That same day, the Bob Jones University Web site (www.bju.edu), which maintains a running review of the institution's chapel programs and speakers as a service to its campus community, issued this brief report:

"Today was a special session with Dr. Alan Keyes as speaker. He is campaigning for the South Carolina Presidential Primary. Dr. Keyes was introduced by Dr. Bob Jones III who stated that not every candidate running in the South Carolina Primary has been invited to speak at Bob Jones University.

"The University is very selective in who they ask to speak," Jones continued. "They must be men of impeccable character and integrity. They also must be men not loved by the national media. If the media likes a candidate then all decent people should not vote for that candidate. Dr. Keyes is a man who does not say what is expected of him; he says what is in his heart, soul, and character."

For the record, Keyes, a black, Roman Catholic Christian who consistently brings his faith into his political message, used his opportunity in the pulpit of the Fundamentalist Christian University that prides itself in being described as "the world's most unusual university" to urge his listeners to put aside "sectarian bigotry or any racial prejudice that stands in the way of the unity Christ represents for Christian people."

Keyes said he had "put the lie to" rumors that Bob Jones University would never invite a black Roman Catholic to its chapel podium. BJU did not admit black students in the 1970s and historically has been strongly opposed to Roman Catholic theology. Keyes was warmly received by his BJU audience, and the school's president said of Keyes: "He's a man I can trust. I don't have to agree with a man to trust him."

A senior at the college told the Associated Press after Keyes' appearance, "I think he spanked Bob Jones a little bit. Some people don't totally understand this school, but it is a good place."

A few days later, Keyes had been transformed into persona-non-grata at BJU, not because of anything he said from the university's chapel pulpit, but because in a televised debate with candidates George W. Bush and John McCain he chided Gov. Bush, who also appeared in the BJU pulpit, for not challenging the university's policy of discrimination, exhibited in its banning of interracial dating by students.

Within hours of that debate, BJU President Jones issued a statement saying Keyes had "betrayed his friends at Bob Jones University with an outburst of sanctimonious hypocrisy."

Jones went on: "I feel hurt and angry that a man whose integrity I believed in has sold himself to the pressure of the media to use Bob Jones University as a whipping boy in the furtherance of his political ambition even as McCain has done."

Jones went on to castigate Keyes for visiting the campus and never uttering a word of reproach to the university. He accused Keyes of caving in to media pressure, and noted that Bush, who appeared but did not criticize the university, had shown himself to be "a far more honorable and trustworthy candidate."

Not only was Keyes rebuked, but the university canceled the appearance of a college musical group at a Keyes rally.

Bob Jones University takes lots of hits from the culture and the media, most of which are related to the university's Fundamentalist theology. Columnist Richard Cohen of the Washington Post refers to the school's "cockeyed religious belief" that God prefers that races do not intermarry or date, and casts the school into the "cuckoo fringe" of American culture and politics.

I won't go into that, other than to note that William Buckley Jr., certainly not a defender of the BJU brand of Christianity, nevertheless notes that to take a stance similar to Cohen's is to demonstrate an "ignorance of American social mores," because the delicate issue of racial intermarriage is hardly an issue unique to Bob Jones University. Buckley cites Judaism's frequent disdain of interfaith marriage as an example of those mores.

The Keyes incident provides some insight into BJU thinking. The real enemy, as far as the university is concerned, is the national media. If the national media likes a candidate, he can't possibly be a man of character and integrity. It follows that McCain, who is the darling of the media, largely because of his openness and accessibility according to most analysts, cannot be a man of character and integrity. One doesn't have to be a Fundamentalist to fall into this logical absurdity.

One should also be aware that Bob Jones University not only objects to interracial dating, it discourages any kind of dating that isn't built on a relationship between believers in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. I don't have any statistics, but my guess is that an overwhelming majority of Bob Jones University students wind up marrying other Bob Jones University students. The anecdotes of rigidly chaperoned dates and chapel police who keep couples from holding hands during services are legendary to those who know anything about life at the school.

BJU takes its role of in loco parentis [Latin: "in the parents' place] to a serious extreme. One article for parents posted on the school's Web site is entitled, "Why parents should choose their children's college," and it's one of the milder admonitions designed to demonstrate that BJU protects its students the way it believes parents should and would.

The real issue for Bob Jones University isn't so much racial as it is Christian separationist. The school takes pride in not being regionally accredited. The school festoons its public relations literature with the note that it is "the world's most unusual university."

It does not compete in intercollegiate athletics but instead runs a rigorous and universal intramural program that would put some intercollegiate conferences to shame. It makes a point of demanding its graduates excel in public speaking. President Jones says no student goes through the university without learning to feel comfortable on a platform. This emphasis has less to do with politics or business than with the school's emphasis on Christian witness. Students not only must know what they believe, they must be ready to give an answer to every critic.

Such separationist thinking makes Keyes' mild critique of bigotry standing in the way of "the unity Christ represents for Christian people" a particularly cutting remark from the BJU pulpit because the school is a bastion for those who resist unity with other Christian bodies for fear of tainting the pure doctrine of Fundamentalism. Roman Catholics are not alone in being disdained at BJU; a good portion of Protestant evangelism is perceived as a compromising faith by Bob Jones and its graduates.

The student who told the AP that nobody fully understands the university probably had the most cogent comment. The national media has made itself a pariah on the campus by neglecting totally any attempt to understand the school or its theology.

Meanwhile, the Republican Party has made the simplistic mistake of accepting what is almost an article of faith at BJU, that if one is conservative in theology one must be conservative in politics. That same logical error drives Republican candidates into thinking they must accept BJU's invitations to the podium.

Once again, it is not Bob Jones University's bigotry or racism that is the root problem; it is the absurd logic upon which its social and political thinking rests.

Allan R. Andrews is an editor in Washington, D.C., and a freelance