Leadership of SC Christian university in flux with 2nd major resignation in a week

The chairman of the Bob Jones University board has resigned amid a dispute with President Steve Pettit, who resigned last week.

John Lewis, a Michigan pastor, has been on the board of the Greenville-based fundamentalist Christian school for 32 years and served as chairman for seven. His resignation is effective immediately, Pettit said in a news release.

Pettit resigned last week effective May 5.

Lewis’s resignation came after a letter to the board from the school’s leadership team warned the “institution was in real and imminent jeopardy” over the conflict between Lewis and Pettit.

The group called for Lewis’ resignation as well as another board member Hantz Bernard, who they said is aligned with Lewis.

“The BJU leadership appeals to you with a plan of action that we believe will minimize damage to the people we, and you, love and may potentially save the ministry,” the letter said.

The group said the board had “lost credibility with the majority of our constituents, students, and employees, and in light of the real possibility of an institution-wide vote of no confidence in the entire Board, we make this appeal.”

Pettit was named president in 2014, the first non-Jones family member to hold the job since the school was founded by Bob Jones Sr. in 1927. He was succeeded by Bob Jones Jr., Bob Jones III and then his great-grandson, Stephen Jones. Bob Jones IV elected not to work at the school.

In a four-page letter to the board, Pettit said Lewis had created disunity on the board, held a meeting without telling staff and was not taking seriously a comment made by a board member that “female students’ clothing and female student athlete uniforms accentuate their ‘boobs and butts.’”

Pettit said he had heard the board member took photos of women without their permission.

He said he did not know if the information was true, but by law should have been turned over to the Title IX coordinator for investigation.

He also said he believed the board was not seeing and working on the school’s financial difficulties and declining enrollment.

Bob Jones University was founded in Bay County, Florida, then moved to Cleveland, Tennessee, before arriving in Greenville in the mid-1940s. Bob Jones Sr. was an evangelist, who said he saw young people during his travels with a need for religious-based higher education.