01: In a move directly related to the larger struggle now going on within the Christian Right over whether to drop out of secular society and form a countercultural society or to keep trying to transform secular society, leaders of the latter course of action are starting the Patrick Henry College.
The Purcellville, Va.-based college is being created explicitly for home schoolers going on to college level work and then moving into activism for the Christian Right agenda. Having grown in 20 years from a few hundred homeschoolers to some l.5 million this last year, leaders are laying plans to shape the next generation of rightist activists through this college. Home school leaders such as Michael Farris sees Patrick Henry as the place where activists can enter directly into public life to shape policies just as the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee turned out such activists as Rosa Parks for the civil rights crusade.
Students at Patrick Henry will take basic Christian-oriented humanities and science courses. Dedicated, as its mission statement reads, to “transform America” through such causes as repealing Roe vs. Wade and curtailing gay rights programs, all of the students will be government majors, with intern and off campus experience built into their studies for influencing governments from the local to the national level.
Students will, according to Farris, dress modestly, refrain from any alcohol, tobacco, or drugs, and follow the requirement that any boy seeking to know an individual girl needs her parents’ written permission before starting any courtship. the collegians will seek employment in the world of public policy making and administering.
(Source: Washington Post (National Weekly Edition), Oct.4)
— By Erling Jorstad