Stephen Davis Pettit, Sr. (born November 27, 1955) is a Christian evangelist and the fifth president of Bob Jones University. Steve Pettit was born in Quitman, Georgia, but his parents, who had met in the U. S. Air Force, moved to Columbia, South Carolina, when he was three. Pettit spent his childhood in Columbia, performing in a workshop theater founded by his mother and playing the tuba in his high school band.