Four newish books, two articles, and one mighty beard

By Jeff Sharlet

As I note below, I’ve been off the grid for most of the past month. But a few artifacts of media about religion have broken through. Following are a few of the most interesting.

In “Onward Chrisian Scholars,” (NYT Magazine, 9/30), Molly Worthen profiles New St. Andrew’s College in Moscow, Idaho. It’s everything the radical-right college could have asked for, but it’s also all that I hoped from the author of The Man on Whom Nothing Was Lost, an admirable intellectual biography of Worthen’s Yale mentor, conservative Iran-Contra diplomat Charles Hill. When Worthen’s tribute to her teacher, started under his tutelage, was published last year, The Boston Globe opened its review thusly: “if ever a book arrived begging to have its block knocked off, this is surely it.” Then the reviewer went on to lavish praise on the book, despite what he saw as its subject’s odious politics. “Onward Christian Scholars” shows that such a delicate balance — essential, I think, to good reporting on the religious right — is Worthen’s specialty. She’s respectful of the ultra-right ideas animating New St. Andrews’s, and is willing to consider the college’s claim that it’s not a political project. “Yet,” she writes, “to quote the iconic conservative author Richard Weaver, ‘ideas have consequences.’ New St. Andrews’s chronic spats with liberals in town belie the claim that one can wholly separate the noble liberal arts from the crass business of politics.”

Hanna Rosin’s God’s Harvard: A Christian College on a Mission to Save Americatakes on a school with no qualms about the political: Patrick Henry College, founded in 2000 to train home-schooled conservative Christians for culture war. Rosin is an old hand in the media of religion and politics, but God’s Harvard is something new: The first work of genuine literary journalism about Christian fundamentalism and politics. There have been plenty of great books about the subject, some of them beautifully written. But until now, no one has come as close as Rosin to a nonfiction, book-length account of fundamentalism and politics that is as much literature as it is news. I’ve been arguing since I started The Revealer that such an approach is necessary if we’re to really understand the enduring appeal of political Christian fundamentalism, but until now that argument has been nothing but that. Now I’ve seen it done. This is an important book, and I’ll have more to say about it after next week, when I’ll have the chance to talk with Rosin in a Beliefnet forum about evangelicals and politics that’ll also includeLeft Behind co-author Jerry Jenkins, and Rice University sociologist D. Michael Lindsay.

Lindsay is the author of an interesting new book, Faith in the Halls of Power: How Evangelicals Joined the American Elite. Last year, Lindsay published in the journal of the American Academy of Religion an academic article titled, “Is the National Prayer Breakfast Surrounded by a ‘Christian Mafia,'” in which he took on a group I’ve written quite a bit about, The Family, aka The Fellowship, an outfit that likes to think of itself, half-seriously, as a Christian Mafia. Lindsay’s approach (available as a pdf here)was radically different from mine: Whereas I started by inadvertently joining the group and then digging through seventy years of archives, Lindsay took a sociologist’s path to power, trading on connections to win access to the group’s most elite members and associates — former presidents (Bush, Carter), congressmen, and business executives. His account is, not surprisingly, somewhat sympathetic — even, I’d argue, euphemistic, framing what most reasonable observers would call the group’s penchant for secrecy and untransparent politics as simply a matter of “privacy.” Six of one, half dozen of the other? I don’t think so, but Lindsay’s work is still unprecedented and valuable, and in his book he has room to stretch out and add nuance to his ideas, which are well worth considering. Journalists who cover religion and politics should give this book enough time to absorb its many insights and to enter into a conversation — an argument, even — with its conclusions.

You could argue with A.J. Jacobs’ The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible, but what would be the point? You can’t argue with facts or foolishness, and Jacobs’ very funny and smarter-than-you’d-think book is packed with both. Jacobs follows the letter of the law, except where killing witches is concerned, for no particularly good reason. That’s my kind of method! The results include not only this book, but a mighty beard. I wish I had as much to show for my writing. Here’s a piece of Jacobs’ . (His writing, not his beard.)