Pillar College

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Pillar College
Pillar College Seal.jpg
Pillar College's seal
MottoEducate, Inspire, Equip
Type Private college
Established1908
Chairman Timothy L. Schmidt
Chancellor David E. Schroeder, Ed.D.
President Rupert A. Hayles, Jr., Ph.D.
Location
Newark, New Jersey, Basking Ridge, NJ., Plainfield, NJ., Paterson, NJ., Jersey City, NJ.
,
U.S.

40°32′14″N74°34′42″W / 40.5373°N 74.5783°W / 40.5373; -74.5783
Campus Urban Center
Colors     Red, black, white
MascotPanther
Website www.pillar.edu
Pillar College

Pillar College (formerly Somerset Christian College) is a private evangelical Christian college with the main campus in Newark, New Jersey and educational locations in Somerset, Paterson, Plainfield, and Jersey City. Pillar College is accredited by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education.

Contents

History

The school was founded as a Wesleyan-Arminian Methodist seminary, the Zarephath Bible Institute in Zarephath, New Jersey, by the Pillar of Fire International in 1908. [1] Pillar of Fire gained notoriety in the 1920s-1940s for openly supporting the Ku Klux Klan and for their founder and longtime leader Alma Bridwell White being an avowed white supremacist stating "The slaveholder, in many instances, was as much to be pitied as the slaves" that they "had the welfare of their dependents at heart" and "had to bear the stigma of cruelty with the worst of tyrants." [2] [3] Pillar of Fire repudiated both their former beliefs and their founder in 1997 stating:

We regret, repudiate and repent, and ask for full forgiveness for anything in our past that is short of Christian standards based on God's Word, following Jesus' model prayer that teaches us to ever pray and forgive us our sins for we also forgive everyone that is indebted to us. (Luke 11:4) We specifically regret mistakes and bad judgement by previous generations or anyone in our membership of the past. [4]

The Institute became an accredited college, the Somerset Christian College on March 23, 2001. [1]

In 2011 the college's campus would be destroyed in Hurricane Irene, with the school moving to a new campus in Newark. [1]

Shortly after in 2012, as the college was no longer in Somerset County, it changed its name to Pillar College. [1]

In 2020 the college opened a second location in Paterson. [1]

Academics

Pillar College offers traditional Associate's, Bachelor's, and Master's Degrees. Pillar College is accredited through the following organizations:

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 "Meet Pillar". pillar.edu. Retrieved January 30, 2026.
  2. ↑ Neal, Lynn (June 2009). "Christianizing the Klan: Alma White, Branford Clarke, and the Art of Religious Intolerance". Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture. 78 (2): 350–378. doi:10.1017/S0009640709000523. S2CID   162426152. White's words and Clarke's imagery were combined in various ways as a means to spread a message of religious intolerance which was both persuasive and powerful.
  3. ↑ Guardians of Liberty, Vol. 1, page 119
  4. ↑ Parsons, Monique (April 24, 1997). "Zarephath repents its past". Home News Tribune .
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