An Authoritarian Power Structure Brought Coronavirus to Liberty University - Opinion Piece

Adam Laats writes: These institutions differed from mainstream colleges in other ways, too. For one thing, schools such as Bob Jones College (it became a university in 1947) struggled to figure out who was in charge. As interdenominational religious institutions, these schools had no higher powers — at least no human ones — to which they could turn. Unlike Catholic colleges or Protestant denominational colleges with defined governing bodies, interdenominational fundamentalist colleges could not turn difficult decisions over to a synod, convention or presbytery. A few of the more conservative institutions eventually hit on an alternative that allowed them to remain stubbornly independent: a single, unquestioned leader.