Hanna Rosin: A new evangelical establishment
Schools like Monica Goodling's turn out scrubbed young ideologues who are ready to serve their nation.
Hanna Rosin
Published: May 30, 2007
It is interesting how this article seems to want to mainstream what we may need to coin as “neo-evangelical.” The only standard against which this generation of “well-scrubbed, Harvard-like Christians” is measured is the derisive characterizations by Bill Maher…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 that are in order…First, to run through the gauntlet of indoctrination prevalent in Christian education indicates an incredible facility for bureaucratic survival and, conversely, an incredible ability to shut down, or at least compartmentalize critical thinking…
“Good soldiers” might be an appropriate term…Good soldiers rarely make good generals…
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, if those have not already been sacrificed running the gauntlet of Christian indoctrination…
This Machiavellian streak derives from an overwhelming need to preserve the "soul" of an institution, as though any institution has a redeemable soul...Terms such as "Christian nation," "Christian company" and "Christian marriage" are frequently employed...
At the end of the day, Goodling is the product of a system that honors no departure from the party line, so to speak…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-thiink…
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 or Messiah College, but from a keen sense of timing and mission…
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
WASHINGTON - To the Bush haters of America, the young Monica Goodling is a footnote of this wretched era, one of the many Washington types that they'll be happy to get rid of come January 2009: Venal Vice President, Ex-Lobbyists Turned Regulators and, in Goodling's case, Young Evangelicals in High Places.
Until she appeared before the House Judiciary Committee last week to testify about her role in the Justice Department firing scandal, Goodling had been mocked on the Internet and on late-night TV as a certain type: one of a "bunch of hayseeds" staffing the administration, as HBO comedian Bill Maher called her.
Goodling graduated from Messiah College ("home of the Fighting Christies") and the law school at Regent University, founded by Pat Robertson ("a televangelist's diploma mill") -- both Maher's terms.
But the joke is on Maher: The age of the televangelist is as dead as Jerry Falwell, and the Regent website treats Robertson like a fondly remembered patriarch from a bygone era, when it was suitable to call yourself a "fundamentalist" and scream on TV.
Goodling is part of a new generation of evangelicals ushered in by Falwell, who insisted that Christians get involved in politics. They are graduates of the exploding number of evangelical colleges, which no longer aim to create a parallel subculture but instead to train "Christian leaders to change the world," as the Regent mission statement reads.
It used to be that being 33 and in charge of 93 U.S. attorneys would mean you'd been top of your class at Harvard or Yale or clerked at the Supreme Court. Now, Christian schools are joining that mix. Regent has had 150 of its graduates working in the White House; the school estimates that one-sixth of its alumni are in government work. Call them the Goodlings: scrubbed young ideologues, ready to serve their nation, the right's version of the Peace Corps generation.
The image of Goodling that emerged in the hearing did not match the "hayseed" of Maher's imagination. A colleague said that it was not unusual to find Goodling BlackBerrying at 2 a.m. or preparing briefs late into the night. Goodling described one bit of office politics as a clash between two "Type A" women in which she played the Eve Harrington character in "All About Eve" and won. "Televangelist" did not seem to be on her list of career goals.
Falwell and Robertson were outsiders and always behaved like it. Goodling's Christian contemporaries grew up with Bush as their president, speaking their language. Even after this administration is gone, they can work for one of the more than 150 members of Congress who call themselves evangelical or dozens of conservative think tanks and activist groups. Or they can run for office: Robert McDonnell, Virginia's attorney general, is a Regent alum. They are part of the Washington establishment now and, much to Bill Maher's chagrin, they will be around long after Bush is gone.
Recently, I spent a lot of time among the students at Patrick Henry College, a seven-year-old school founded in much the same spirit as Regent. The students there easily matched Goodling's description of herself as "anal-retentive." They input their daily schedules into Palm Pilots in 15-minute increments -- read Bible, do crunches, take shower, study for Latin quiz. They intern at the White House. The atmosphere is much more Harvard than Bob Jones.
A 1996 study found that evangelical college students were remarkably unified in their political identification: More than two-thirds called themselves Republicans, and only 9 percent said they were Democrats. At Patrick Henry, I heard a rumor that someone had voted for John Kerry. I chased down many leads. All dead ends. If it was true, no one would publicly admit it.
While testifying last week, Goodling admitted that she had asked inappropriately partisan questions of applicants for civil service jobs. But she never asked about religion, she said. Unlike their elders, the new generation of evangelicals does not turn the cubicle into a pulpit. If they are intent on implementing God's will, they do it with professional discretion.
It took the conservative political movement 30 years to become a fixture in American politics, and it's taken evangelicals about the same. Like conservatives, evangelicals may remain chronically ambivalent, afflicted with a persecution complex despite their obvious successes. But they are embedded firmly enough into Washington to provide jobs for smart young Christians for generations to come.
Hanna Rosin is the author of "God's Harvard: A Christian College on a Mission to Save America," due out in September. She wrote this article for the Washington Post.
© 2007 Star Tribune. All rights reserved.
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