A Sea Of Red

From the Philly fishwrap:

Commentary
Christian colleges: A richly diverse group
By Richard T. Hughes

If there's one topic journalists have difficulty getting right, it's religion. It came as no surprise, then, that in their attempts to explain the Monica Goodling story, most journalists badly misunderstood - and misreported - the implications of her undergraduate education at Messiah College, a Christian liberal arts school near Harrisburg.

To that end, both men established universities: Falwell's Liberty University in 1971 and Robertson's Regent University in 1978.

Messiah College, founded in 1909, and most other Christian institutions of higher learning, however, reject the promotion of an unreflective, ideological message, just as they reject political power for the Christian religion.

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so where do I sign up to make money talking about something that I don't have a clue about?

Sly Fox wrote:From the Philly fishwrap:

Commentary
Christian colleges: A richly diverse group
By Richard T. Hughes

If there's one topic journalists have difficulty getting right, it's religion. It came as no surprise, then, that in their attempts to explain the Monica Goodling story, most journalists badly misunderstood - and misreported - the implications of her undergraduate education at Messiah College, a Christian liberal arts school near Harrisburg.

To that end, both men established universities: Falwell's Liberty University in 1971 and Robertson's Regent University in 1978.

Messiah College, founded in 1909, and most other Christian institutions of higher learning, however, reject the promotion of an unreflective, ideological message, just as they reject political power for the Christian religion.

Click Here for Full Story

What should we expect from a place like Messiah? It's basically a tiny Mennonite, mostly girls school, for future school teachers and nurses. Their opposition to political involvement decends from their Amish brethren, or in this case, sisters.

Oddly enough, the young lady who broke into the news because of her affilation with the Bush adminstration, went to grad school in the politically poluted and unreflective land of Regent U.

Things may have changed a bit in the last 35 years, but I actually attended Messiah College for 1 year (72-73) before working a year and then transferring to LBC.

Not Mennonite, but pretty close. The school is affiliated with the Brethren In Christ church, which has similar beliefs to the Mennonites. Some of the girls from strict BIC families wore hair nets in Mennonite fashion and the guys had beards. At that time male/female ratio seemed fairly even.

They prided themselves in being pacifist and believing in church/state seperation, but built a multi-million dollar student center with a federal grant and then refused to fly the American flag or sing the national anthem at athletic events. Despite the church affiliation, I would describe the education there as secular liberal arts. I remember one lecture my first semester entitled "Why not call s**t s**t? The professor spent the entire hour rationalizing/justifying the use of profanity, liberally interspersing examples to illustrate.

Oh yeah, not exagerating here. At least a third of the student body had either Yoder or Hess for a last name. It got confusing at times, as in this tiny school there were 5 or 6 guys named Jim Yoder.