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Patrick Henry College (PHC) is evangelical, fundamentalist, literalist, Christianity at its stomach-churning worst. But is this cause for concern? Surely in the Land of the Free, people should have the right to educate children as they please. Aren't such institutions harmless expressions of the liberty of a great nation? Far from it. PHC is not just an abhorrent affront to science and truth. It is a factory, a well-oiled production-line, churning out intellectual clones in sharp freshly-pressed suits to fulfil the PHC mission of moulding the culture of America to their vision of a fundamentalist Christian republic.

Boy am I glad to live in the UK.

Such was the prevailing feeling as the credits rolled on God's Next Army, a documentary charting the lives of students at Patrick Henry College (PHC), Loudoun County, Virginia (1). It was like watching an episode of Star Trek. You know, one of those where the crew has been taken over by a mysterious alien mind-virus. In this case, the symptoms are losing the ability to think critically, coupled with an uncontrollable urge to smile absolutely all the time, except when swaying open-palmed and shut-eyed at the sound of particularly naff, happy-clappy songs.

Yes, PHC is evangelical, fundamentalist, literalist, Christianity at its stomach-churning worst. Despite its Ivy-League appearance (minus the ivy), the college is only six years old and, with around 300 students, is still relatively small. The vast majority are experiencing the class-room environment for the first time, having been cocooned and home-schooled in a bubble of delusion by parents too afraid to let them interact with the real world. Indeed, the college was set up with precisely such people in mind. Its founder is one Michael Farris, who in 1983 also co-founded the Home School Legal Defense Association, to "preserve and advance the fundamental, God-given, constitutional right of parents and others legally responsible for their children to direct their education."

Every class at PHC is taught from a Biblical perspective. This of course extends to biology, about which their website proudly states:



Evidence of how strictly the doctrine is applied at PHC emerged in May this year when five "professors" left the college because of what they described as limitations on their academic freedom. One of the professors, David Noe, said faculty members were reprimanded for writing that the Bible "is not the only source of truth."

But is any of this cause for concern? Surely in the Land of the Free, people should have the right to educate children as they please. Aren't such institutions harmless expressions of the liberty of a great nation? Far from it. Leaving aside the idea that teaching a pupil the Universe is only 7,000 years old and was literally formed in 7 days might, to say the least, be morally questionable, I think we should be deeply worried and for a number of reasons.

Firstly, PHC is not just an abhorrent affront to science and truth. It is a factory, a well-oiled production-line, churning out intellectual clones in sharp freshly-pressed suits to fulfil the PHC mission of moulding the culture of America to their vision of a fundamentalist Christian republic.

The soldiers are being deliberately prepared for political warfare. They are smooth operators, with skills honed for attaining positions of authority and influence. Farris, a high-profile lawyer, is personally involved in coaching students in the art of debating and moot court which are central to the college's activities. As their considerable success in intercollegiate debating tournaments shows, they mean business. The influence of Farris should not be underestimated here. There's no denying he is an impressive and ambitious figure. One of his goals is, in his own words, "to raise up a few people that are really at the top of the legal profession and get in the zone where they can become the attorney general of their state... maybe the Supreme Court of the United States."

And the small size of PHC is no reason to be reassured. In George W. Bush, God's Next Army already has its Commander-in-Chief in place and they are too close for comfort. Farris is extremely well-connected with members of Congress, not to mention the president himself. In the spring of 2004, seven of the 100 or so interns working in the White House were from PHC, and in its first four years, the college provided interns for no less than 22 conservative members of Congress (3). They have even had interns working for the president's senior political adviser at the time, Karl Rove, and the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad. As Farris says, "Personnel is policy. If you can get the right people there, you will change the way the nation works." It seems his focussed determination is paying off.

Secondly, PHC is not some isolated case punching above its weight thanks to fortuitous White House connections. It is indicative of the much deeper problem of widespread right-wing Christian fundamentalism in the United States.

Conservative politicians taking on interns from institutions like PHC do so because, according to Farris, they share their own deeply-held values. Moreover, the Republican Party, which they serve, would not be in control of every branch of US government had over half the participating electorate not voted them in. Of course, the correlation between Republicanism and this brand of religion is not absolute. There are fundamentalist Christian Democrats and, no doubt, Republicans who despise the current trends in their party, but the voice of the latter is disturbingly quiet. The truth is that graduates of PHC enter a world more willing than ever to receive them. They become an active part of the population which twice elected the Bush administration, a regime littered with a catalogue of religiously-inspired, ill-considered legislation, matched only by the verbal gaffs of its leader.

Perhaps the most damning manifestation of this has been the attacks on science. From the much-documented opposition to stem-cell research to the somewhat more underhanded, semantically-driven interference with NASA (4), the actions and policy of the Bush administration towards science has shocked the academic community. Yet is it at all surprising that this is tolerated by so many given that over half the population, according to the polls, deny that evolution by natural selection ever happened? (5)

And all this is occurring in a country which explicitly separates Church and State in its constitution. Yet, ironically, perhaps this is not causally unrelated. It could be argued that this very separation is a significant factor in the rise of fundamentalism. It is as though panic sets in and people feel the need to go to increasingly bizarre and extreme lengths to subvert the system and ensure their moral and metaphysical voice is heard. Churches become more like cynical businesses competing for bums-on-pews while bottom-of-the-range academics invent devious schemes like "intelligent design theory" and the "wedge strategy" in a vain attempt to get creationism into schools.

Richard Dawkins recently said on the Charlie Rose Show, "we do have ignorant fools in Britain. The difference is that they don't get political power". And he's right. On the whole, the religious madness seen in the US doesn't happen in Europe. To be sure, the forms of Christianity found here, for all sorts of cultural reasons, tend to be far more liberal and progressive than that which dominates in the US, but perhaps it is also no coincidence that there is often a mature state-established Church. In the UK, for example, a number of bishops of the Church of England are automatically members of the House of Lords, as are other religious leaders. This may be illogical and democratically suspect but, historically at least, perhaps it has removed an element of religious paranoia leaving the politicians to get on with real politics.

So, far from being separated, American politics has become so infused by evangelical Christianity from the inside that, anyone who doesn't conform, simply has no voice. Indeed, at present, openly atheist candidates stand very little chance of being elected to Congress, regardless of their policies. Instead, the system throws up governors like Bush with a twisted Christian worldview, hopelessly divorced from reality. Remember this is a man who openly claims he went to war because God told him to, a man so deluded that, by many accounts, he believes in Armageddon and the Second Coming. And he has his finger on the button of the most destructive arsenal of weapons ever known. That surely is reason to be worried.

Bush may only have two of his "four more years" left, but with slick operations like PHC up and running, there is a real danger that he could be just the beginning. Wake up! The "ignorant fools" have their act together. The virus is spreading fast and, unlike on The Enterprise, there is no logically-minded Spock guaranteed to save the day. Political and ideological action is needed, both at and away from the ballot box, by the people who read more than one book. Atheists, agnostics, sceptics, non-believers, critical-thinkers, secular humanists and, yes, sophisticated theists of America: it's down to you.