[.ca] God's Harvard: A Christian College on a Mission to Save ... (ISBN 0151012628)

From the Left: A Look at America's New and Improved Right:
God's Harvard is the story of Washington Post reporter Hanna Rosin's year-and-a-half long look at Patrick Henry College, a young evangelical liberal arts college with high ambitions. Students come to the college for an education on par with what they might have received at an Ivy League school, but with an emphasis on biblical studies and Christian living that transcends the whole curriculum. The school solicits, particularly but not exclusively, applications from students who are serious about "changing the culture for Christ" in the political realm, a project which brings them into frequent contact with the centre of US national politics, near the campus, in Washington D.C. A remarkable number of PHC students secure internships and entry-level jobs working for Republican politicians on Capitol Hill during or immediately following their four years of post-secondary training. One third of the student body sits on school's senate. Debate and current affairs are stressed in the school's curriculum. At the stern of this enterprise, hand-picking students and grooming them for political careers, stood Michael Farris (since retired). PHC founder and first president, Michael Farris, J.D., has been a vociferous legal proponent for home-schooling families--most of which describe themselves as "evangelical" in some sense--in the USA and in Canada. Most of the school's 200-300 students were home-schooled through high school and come to PHC for the "safe" atmosphere it offers. These students are not illiterate bumpkins, contrary to a stereotypical perception of home-schoolers. Admissions are competitive, merit-based scholarships attract bright lights, and many of the students go immediately from PHC into the top-ranked law programs in the States. Many students at PHC, much to their seniors' delight, style themselves as a "Joshua Generation" intent on "taking back the land" from the immoral Canaanites (read: liberals). The attack plan begins with infiltration at every level of government. Rosin's time spent at PHC let her develop relationships with some of the school's students, faculty, and administrators. She writes candidly as an outsider, a position which colours her presentation of the characters in her drama. Conformists are hanged with their own words (carefully selected, one suspects, to cast their owners in a repugnant mould); rebels are celebrated and lionized (not surprisingly, quotes from these non-conformists read more clearly, coolly, and level-headedly than those of their stick-in-the-mud peers). There is a not-so-subtle critique of pro-PHC types for their position on gender and family roles, human origins, and the church/state relationship. Her writing is sometimes sympathetically dismissive, writing off evangelicals as poor and misguided souls. More often, the book's tone is alarmist, fuelling fears that a backwards and bizarre group of evangelical Christians is sneakily mobilizing en masse to stifle scientific progress, undermine social enlightenment, and propagate Bush's reign of terror. Their "soft-sell" approach will have a bigger impact than hard-line position taken by the Jerry Falwells and Pat Robertsons of the last generation, if only because it is harder to spot and dismiss. In any case, Rosin is a skilful, entertaining, and highly readable writer. The book can be profitably read by Democrats and Republicans in the States; by Liberals and Conservatives in Canada; by students of Ivy-league universities and Bible colleges; by public school teachers and home-schooling parents. On the one hand, Rosin's memoir offers an illuminating look into a quickly growing subculture of highly trained evangelical Christians; those who haven't experienced it get a feel for its language, motivations, and goals. On the other hand, God's Harvard offers insiders an honest and well-informed outsider's perception of evangelicalism's suave new intelligentsia; adroitly uncovering some of its shortcomings and blind spots. Though localized in her experience with one particular American college, Rosin's observations ring true for other "smart evangelical" colleges and seminaries on both sides of 49th parallel.