God's Harvard: A Christian College on a Mission to Save America

This is a very humane, sometimes amusing, occasionally sharp-eyed, often sympathetic look at a determined subculture. It is not a chronological narrative but a series of episodes--detailed snapshots illuminating the lives of Patrick Henry students and faculty. Thankfully, Mrs. Rosin doesn't limit her focus to the campus itself, but shows these characters within larger frameworks--the home schooling movement, the ID movement, politicking, and Christian filmmaking. You feel as if you know these characters--Farahn the (somewhat) rebellious student, fiercely determined PHC founder Tim Farris, good-hearted young Mr. Archer--in the round, as if they were old friends. Mrs. Rosin's curiosity and open-minded humanity have given birth to an excellent book--perhaps a classic of cultural anthropology and sociology. A must-read.

The most remarkable thing about Hanna Rosin's magnificent book is that the Christian right now feels sufficiently secure and confident to let a heathen like her into its midst and allow her to roam freely. The characters who populate "God's Harvard" are clearly not afraid of coming off like gap-toothed fools, and indeed, they are not. To me, the most touching character in the book is a teenager called Derek, who comes to Patrick Henry College with sparkles in his eyes and doesn't really lose them even once he discovers that the world outside is a terrible, evil place where even (gasp!) Republians are sometimes dishonest or sly. That said, "God's Harvard" is also a cautionary tale about the rise to power of a group of people who should and, indeed, must be kept as far away from it as possible. The book is about a college set up expressly to educate young men and women who have been "homeschooled" -- in other words, who have undergone the process which without much exaggeration could be called "religious bigots training children to be bigots, too." In the America of George the younger, graduates of this establishment can hope for jobs in government departments, think tanks, and perhaps even the White House itself. And yet it is a school which constantly shoots itself in the foot. Even "homeschooled" teenagers seldom fail to be teenagers with exploring minds, and anyone with even a small modicum of intellectual curiosity must surely see that some of the basic tenets of the fundamentalist faith which underpins the school are at least questionable, if not far, far worse. So, too, even the most buttoned-down teenager will at least think about loosening the top two buttons, if not actually going ahead and doing it (there are, it must be said, several young people in the book who never loosen any buttons, go through the process of "courtship" as if they were in the 19th century, and, in one case, never ever kiss until their wedding). Inevitably, "God's Harvard" deals in large part with the twaddle (and there can be no other word for it) that hides under the quasi-intellectual title of Intelligent Design. The book reveals that this is twaddle which has attracted a certain number of people with important educational credentials. There is one young man who is repored, with wide-eyed amazement, as having learned at the foot of the great Stephen Gould himself. But "God's Harvard" ends with the school's most popular professors -- those who asked students to think, rather than just parrot Bible phrases -- resigning in exasperation. The premise of those scientists who stick to the party line, as it were, must necessarily be that science is the sum of all that humankind have discovered through observation and evidence, and faith is a process whereby people must seek to reduce that sum of knowledge, not enhance it. There can be absolutely no intellectual argument whatsoever for the ludicrous idea that the Earth is 6,000 years old and that the reason

Several intertwined stories: *How several overly-religious, over-achieving youngsters cope with a new and unique overly-religious, over-achieving college. *How these students decide where to draw the line when it comes to participation in today's seductive secular culture - with the help of prayer, a personal relationship with Jesus, and Patrick Henry College's conduct manual and "snitch" policy. *How an attorney, who made a career out of representing the interests of home-schooling parents, opened an evangelical college designed to put high achieving home-schoolers on a career path leading to politics. Student volunteers are given time off to assist the Republicans during each election cycle. A huge number of them get positions assisting Republican Congressmen and Senators in Washington DC during their off time. *How these kids have been taught since birth that God is on the side of the Republican Party. Patrick Henry College must tweak a continuous balancing act to maintain their offense and defense against secularism. Founder and President Michael Farris would like PHC to be part of the movement that would return the United States to be the God-fearing society it believes the founding fathers intended. This means an education that enhances a working knowledge of and working relationship with the enemy. That knowledge, at times, enhances the inadvertent defection of some of their brightest stars to the dark side. Robert Stacey, PhD, consistently was a role model and favored teacher at Patrick Henry. Among other things, he caused students to question whether, for example, Bush's every move had been the correct one, and whether, in truth, all the founding fathers were as religious as these home-schoolers had always been taught. Jennifer Gruenke, PhD, taught biology. She didn't believe in evolution but she taught it - on the basis that you have to know the correct theory in order to honestly oppose it. She also taught alternatives - intelligent design and even a 10,000 year old earth inhabited by a naked lady and a snake, as portrayed in Genesis. These instructors and several others are no longer at Patrick Henry. They resigned en mass when Farris tried to enforce a more Biblical code on their curriculum - caving in to complaints from home-schooling parents. Not my cup of tea, nor is it the author's, who is a journalist specializing in religion and is a non-practicing Jew. In the hands of other authors, this book could have been a scathing indictment of a Taliban-like fundamentalist sinkhole - or it could have presented PHC to be a suger-coated nirvana-land, but she has done neither. For a year and a half she was granted freedom to the campus and to those who live and work there. She is open-mindedly empathetic, but realistic about them. It appears PHC will be a significant force in the future, influencing politics and culture wherever they think they can. This is a very interesting, timely book and I recommend

This is just a wonderful book. I've been fascinated by the impact of the Christians on American politics and this book really brought it home for me, how influential this movement is, and how sophisticated it has become in educating its young people on the workings of government. Hanna Rosin is very fair-minded in her dealings with the young Christians in this book, and I have to say, she is also a very entertaining writer, who is very funny and engaging, even when dealing with weighty subjects about the future of our country.

It probably should be mentioned at the outset that the term "Christian" as used in the context of this review refers to a particular brand of Protestant Christianity -- evangelical or fundamentalist -- which differs in many theological essentials from other Protestant Christian churches. Commonly, these believers are referred to as the "Christian Right" in contrast to members of the latter churches who often are considered "liberal" or "moderate." With that caveat in hand, then, let's begin. I am pretty astute at keeping up on public affairs, especially regarding political and religious issues, so how I missed this important story I can't explain. Of course, it is always possible that I did hear some reference to Patrick Henry College and its special program somewhere along the way and simply let it pass by or didn't focus on it with any deliberate attention. That, if so, has now been rectified. Hanna Rosin, a veteran reporter who has covered religion and politics for many years, has, I think, done an excellent job of exploring the ins and outs of an evangelical Christian college, founded in 2000 by Christian activist Michael Farris, which is dedicated to the proposition that the future of America rests in the hands of a college-trained Christian elite which itself is dedicated to saving America from "secular humanism" or any variant thereof. Rosin's book is titled "God's Harvard: A Christian College on a Mission to Save America." I might suggest an alternate title: "God's Military Academy." It seems to me that Patrick Henry College is much more than your usual, traditional liberal arts college; at the least it does not share many of the important features I am familiar with in my undergraduate experience. I attended and graduated from a small, religious-run liberal arts college but it was dedicated to, among other things, Enlightenment values such as freedom of thought, free speech, tolerance of differing views, and the exploration of things secular, as well as sacred. My impression of Patrick Henry College from Rosin's description is somewhat at odds with my conception of a true liberal arts institution. Furthermore, by the end of the work, I had formed a picture of an institution preparing an "army of God," marching out onto a cultural battlefield to defeat a "worldly" and "permissive" enemy, intent on "saving" us from our social, personal, and political "wickedness." It seems to me that today that is a pretty ambitious mission. The author spent around eighteen months within Patrick Henry College's surroundings, talking with its president, Michael Farris, interviewing students and faculty, interacting informally with both groups, socializing with some of them outside the campus environment, and even attending classes. The result is an interesting and insightful narrative about a contemporary phenomenon with which, I suspect, few Americans are actually acquainted: the training and nurturing of a young, dedicated, highly sophisticated, and