Patrick Henry College

Occasionally I've been questioned as to why I'm concerned about the emergence of Christian Nationalism in the United States. The most idiotic remark, in this vein, was the observation that fundamentalism is only growing in the United States and the Middle East, while religious belief everywhere else has been on decline, so I really shouldn't worry about these things (this came from one of my European friends here on Larval Subjects). Well gee, thanks, this does me a lot of good if I live everywhere else, but I don't see how it does me much good living here. Perhaps the person who made this comment would like to find me a nice teaching position in Europe so I wouldn't have to worry about these things. Padraig from the brilliant subject-barred ($), who hails from Ireland I might add (apparently word of this small college has travelled far and wide), has been kind enough to track down a number of links on Patrick Henry College that are cause for concern.

No, what makes Patrick Henry unique is the increasingly close - critics say alarmingly close - links this recently established, right-wing Christian college has with the Bush administration and the Republican establishment as a whole. This spring, of the almost 100 interns working in the White House, seven are from Patrick Henry. Another intern works for the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign, while another works for President George Bush's senior political adviser, Karl Rove. Yet another works for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad. Over the past four years, 22 conservative members of Congress have employed one or more Patrick Henry interns. Janet Ashcroft, the wife of Bush's Bible-thumping Attorney General, is one of the college's trustees.

These are astonishing, eye-popping numbers. Now I have no axe to grind with Christians. I earned my doctorate from a Jesuit institution. I would argue late into the evening with evangelical and Catholic friends about the finer points of scripture and the teachings of Jesus. My mother is a devout Catholic and my father a Southern Baptist. They decided to split the difference and raised me Episcopal. I even enjoy a good high Catholic service. I've always thought atheism consisted in the freedom to be done with religion, to no longer even talk about religion, not in the activity of sitting around trying to persuade others of the folly of their religious views. Yet when I do find myself talking about religion it's usually defending religion, much to my dismay and confusion, not attacking it. My friend Jeff, in graduate school, who was home schooled and Baptist, would sometime tell me that I should be a minister due to how I talked about scripture. I suspect he did this to irritate me, but such is the nature of transference with regard to those whom we love. We become what we think they want us to be. Jeff also became a bit of an atheist.

But these groups are a different breed altogether, and it's worthwhile to know what it is that they believe as they are currently being groomed for extremely powerful positions that will not only have a tremendous impact on domestic policy in the United States, but on U.S. foreign policy is well. Do we really want people leading the United States who believe the apocalypse is immanent (thereby undermining any need to change environmental policies that effect the rest of the world) and who believe these events will unfold in a conflict between the Middle East and the United States (thereby encouraging "statesmen" to promote conflict with foreign countries rather than avoiding it)? The articles can be found here and here and here and here and here. Thanks for the hard work Padraig!