---

Bush Administration mining fundamentalist recruits
The former Dean of Academic Affairs at the fundamentalist Christian Patrick Henry College is appointed to oversee USAID's democracy and governance programs

...Michael P. Farris, a longtime Christian right activist is the founder and president of the Purcellville, Va.-based Patrick Henry College (website), whose motto is "For Christ and For Liberty." Located just 50 miles from the nation's capital, it bills itself as "one of America's top ten conservative colleges," a designation given it last November by the conservative Young America's Foundation (YAF), "a nationwide campus outreach organization dedicated to the promotion of conservative values."

Farris is a member of the Board of Directors of Paul Weyrich's Free Congress Foundation and belonged to the ultra-right secretive Council for National Policy. He is an attorney who specializes in constitutional law, and in 1993 he was the Republican candidate for the office of lieutenant governor of Virginia (he lost). Farris is also the author of "Where Do I Draw the Line," "Constitutional Law for Christian Students," "Home Schooling and the Law," and "The Homeschooling Father."

Farris, however, made his mark as founder and president of the Home School Legal Defense Association, which was set up in 1983 to promote home schooling among Christian families.

Patrick Henry College's mission, as adopted by the Board of Trustees September 28, 2002, is "to train Christian men and women who will lead our nation and shape our culture with timeless biblical values and fidelity to the spirit of the American founding. In order to accomplish this mission, the College provides academically excellent higher education with a biblical worldview using classical liberal arts core curriculum and apprenticeship methodology." Its vision is "to aid in the transformation of American society by training Christian students to serve God and mankind with a passion for righteousness, justice and mercy, through careers of public service and cultural influence."

According to Fischer, the school "requires ... all of its 300 students sign a 10-part 'statement of faith' declaring, among other things, that they believe 'Jesus Christ, born of a virgin, is God come in the flesh'; that 'Jesus Christ literally rose bodily from the dead'; and that hell is a place where 'all who die outside of Christ shall be confined in conscious torment for eternity.'"

In addition, faculty members "must sign a pledge stating they share a generally literalist belief in the Bible," Fisher reported. "Revealingly, only biology and theology teachers are required to hold a literal view specifically of the Bible's six-day creation story."

Even though there are only 240 students enrolled, the college is flush: It "gets so much money from right-wing Christian donors that it operates without debt and yet charges just $15,000 a year for tuition," the Independent's Andrew Buncombe reported in January 2004.

Buncombe described the College as a campus out of some other time: "Students must obey a curfew, wear their hair neatly and dress 'modestly.'If they wish to hold hands with a member of the opposite sex, they must do so while walking: standing while holding hands is not permitted. And students must sign an honor pledge that bans them from drinking alcohol unless under parental supervision." In addition, "The MTV and VH1 pop-culture channels are blocked from campus televisions because their contents are considered inappropriate [and] the students' computers are set up with a program called Covenant Eyes, which monitors the websites they visit."

In addition to Farris and Janet Ashcroft, the wife of the then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, PHC's Board of Trustees includes: Chairman Jack W. Haye, a Senior Vice President of Wells Fargo Bank; Vice Chairman Paul De Pree, Ph.D., a Senior Project Leader with the Dow Chemical Company; Ramon Ardizzone, Chairman and CEO Emeritus of Glenayre Technologies, Inc.; Kenneth L. Connor, J.D., an attorney with Wilkes & McHugh, P.A. and the former head of the Family Research Council; Barbara Hodel, Vice President of the Summit Energy Group and the wife of Don Hodel who recently retired as President and Chief Executive Officer of Focus on the Family; James R. Leininger, M.D., the Founder and Chairman Emeritus of Kinetic Concepts, Inc. and a longtime funder and supporter of the privatization of public schools; Russell B. Pulliam, the Associate Editor of the Indianapolis Star; Wilfred S. Templeton, the President and CEO of Ft. Myers Toyota; and John E. Urban, a Partner (Retired) with Goldman Sachs....