By Gustav Niebuhr

• March 4, 2000

A fundamentalist Christian institution that had come under national criticism for its ban on interracial dating among its students, abandoned that long-held policy, its president, Bob Jones 3d said tonight in an unexpected move, Bob Jones University.

Mr. Jones, in an look in the CNN program ”Larry King Live,” stated he had asked the university’s board this afternoon to get rid of the insurance policy.

<р>”In fact, to date, we now have dropped the rule,” Mr. Jones stated.

Inside the remarks, Mr. Jones, grandson associated with the college’s founder, provided only a quick explanation, saying your decision had been according to a perception that critique on the policy was threatening to obscure the university’s Christian mission. ”We have a wider testimony,” he said.

Mr. Jones included: ”I believed to our management, ‘You understand, dudes, this thing is of these insignificance to us, it really is so significant to your globe in particular, the news particularly, why should we’ve this right here as an barrier?’ ” then he said that the ban had damaged the trustworthiness of the university’s graduates and Protestantism that is possibly conservative as. ”I do not wish to hurt the church of Jesus Christ,” Mr. Jones said.

Your choice also came only days after Democrats in Congress had proposed an answer that could have condemned the college for the ban as well as for statements that Bob Jones leaders are making about Roman Catholicism, which were interpreted as attacks on Catholics as a whole (an intent that the college has denied).

The statement amounted up to a turnaround that is remarkable Bob Jones, a 73-year-old organization that hews to an unapologetic adherence to classic Protestant fundamentalism. The university lost its tax exemption in 1983 after a 13-year legal fight. So that as belated as Wednesday, the college ended up being wanting to give an explanation for ban on interracial relationship based on its belief that the Bible shows that God will not want a unified and world that is undifferentiated.

”God made racial differences as he made gender differences,” stated a declaration the college posted on its web page. But, the declaration included, when God stopped people from building the Tower of Babel, a whole tale told in Genesis, God did therefore to stop them from producing ”one-world government.”

”Based with this account that is biblicalGenesis 10 and 11),” the declaration said, ”the university wishes to give God the main benefit of any question and prevent pursuing any direction that could give assist with the renewed efforts of guy to produce a one-world community composed of one faith, one economy, one federal government and something battle.”

The university has admitted interracial married couples despite its stance.

Inside the remarks, Mr. Jones stated that even though principle on that the university’s previous ban had been based stayed essential, the ban itself had been ”meaningless to us.”

With its Web statement, the university described Catholic beliefs as being a ”false system,” but asserted so it adored Catholics as people and wished to convert them.

The problem found the fore following the see on Feb. 2 by Gov. George W. Bush of Texas, an applicant when it comes to Republican presidential nomination. Mr. Bush’s opponents, Republicans and Democrats alike, faulted him for perhaps not using the opportunity to speak out contrary to the ban that is dating the statements regarding the Catholic faith.

Tonight, after Mr. Jones’s statement, Mr. Bush said: ”I’m heartened to know that Bob Jones University has reversed its ban on interracial dating. It absolutely was incorrect in the first place, this is exactly why I spoke away from the ban once I was asked about this at a news meeting just after my check out here. Tonight, the institution has been doing just the right thing.”

In a premium ad that Bob Jones took down today in USA Today plus in sc newspapers, the college stated it did not hate Catholics, but asserted that a ”wide gulf” existed between Catholic and Protestant philosophy.

When you look at the ads, the college contended it was being falsely accused in news reports as a haven for bigotry. Alternatively, it said that the real problem in the controversy had been the university’s constitutional straight to its religious freedom.