Bob Jones University

Bob Jones University

BJU logo, implemented in 2013
Motto	Petimus Credimus (Latin)
Motto in English	We seek, we trust
Type	private,non-denominational
Established	1927
Chancellor	Bob Jones III
President	Steve Pettit
Provost	Gary Weier
Students	c. 2,800
Undergraduates	2,755
Address	1700 Wade Hampton Blvd., Greenville, South Carolina, US 34°52′23″N 82°21′50″W / 34.873°N 82.364°W / 34.873; -82.364Coordinates: 34°52′23″N 82°21′50″W / 34.873°N 82.364°W / 34.873; -82.364
Campus	Suburban, 210 acres (85 ha)
Colors	Blue and white
Athletics	NCCAA Division II – South
Nickname	The Bruins
Mascot	Brody the Bruin
Website	www.bju.edu

Bob Jones University (BJU) is a private non-denominational Protestant university in Greenville, South Carolina, United States, known for its conservative cultural and religious positions. It has approximately 2,800 students, and is accredited by the Transnational Association of Christian Colleges and Schools. In 2008, the university estimated the number of its graduates at 35,000. The university's athletic teams, the Bruins, compete in Division II of the National Christian College Athletic Association (NCCAA).

During the Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy of the 1920s, Christian evangelist Bob Jones, Sr. grew increasingly concerned about the secularization of higher education and the influence of religious liberalism in denominational colleges. Children of church members were attending college, only to reject the faith of their parents. Jones later recalled that in 1924, his friend William Jennings Bryan had leaned over to him at a Bible conference service in Winona Lake, Indiana, and said, "If schools and colleges do not quit teaching evolution as a fact, we are going to become a nation of atheists." While he himself was not a college graduate, Jones grew determined to found a college, and on September 12, 1927, he opened Bob Jones College in Panama City, with 88 students. Jones said that although he had been averse to naming the school after himself, his friends overcame his reluctance "with the argument that the school would be called by that name because of my connection with it, and to attempt to give it any other name would confuse the people."

Bob Jones took no salary from the college and helped support the school with personal savings and income from his evangelistic campaigns. Both time and place were inauspicious. The Florida land boom had peaked in 1925, and a hurricane in September 1926 further reduced land values. The Great Depression followed hard on its heels. Bob Jones College barely survived bankruptcy and its move to Cleveland, Tennessee in 1933. However, Jones's move to Cleveland proved extraordinarily advantageous. Bankrupt at the nadir of the Depression, without a home, and with barely enough money to move its library and office furniture, the college became in thirteen years the largest liberal arts college in Tennessee. With the enactment of GI Bill at the end of World War II, the college was virtually forced to seek a new location and build a new campus.