has passed to a close inner circle. And so, that's kind of the structure that it is. Was there any type of, in our research, was there any type of student representation or appeal process or any type of anything that the students had to say in? No, none of that. If you're accused of breaking a rule, you're at the mercy of the system. No defense. It's all authoritarian. So, that kind of structure makes it easy to hide problems and hard for students to heal. Exactly. Like, there's no way you can appeal that. It's just like, well, there's nothing you can do about it. But we're going to go into kind of the alumni and some of the trauma stories that we've heard. And this leads us to some heavier subjects. Because there's a growing number of former PCC students sharing stories of trauma. Yep. If you go to Reddit, there's an entire Reddit thread on this. The Facebook group. There's a Facebook group called Recovering from PCC. And even personal blogs. And you'll find countless testimonies of spiritual abuse, depression, and isolation. Right? When you are very rarely even allowed to leave campus. To leave campus, you've got to be, you've got to, if you're a girl, you've got to be in a certain amount of groups. I mean, you're in this isolation. You're on this island that can lead to some spiritual abuse and depression. Because all you ever see is these four walls. And you never can leave. Even though you're in Pensacola. Even though you're right there on the beach. Like, a wonderful getaway spot. Right? You just feel isolated and alone oftentimes. Why is it that so many of these colleges and things like this, why do they disguise legalism as holiness? Really, I think it's because people who came in already struggled feeling lonely. They left lonely. It was an easy way because they were part of the Abeka system to go. And the big thing that's missing, I would say, is grace. When grace is not there, loneliness is felt. Because grace comes in and the grace of God comes in. And we experience the grace of the Holy Spirit. And grace was completely gone and missing from it. And it left people feeling worse than when they got there. Now, Brett, my youth pastor, he graduated from PCC. The guy who followed him, who's now the sheriff of Rowan County, he graduated from PCC. And so there were some great things that came out of that. I had some experience through that. But I believe they would tell you as well, looking back, it was tough. It was hard. It was a difficult time. And going forward, maybe I wouldn't send my kids there. Now, our research indicates that people that left were actually shunned. Not just by the school, but by the families and the churches that sent them there. Yeah, absolutely. This is the spiritual pain that's tied to the place. And we need to take those stories seriously. As I was talking to my wife about Champion and Gospel Light, she would tell me, she'd say, James, you know, I was one of the kids that when someone would come back from college or come back from after they graduated, they'd show up to a basketball game and they'd be in pants. We would be the ones that would be like, oh, man, look at them. They completely went to the world. And they've left, they're worldly, they're ungodly because they're wearing pants. And she said, I think back and I think about the mindset that I was in. And I think about how I mislabeled them and isolated them instead of reaching out and caring for them. And then I see the way their path went because I was one of the ones that shunned them and abandoned them and wouldn't talk to them. A year later, we were in class together. A year before that, we were in class together. But now I'm completely on the other side and I'm abandoning them. And think of the spiritual damage that's going to do to someone when you can't even talk or hang out with them. So, Brett, let's step back a second and let's begin to talk about both Bob Jones and PCC and how they emphasize separation. And we have to ask the question, what are they separating from and why? What is this and what are they separating from? So, look, separation from the world is biblical. Yes. And you know what? I would even take that statement a step further. I would say separation from the sin of the world is biblical. But it needs to be separation to Christ. That is the goal. Yeah. And, you know, if we're just avoiding sin without pursuing Christ, I believe we're missing the heart of holiness. Right. Real holiness doesn't hide. It engages. It welcomes questions. It loves people. Yeah. And, you know, it's not afraid of the messy. Jesus went to the messy people. Jesus went to the woman at the well. Jesus was there when the woman that was caught in adultery. Jesus went to the tax collectors. Jesus went to messy people and he welcomed their mess into where he was at. And he knew that when he met them in their mess, he would be there to help pick the pieces up and lead them in a way that was going to be glorifying to God. And it was going to be great. Exactly. And listen, through all this, we're not saying that every student that went to these schools had a bad experience. You know, for some people, you may have went to one of these schools and it was like the best time of your life. And so we're not saying that, you know, they had a bad experience, but we're just trying to show all sides of this. Yeah, absolutely. Some graduated, got jobs, got married, moved on, began to live a life and be contributing people to society. And, you know, as I shared my experience of some of those people that were influential in my life, they didn't let the isolation define who they were. Exactly. Did these institutions teach students to follow Jesus or just to follow rules? And these are kind of the questions that we're asking. Yeah. You know, a lot of times they prepared people for a life of grace, a life on mission, you know, the mission sending arm of PCC. I mean, they sent people all over the world through the mission program. And yeah, there's a fear of conforming, but they did some great things and they've helped some people out in a great way. Exactly. And listen, if you went to a place like this, you're not alone. You're not crazy. Other people have been there too. And we want you to know, we want you to know that there's grace, there's healing, and Jesus is better than any institution. Absolutely. One thing I'll say that we didn't have quite in our notes, but man, some of the things, because PCC had the money and the backing from a Becca, man, their facility is top notch. They've got water parks and bowling alleys. And they've got things there for student life in campus. Now they didn't have it back then. But now they've got it at PCC. That is, I mean, it's a top notch facility. And they're offering education that is so well. One thing that they did that I thought was just so well was called the Jericho program. Brett, have you ever heard of the Jericho program of PCC? So Jericho program is if you start PCC and you basically decide that you're going to go for four years, your senior year is free. So you pay three years or maybe it's called the Joshua program. I can't remember. You pay your freshman year, your sophomore year, and your junior year of your college bill. And when you get to your senior year, you don't have to pay anything if you finish in those four years. And so it's a way of rewarding students and going forward. Of course, like I said, they've got the financial backing of a Becca. And so they made it where, hey, we're trying to help you get through this point. We know your senior year is tough. We know your senior year has got projects and final things going on. And so how can we help you? We're going to give you that year for free. And students were able to, many people I talked to, we graduated debt free. We didn't have to get student loans. And we had an accredited degree that was top notch, that was on point. Yeah, there was some legalism. Yeah, there was some spiritual separation. Yeah, there was some hard times. But, man, education-wise, while we're going to college was great. And so I applaud them for those things because that's great things. And so sort of the last thing we want to look at is how BJU and PCC compare to Howells and Bob Gray and Longview Baptist Temple. Brett, what's your thoughts on that? So Bob Jones and PCC, they're more academic, they're more polished. You know, Howells and Longview, they were more emotional, more personality-driven. But I think all three emphasize separation, authoritarian leadership, and just like stiff, rigid, spiritual control. Also, all three have shaped pastors and churches across the country, often in ways that go unquestioned. Now, next week, we're headed to Tennessee to talk about Crown College and Claret Sexton. You know, one of the quieter but still influential forces in the independent fundamental Baptist world. Absolutely. I think it's going to be great as we talk through Crown. Looking forward to our interview coming up with Rachel Davis, Rebecca Davis. I'm sorry, Rebecca Davis and The Grace Report. And looking forward to this series. I know it's been a fun series, talking through these foundational steps. And we're getting close to our summer break. And we know that. We're trying to push forward. We've got some good things in the pipeline that we're going to be picking up in the fall as well. And so we're excited about what the Lord's doing and excited about this series that we're going through. And until next time, to God be the glory. Great things he has done. Found my new name. Found that good grace. Found that healing. And the tears fell down my face. When I found my beginning. That has no ending. Found that second chance. Found my best friend. Found my forgiveness. Found my happiness. I've been singing ever since. I found my freedom in you. Thanks for listening to the For Freedom Podcast. If you enjoyed our content, do us a favor by liking, subscribing, or sharing our podcast on whichever podcast platform you use. Be sure to join us next time for the For Freedom Podcast.

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