God’s Harvard: A Christian College on a Mission to Save America
by Hanna Rosin
Published by Harcourt Books
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Reviewed by Jamie Driggers
(Also available in CD)
Patrick Henry College, a small evangelical college just outside of Washington D.C., aims to “save the culture and take back the nation.” It is grooming its students, mostly former home schooled, to attain positions of influence in the government and the media.
Hannah Rosin spent a year and a half with the students and faculty of Patrick Henry College. She went with them on campaigns, visited their families, attended conferences and even rented a student a room who was on an internship. What she found were highly driven individuals with principles and dreams.
I’d never heard of Patrick Henry College, and as a person who considers herself on the “right” side of politics, I was intrigued. However, I’m not sure for whom this book is written. If I’m honest, I’ll say that it reads far more like an expose of the “radical” religious right that is packaged as an informative book about a college of influence.
This is a well-written, well-researched book by someone who does not get it: neither evangelical Christianity nor Patrick Henry College. Her heavy use of quotation marks when referring to Christian terminology set a mocking tone. And she didn’t even stick to the people of Patrick Henry. She would go off on tangents about people who weren’t associated with Patrick Henry College—they were just associated with people who were associated with Patrick Henry College—as if to show what kind of maniacs are out there who believe God could possibly be interested in us as individuals. Though I have to admit that the tangential people were fascinating.
I give kudos to author Rosin for enlightening us radical right wingers as to what the other side really thinks of us. As if we already didn’t know. So my complaint isn’t so much about what was written, as it is to how it is packaged. If you are going to put out a book showing the dark side of a college, don’t make it look for all the world like you might be writing of the good. That’s all I ask.
Armchair Interviews says: Interesting information packaged for several interpretations.