Patrick HenryÕs president, Michael Farris, is a lawyer and minister who has worked for Christian causes for decades. He founded the school after getting requests from two constituencies: homeschooling parents and conservative congressmen. The parents would ask him where they could find a Christian college with a ÒcourtshipÓ atmosphere, meaning one where dating is regulated and subject to parental approval. The congressmen asked him where they could find homeschoolers as interns and staffers, Òwhich I took to be shorthand for Ôsomeone who shares my values,Õ Ó Farris said. ÒAnd I knew they didnÕt want a fourteen-year-old kid.Ó So he set out to build what he calls the Evangelical Ivy League, and what the students call Harvard for Homeschoolers.
Farris is fifty-three but seems younger, with thick brown hair and a slightly amused expression. He and his wife, Vickie, began to homeschool their children (they have ten) in 1982, and the next year he founded the Home School Legal Defense Association, to challenge state laws that made it difficult to homeschool children. In 1993, he ran, unsuccessfully, for lieutenant governor of Virginia. At the time, evangelicals had yet to emerge as a national political force; many preferred to keep their distance from secular culture, which is one reason that Patrick Henry parents educated their children at home. Since then, Rove has built an entire campaign around mobilizing Christian conservatives. In a speech at the American Enterprise Institute after the 2000 election, he said that the President had lost the popular vote because fewer than expected Òwhite, evangelical ProtestantsÓ had come to the polls. One of RoveÕs principal strategies for victory in 2004 was working to increase this groupÕs numbers, and on Election Day four million more evangelicals voted than in 2000.
FarrisÕs manifesto for the school, ÒThe Joshua Generation,Ó embraces the Rove principle: the ÒMoses generation,Ó he wrote, had Òleft Egypt,Ó and now it was time for their children to Òtake the land.Ó Farris is the author of nine nonfiction books and three novels, all with Christian themes, and in them he warns against ÒMTV, Internet porn, abortion, homosexuality, greed and accomplished selfishnessÓ; he calls public schools Ògodless monstrosities.Ó But students are not expected to avoid the secular world entirely. Farris told them at chapel recently that one day Òan Academy Award winner will walk down the aisle to accept his trophy. On his way, heÕll get a cell-phone call; it will be the President, who happens to be his old Patrick Henry roommate, calling to congratulate him.Ó
