Free Republic

GREENVILLE, SC --- Just a week before graduation, 23 year old Chris Peterman should be preparing his cap and gown. Instead, the Bob Jones University student says he's fighting for the degree he believes he's earned, and he believes the popular television show "Glee" may be partly to blame.

GREENVILLE, S.C. — Walking across the tidy campus of Bob Jones University, there’s no obvious sign this bastion of Christian fundamentalism is also home to one of the nation’s largest collections of Renaissance and Baroque religious art from the heart of Catholic Europe. It’s all the more surprising since the school’s old-time Protestant leaders have for years taught that Catholicism is a “cult” and even the “Mother of Harlots.” “You go into that gallery and its big, amazing paintings are really staggering, and you know you can’t buy altarpieces like that anymore,” said David Steel, curator of European art at...

Bob Jones III, chancellor of the fundamentalist South Carolina university that bears his family’s name, has become the latest conservative Christian leader to publicly cast doubt on President Barack Obama’s stated Christian commitment. "I've no reason to think he's a Christian,” Jones told National Journal in an interview published Saturday. “Anyone can say he's a Christian. “Some people will say whatever they think the politically helpful thing would be,” Jones said. “I say, 'Where is the evidence that he is a Christian?' " Jones is an influential conservative leader in South Carolina, home to one of the nation’s key Republican...

  Last week, Greenville, South Carolina -- the buckle of the Bible Belt -- made national headlines for the second time in two weeks. The first story involved Rev. Jay Scott Newman and his comments in his parish bulletin about Catholics who voted for Obama. The second was the announcement that the fundamentalist Bob Jones University had issued a public apology for its racist past.   I happen to be connected to both stories: I'm on the staff of Father Newman's parish, and I'm a graduate of Bob Jones University. How I managed to exit the school in 1978...

A group supporting equality for homosexuals is not being warmly welcomed at an Upstate campus. Members of the group, called the Soulforce Equality Riders, contacted Bob Jones University because of its policies on homosexuality. Members of the group want to visit the campus and talk to students, but that may not happen. The university's public relations department told WYFF that the Soulforce Equality Riders has plans to visit the school on April 4 even though the school doesn't want them to. According to the group's Web site, the Soulforce Equality Riders group is composed of 50 activists from across the...