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Since 2000, America's most ambitious young evangelicals have been making their way to Patrick Henry College, a small Christian school just outside the nation's capital. Most of them are homeschoolers whose idealism and discipline put the average American teenager to shame. And God's Harvard grooms these students to be the elite of tomorrow, dispatching them to the front lines of politics, entertainment, and science, to wage the battle to take back a godless nation. Hanna Rosin spent a year and a half embedded at the college, following the students from the campus to the White House, Congress, conservative think tanks, Hollywood, and other centers of influence. Her account captures this nerve center of the evangelical movement at a moment of maximum influence and also of crisis, as it struggles to avoid the temptations of modern life and still remake the world in its own image.
List of contents
contents
Introduction • 1
chapter one • 9
Welcome, Surfer Ninjas and Knights
chapter two • 40
Harvard for Homeschoolers
chapter three • 73
“Elisa Muench, Republican, for Idaho’s Senator.She Will Make a Difference.”
chapter four • 104
America Is a Christian Nation, Capital “C,” Capital “N”
chapter five • 125
Farahn’s Attempt to Hide Her Midriff
chapter six • 151
“This Is It! Go for Smiles! Go for Christ!”
chapter seven • 167The Den of Sin
chapter eight • 183
From Humanzee to Liger: A Brief History of Evolution
chapter nine • 205
The Fifth Quadrant: Hollywood Finds God
chapter ten • 231
Today I Met the Boy I’m Gonna Marry
chapter eleven • 250
Obey, All You Little Children
Conclusion • 268
Acknowledgments • 284
Endnotes • 287
About the author
HANNA ROSIN has covered religion and politics for the Washington Post. She has also written for the New Yorker, the New Republic, GQ, and the New York Times. She lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband, Slate editor David Plotz, and their two children.
Summary
Since 2000, America’s most ambitious young evangelicals have been making their way to Patrick Henry College, a small Christian school just outside the nation’s capital. Most of them are homeschoolers whose idealism and discipline put the average American teenager to shame. And God’s Harvard grooms these students to be the elite of tomorrow, dispatching them to the front lines of politics, entertainment, and science, to wage the battle to take back a godless nation. Hanna Rosin spent a year and a half embedded at the college, following the students from the campus to the White House, Congress, conservative think tanks, Hollywood, and other centers of influence. Her account captures this nerve center of the evangelical movement at a moment of maximum influence and also of crisis, as it struggles to avoid the temptations of modern life and still remake the world in its own image.
Additional text
PRAISE FOR GOD'S HARVARD "A rare accomplishment for many reasons—perhaps most of all because Rosin is a journalist who not only reports but also observes deeply. Her insights come through in her balanced portrayal of each student, the nuance with which she inserts her own first-person narration, and—not least—her dry and sometimes acerbic sense of humor."—San Francisco Chronicle "Nuanced and highly readable . . . [with] feisty, richly detailed prose."—The Washington Post
