c. 2000 Religion News Service
PURCELLVILLE, Va. _ In a recent government class at Patrick Henry College, the lesson was on how different political parties control the White House and the Congress _ and the resulting gridlock.
“Are you saying that’s a bad thing?” junior Michael Daniels asked professor Stan Watson, recalling environmental legislation he disliked in his home state of California.
“If they actually started doing anything, it’d be really, really bad.”
Daniels, of Fairfield, Calif., is one of 90 young people who make up the inaugural student body of the college that aims to attract home-schoolers.
After two years in community college, he said Patrick Henry College’s blending of conservative views on both government and Christianity attracted him.
“We’re all here because we see a problem in government and we want to do something about that problem,” said Daniels, 20, a debate team member who plays violin to help accompany hymns during the school’s daily chapel services. “To my mind, the problem is that government has run amok.”
Students and faculty holding this belief in limited government are just who Mike Farris, college president and general counsel of the Home School Legal Defense Association, envisioned attracting to the 43-acre site in the rural hills near the northern tip of Virginia.
“A lot of candidates running for office campaign as if they’re running for Messiah. They’re going to solve every problem in life,” he said.
“We want to train students who understand the difference between government and God.”
Patrick Henry College opened its doors Oct. 2 to 54 freshmen and 36 transfer students from 30 states. Most of them, like Daniels, were home-schooled from kindergarten through high school. A couple attended public schools and the rest had a mixture of public, private and home-schooled education.
“We anticipate that home-schoolers will continue to be the majority constituency of this college for a long time,” Farris said, “because that’s where a majority of students are in this country who have both the academic excellence and the values that we’re trying to establish here at the college.”
Patrick Henry offers two years of liberal arts studies, followed by two years of apprenticeship-based education, focusing on research projects and planned internships, some of them on Capitol Hill. Most students are taking six courses this semester.
Students like the integration of Christianity throughout the day, from chapel to classroom discussions to prayers about the way to develop their student government.
“I think a lot of the Christians have tended to compartmentalize it, and say that … you’re a Christian at church and the rest of the world doesn’t apply, ” said freshman, Rachel Northrup, 19, of Palmer Lake, Colo., while eating a lunch of egg rolls and fried rice. “It does apply to every area of life.”
John Vinci, 23, of Cleveland, cited his English composition professor, who begins class with prayer.
“He tries to instruct us in not only how to write, but how to write as a Christian, how to demonstrate Christian love,” said Vinci, a freshman who has created a Web site on the founding fathers.
He completed one assignment that looked at how the biblical prophet Nathan began with a story, rather than a condemnation, when he approached David about his adulterous relationship with Bathsheba.
Faith fits into the application process as well. Students are required to write essays describing their “personal walk of faith” and analyzing a public policy issue by stating how their biblical viewpoint would affect the position they took as an elected official.
The school currently offers one major in government, but is seeking approval from a Virginia higher education council to offer a second major in classic liberal arts.
Farris, 49, hopes to have 75 new freshmen next year and a student body of 300 within a couple years.
“Beyond the 300 is going to depend on our ability to raise money to expand,” he said.
At present, the campus operates from one building, a two-story colonial-style brick edifice with six white columns. The $7.5 million structure includes classrooms, a library, a dining area that becomes the chapel in the morning and student cubicles outfitted with voice mail and hook-ups for college-provided laptop computers.
The hallways of the building, which also houses the offices of the 70,000-member home-school organization, are decorated with portraits of patriots, including Henry and Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.
The school, which does not accept government funding, depends solely on donations and the tuition paid by students. This year, they are paying $15,000 for tuition, room and board.
But because of construction delays for four dormitories, the students currently stay in people’s homes within driving distance of the campus. Farris hopes the dormitories will be open by mid-November.
Northrup is one of eight students living with a family of nine.
“We call it our mini-dorm,” said the freshman, who likes to wear a necklace that blends a cross and the Star of David and reminds her of the Jewish roots of her Christian faith.
While the buildings remain under construction, other aspects of the school are more certain.
Among the rules already in place are a ban on alcohol consumption and a “courtship” regulation that students must discuss plans for dating with their parents. Once the dorms are occupied, they will be single-sex with no co-ed visiting hours.
“The reason for that rule is hormones,” Farris said.
He’s also instituted a dress code, which he describes as “basically corporate casual during class hours and just don’t be ridiculous afterwards.”
The college opens at a time when home-schooling has grown to more than 1.5 million students, a dramatic increase from the 1978 figure of 12,500.
Brian Ray, president of the National Home Education Research Institute in Salem, Ore., said the college’s focus on home-schoolers, disapproval of an “evolving progressive Constitution,” and biblical worldview has produced excitement in conservative Christian home-schooling circles.
“You put all three of those together,” he said, “then of course you’ve got a lot of enthusiasm from the majority of the home-school community.”
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Bob Andringa, president of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, said the evangelical schools in his consortium also expect faculty to approach their subjects from a Christian worldview, but he said they tend to offer a wider variety of majors within the liberal arts and are more open to diverse viewpoints about government.
“To have a board of trustees or a president position their campus on anything but a strong search for truth within the Christian worldview from a multidisciplinary approach would be a high risk,” he said, referring to a school’s appeal to donors.
But the faculty and students don’t apologize for their approach to academics.
Stan Watson, who teaches government and used to work for a “pro-family” think tank in Alabama, looks forward to the day when the students graduate and affect political change.
“I believe that these kids are going to be some of the best trained, most effective political operatives in the system and I think they are going to have a major impact,” he said.
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