Pensacola Christian College (PCC) is a Christian, Independent Baptist nonprofit liberal arts college in Pensacola, Florida. Founded in 1974 by Arlin and Beka Horton, it is accredited by the Transnational Association of Christian Colleges and Schools since 2013.
History
Arlin and Beka Horton graduated from Bob Jones University in 1951, and moved to Pensacola, Florida in 1952 to found a Christian grade school. That school, Pensacola Christian Grade School, opened in 1954 and was later renamed Pensacola Christian Academy.
In 1974, the Hortons opened Pensacola Christian College to further their vision of "Education from a Christian Perspective." The college opened to 100 students the first year, and was based in a single building, Ballard Hall. The student body now spans all fifty states and more than fifty foreign countries.
Pensacola Theological Seminary, an extension of PCC's graduate school, was founded in 1998. Its avowed purpose is "to fill each student’s mind and heart with what the Bible says."
In 1996, state and federal agencies requested millions of dollars of unpaid taxes between 1988 and 1995 from A Beka Book, at the time a division of PCC. A Beka Book (named after Horton's wife, Rebecca), provides a Kâ€"12 curriculum that is used by some Christian schools and homeschooling families and is one of the largest Christian textbook publishers in America.
In February 2012, Arlin Horton announced that he would be retiring from the ministry after the May 2012 school year. The school's board voted unanimously to install Troy Shoemaker, a PCC graduate, as president of the college. Mr. Shoemaker obtained a bachelor's degree in education from PCC in 1989, and a doctorate of education from PCC in 2007.
Academics
PCC has eight academic divisions including Arts and Sciences, Basic Sciences and Engineering, Bible, Business, Communicative Arts, Education, Music, and Nursing. Graduate degrees are offered through the Graduate school at PCC and through Pensacola Theological Seminary in the fields of Bible, Business Administration, Communicative Arts, Divinity, Education, Ministry, Music, and Nursing.
Students who study education are told the PCC program is for "Christian school teachers" and states that their approach is for a "local Christian school ministry" and is "not designed for preparing to teach in public schools."
Because the college accepts a literal interpretation of the Genesis creation narrative from the Bible and teaches students young Earth creationism, students are taught that God created the Earth in six literal 24-hour days and its biology classes teach creationism.
Accreditation
Since 2013, Pensacola Christian College has been accredited by the Transnational Association of Christian Colleges and Schools (TRACS), a religious national accreditation agency recognized by the U.S. Department of Education, to offer Associates to Doctorates degrees.
From 1974 until 2011, Pensacola Christian College did not seek accreditation. In numerous publications the school explained that it eschewed accreditation, indicating that an outside agency that didn't share its religious and moral views might try to pressure the college to change or eliminate its beliefs.
The college changed course on November 9, 2011, when the administration informed its students that PCC had been awarded candidacy for accreditation, a pre-accreditation status, by Transnational Association of Christian Colleges and Schools. In October 2013, PCC was officially accredited by TRACS.
The baccalaureate and master's degrees in nursing at Pensacola Christian College are also accredited by the Commission on Collegiate Nursing, and the baccalaureate degree in engineering is accredited by the Engineering Accreditation Commission of ABET.
Student life
Athletics
PCC participates in the National Christian College Athletic Association (NCCAA) for intercollegiate sports. Sports include men's basketball and soccer and women's basketball and volleyball. The men's wrestling team won the NCCAA national championship in 1994, 1995, 1996, and 1998, the last year before the NCCAA discontinued the sport. The Men's Eagles Basketball games as well as the Lady Eagles basketball games are played in the arena level of the Sports Center. PCC also hosts a number of invitational high school sporting tournaments and camps..
In addition to intercollegiate athletics, PCC students are also afforded the opportunity to play intramural sports through their Collegians. Sports offered through collegians include soccer, basketball, softball, volleyball, and broom-hockey among others. Every fall Collegian Soccer culminates with the winners of the playoffs facing each other in the annual Turkey Bowl held over the Thanksgiving weekend. Also in the spring students can play softball and basketball.
Recreation
The campus offers opportunities for individual or group recreation, such as the Arlin R. Horton Sports Center that opened in 2009. The Sports Center has facilities for ice skating, bowling, racquetball, miniature golf, table tennis, and weight lifting. In addition, it includes a surfing wave, water cannons, an inline skating track, a rooftop sun deck, a snack bar, and two climbing walls. The campus also has the John Ray Hall Field House in which students can play basketball, swim, work out in the weight room, and play tennis.. For students willing to make the 30-minute drive, the West Campus has 24 Hobie catamarans with classes "offered in sailing, kayaking, swimming, and lifeguarding."
Rules and regulations
PCC policies govern many aspects of the students' lives, including dress, hairstyles, cleanliness of residence hall rooms, styles of music, borrowing, off-campus employment, and Internet access. For example, "All students are expected to dress modestly, in conservative fashions and . . . men are not to wear effeminate hairstyles or apparel."
PCC also prohibits physical contact and interaction between unwed members of the opposite sex. For example, a chaperone and "day-pass" is required for a "mixed group" for students under the age of 23. Students over the age of 23 are not required to have a chaperone on a date, but cannot go to a beach or a park after dark and cannot "visit the home of an unmarried person of the opposite gender."
Most stairwells and elevators on campus are segregated by gender.
Other prohibited activities at PCC include "fornication, adultery, homosexual behavior, or any other sexual perversion. Also, any involvement in pornography or sexual communications, including verbal, written, or electronic." In addition, "most forms of dancing," profanity, hazing, discrimination, gambling, stealing and "witchcraft, séances, astrology, or any other satanic practices" are also banned." Students are also not allowed to use, possess, or "associate" with alcohol, tobacco, and illicit drugs. Policy violations also include visiting movie theaters, patronizing unauthorized area businesses, being off campus after hours, being in a residence hall belonging to a member of the opposite sex, and engaging in social activities with members of the opposite sex as a group.
Demerits and discipline
The school operates a "demerit" system where "demerits" are "recorded on a student’s record for the purpose of limiting continued misconduct, given for continued neglect of responsibilities or for more serious offenses." PCC has four levels of punishment; students can be given "infractions," can be "limited", "shadowed", or expelled. For students, who receive "75 demerits in consecutive semesters or 100 demerits within a semester may be subject to suspension." Students who have these demerits are subject to administrative review by the Student Court, during which demerits are assigned or canceled corresponding to the degree of the infraction or circumstantial conditions surrounding the incident in question."
Students who acquire a certain number of demerits in a semester are "limited," meaning they are not allowed to leave campus for a period of time. Students suspected of more serious violations may be subject to being "shadowed," where they are assigned to a Residence Assistant (a fellow student who is selected by PCC to provide leadership in the residence hall and to enforce college regulations). This includes being required to attend the Residence Assistant's classes and moving to the Residence Assistant's room. While being shadowed the student is prohibited from speaking with any student other than with the Floor Leader who is shadowing them.
The rules and disciplinary policies at Pensacola Christian College have been the subject of criticism. In 1996 a PCC alumnus started an electronic newsletter entitled The Student Voice, which criticized PCC, particularly the school's rules and demerit system. It was originally published in a newsletter format distributed exclusively via e-mail, and it was later published at www.pensacolachristiancollege.com. Following numerous attempts by the college to have the website shut down through arbitration and lawsuits, the website's owners relinquished control of the domain to the college, who has redirected the domain to the main PCC website.
Faith and King-James-only debate
PCC rejects Calvinism, Modernism, Neo-orthodoxy and the modern day charismatic movement and specifically states that "Pensacola Christian is not a part of the 'tongues movement' and does not allow students to participate in or promote any charismatic activities, nor do we permit students to promote hyper-Calvinism."
PCC also states that they believe the Textus Receptus is the superior Greek text of the Bible and upon this basis use the King James version of the Bible for all their pulpit ministry and classroom Bible instruction.
Conflict with Kent Hovind
In the mid-1990s, after former senior vice president Rebekah Horton learned of Kent Hovind's anti-tax stand where he claimed he did not have to pay taxes, she testified during Hovind's 2006 criminal trial that his tax beliefs are "against Scripture's teaching" and she reported the misleading doctrine because "I didn't want to see innocent people get led astray." After learning of Hovind's tax teaching, Pensacola Christian College no longer permitted students to work at Creation Science Evangelism, Hovind's organization. Rebekah Horton testified in federal court that she will report people who break federal tax law.
Affiliated ministries of PCC
The Campus Church
The Campus Church, an Independent Baptist church, meets in the Crowne Center on Pensacola Christian College's Campus and has Sunday morning, evening and Wednesday evening services.
Original founded in 1974, the Campus Church's first pastor was Bob Taylor, who served in the ministry at Campus Church for fourteen years. . In 1988, Jim Schettler became the Senior Pastor and served for eighteen years, resigning in May 2006. On December 10, 2006, Dr. Arlin Horton announced that Neal Jackson would be the pastor. Neil Jackson resigned from Campus Church on August 20, 2009. On August 14, 2011, Denis McBride was installed as the Senior Pastor. During the summer of 2017, Dr. Tim Zacharias was called to become the Assistant Pastor of Campus Church.
Rejoice in the Lord
The Campus Church holds their weekly services from the Crowne Center at Pensacola Christian College. These services are recorded and edited for the weekly television broadcast of Rejoice in the Lord. The programming of Rejoice in the Lord consists of musical numbers performed by the Rejoice Choir, various PCC musical ensemble groups, congregational singing recorded in the Campus Church and preaching by Pastor Denis McBride. The hour-long television program is broadcast at 7 p.m. EST on Sundays on the Daystar Television Network.
WPCS
Pensacola Christian College owns radio station WPCS 89.5 FM, known on-air as Rejoice Radio. WPCS is the main station of the Rejoice Broadcasting Network (sometimes referred to as "RBN"). The content heard on Rejoice Radio consists primarily of inspirational music and syndicated Christian radio programming.
A Beka Book
A Beka Book is a publisher affiliated with Pensacola Christian College that produces Kâ€"12 curriculum materials that are used by fundamentalist conservative Christian schools as well as non-fundamentalist Christian schools and homeschooling families around the world. It is named after Rebekah Horton, wife of college president Arlin Horton. A Beka Book and BJU Press (formerly Bob Jones University Press) have been considered the two major publishers of Christian-based educational materials in America.
A Beka has been criticized for selling works that do not follow a scientific consensus regarding the origins of the universe, origins of life, and evolution. In Association of Christian Schools International et al. v. Roman Stearns et al., a judge upheld the University of California's rejection of A Beka publications for preparatory use because the books are "inconsistent with the viewpoints and knowledge generally accepted in the scientific community."
Notable alumni
References
External links
- Pensacola Christian College official site