God's Harvard

I’ve just finished reading God’s Harvard: A Christian College on a Mission to Save America by Hanna Rosin. I had heard the author speak on NPR about her book, and it sounded interesting. The thought of a Christian college that is really wholesome and out to do some real good in the world really appeals to me.
Each chapter focuses on either one person or one event. Ms. Rosin followed (with permission) and virtually lived with a variety of people throughout 2 years, including the president of the college, a professor, and several students. At one point she actually drives some of the college kids around to canvas neighborhoods during an election because they were short on drivers over the age of 21.
It caters to the homeschool crowd and the president, Michael Farris, is the head of the Homeschool Legal Defense Association which is the organization that pretty much made it so everyone who wanted to could homeschool without legal trouble. He started Patrick Henry College when he started encountering homeschooling parents who were complaining that it was impossible to find a strict Christian college that provided an Ivy League level liberal arts education.
It turns out that the college doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. The point of the college is to get educated Christians into politics or Hollywood. Women are expected to be educated in order to be a good help-mate of a political husband, but not to be allowed to be in politics herself beyond marriage. Mr. Farris wants to “bring America back to God”, and while he allows the teaching of philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle and others, it’s only palatable to him if they are presented in a very evil light. There are science classes taught by a Ph.D. in cell biology who is a creationist. She uses a pretty standard biology text book, but supplements with creationist science. I thought her chapter was pretty cool. However the teaching of history is pretty slanted toward a Christian Founding Fathers viewpoint that totally ignores all evidence to the contrary. At least, that’s what Mr. Farris wanted. He ends up firing the History professor over the content of the course.
The atmosphere at the college appears more Taliban than wholesome. There’s actually a rule in the student handbook that stipulates that if a student knows or suspects another student or faculty of anything, from a bra-strap showing to gross indiscretion, that the student is liable to the same punishment as the perpetrator if that student doesn’t turn them in. Thus, there is a lot of fear on the campus of spies in the dorms and classrooms. Almost everyone seems to have a “school persona” and a “world persona”. The few people who were consistent everywhere were miserable at the school.
I was really bothered by the strong desire to get people into politics for the purpose of legislating morality. These young people were so out of touch with what most people experience in life: poverty, abuse, desperation. It’s scary to think that they think they already have the answers for what we need in this country. I would rather the college had focused on figuring out how to help people so that they are less likely to resort to drugs or sex in exchange for a roof overhead. I certainly don’t want these people writing the laws that I would have to live under. I do not want to live in a theocracy where a few powerful people decide what is Godly and what is not and ignores individual conscience. I want to live in a Kingdom where everyone reports to Christ directly and works in harmony with others who report to Christ directly.