God's Harvard: A Christian College on a Mission to Save America

Hanna Rosin

Harcourt,  September 2007

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. At "God's Harvard" they are groomed to become tomorrow's elite. Diplomas in hand, they are dispatched to the front lines of politics, entertainment, and science, where they will lead the battle to take back a godless nation.

Hanna Rosin spent a year and a half embedded at the college, following 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.

hardcover | ISBN: 9780151012626 | Publication Date: September 2007

Reviews:
"Hanna Rosin's wonderful book is as insightful as it is witty. Rarely is a book on such an important subject such a joy to read."
--Alan Wolfe, author of One Nation, After All and The Transformation of American Religion

"Hanna Rosin has gotten incredible access to a subculture that is fast becoming a mighty political force. This insightful book reveals the new face of the Christian right: highly educated young people brilliantly trained to advance their worldview into mainstream America. Rosin's frank and candid portraits of these fiercely dedicated youth leave the reader wondering: What will my world be like when these kids are in charge of it?"
--Rachel Grady, director and producer, Jesus Camp

"With clarity, honesty, and equal measures of surprised delight and foreboding, Hanna Rosin takes us into a new world of Christian higher education that few outsiders knew existed but the entire nation will be dealing with for decades to come."
--David Maraniss, author of First in His Class

"By reporting among America's young Christian elite with curiosity, empathy, and persistence, Hanna Rosin has produced a  book that is humane, surprising, and very unnerving. This is journalism at its best -- never preachy, but honest and revealing."
--Steve Coll, author of Ghost Wars

"
Hanna Rosin reminds us in God's Harvard why there is no substitute for good reporting and beautiful storytelling. Human beings, not stick figures, populate this book, reflecting Rosin's approach, which is simultaneously tough-minded and sensitive. Readers who never expected to read about this subject will find themselves drawn in and fascinated."
--E.J. Dionne, Jr., author of Why Americans Hate Politics