reading circle

Reading God's Harvard, A Christian College On A Mission To Save America was a strange experience. I knew a tiny bit about Patrick Henry College from weekly missives in my email box urging me to send my homeschooler to debate camp, summer classes, and goverment classes on-line, but not much more. I have great respect for Mike Farris and the other lawyers and administrators of HSLDA and the college, but have always been a bit put off by their evangelical zeal that rejects those of other religious viewpoints.

The author of this year and a half long study of the college is Hanna Rosin, a religion writer for the Washington Post. While I can understand Mrs. Rosin's outsider-looking-in writing style as she is a cultural Jew and I am Catholic (neither one of us would be admitted to PHC), her contempt and condescension throughout this book is uncalled for. Her unprofessional sneering at the school rules, the student's political aspirations and dissapointments, any weakness in the character of anyone at the college is so blatant it makes a reader question if anything in this book is true or is it just a liberal hit job. Every page is peppered with her incredulity that these Christians actually believe the Bible and attempt to live up to a moral code.

I think this book illustrates the most to me is not the collision of the administration's and faculty's ideas of what a liberal arts education should look like, but the utter contempt of today's media toward all Christians who want to influence society. If we want to retain sexual purity then we are called Puritans or Jane Austen era wanna-bes. If we want to homeschool for any reason then we are lampooned as narrow-minded dictators in our homes. The liberals don't want us to choose our own paths through this life, they want us all to be like them: free from moral constraints and free from God.