McChurch - Rise of the Neo-Evangelical in American Politics

Rise of the Neo-Evangelical

Writer Hanna Rosin has just completed a book due out in September on Patrick Henry College, God's Harvard: A Christian College on a Mission to Save America. She recently published an Op Ed piece in the Washington Post on the rise of a new generation of Evangelicals involved in politics. Monica Goodling, the young Turk from Messiah College and Regent University Law School who played a key role in the firing of a number of U.S. Attorneys, was showcased as representative of this new generation.

Rosin’s article raises many interesting questions. If we are to take her position as authoritative, we may need to create a category of political activism – “neo-evangelical.” Rosin points to the derisive characterizations of Evangelicals by comic Bill Maher as the standard against which this generation of “well-scrubbed, Harvard-like Christians” is publicly measured. How relevant that is may be up for grabs.

My suspicion is that the media is just waking up. The fact is that “well-scrubbed, Harvard-like Christians” have always been in administrative positions in government, albeit somewhat in the closet.

Having said that, however, there are several reactions to the Rosin piece that are in order.

First, to run through the gauntlet of indoctrination prevalent in fundamentalist Christian education requires an incredible facility for bureaucratic survival and an ability to shut down, or at least compartmentalize, critical thinking. “Good soldiers” might be an appropriate term. Good soldiers rarely make good generals.

Where Christian schools shine are the few instances of classical education with a Christian distinctive rather than Christian education with a classical distinctive.

Messiah College and Regent University would not, in my thinking, be institutions where classical education is emphasized over indoctrination. I would leave room, however, for the very real possibility that I may well have, in the characterization by Rosin of Pat Robertson, become irrelevant.

Secondly, while these “well-scrubbed, Harvard-like Christians” may toe the party line (primarily Republican), there is a Machiavellian streak in all of them that pays extreme homage to the will of authority, even to the extent of sacrificing one’s own principles.

This Machiavellian streak derives from an overwhelming need to preserve the "soul" of the institution. Terms such as "Christian nation," Christian school,” "Christian company" and "Christian marriage" are frequently employed.

At the end of the day, the neo-evangelical is the product of a system that honors no departure from the party line. While Robertson may have been put on the shelf by neo-evangelicals, his personality and agenda was very much alive in the education of Monica Goodling. To bow to his authority for even a month requires a strong propensity toward group-think.

As for Harvard, inertia is a wonderful thing, but it is not certain that Harvard has not, along with Pat Robertson, passed its zenith. If the best one can offer in this uncertain and dangerous world in which we live is either a Harvard degree or a Regent University degree, we may be in deep trouble…

Leadership in the arts, business, medicine, politics and religion emerges, not from training at Harvard, Messiah College or Regent University, but from a keen sense of timing and mission, a sense that made Pat Robertson a legend in his own time and mind.

It would be well not to forget that Bill Gates jettisoned college after one semester in order to respond to both timing and mission…

Stan Moody is the author of "Crisis in Evangelical Scholarship" and "McChurched: 300 Million Served and Still Hungry