When we saw the headline on the BBC’s homepage “Educating America: How the Christian Right is attempting to transform US culture” we clicked through, interested to find out precisely what our friends across the pond had discovered about America. We were even more interested when it turned out the story was a profile of a school just 50 miles from D.C., Patrick Henry College, founded in 2000 by a home school activist for primarily evangelical Christian home-schooled students. The school’s motto is “For Christ & For Liberty” and exists for the stated purpose of working towards the “transformation of American society.” The BBC was careful to point out that “It is only a short drive from Washington DC but just far enough away not to be influenced by the big city culture of the capital.”

It turns out that the school has been the subject of much attention, partly due to the energy and vision of Michael Farris, the college’s founder and a conservative political activist. Farris founded an organization called the Home School Legal Defense Association before founding Patrick Henry College. He is available for a variety of lectures, including one titled “The Homeschooling Father,” the topic he describes this way: “Even busy executives with 10 children like Mike Farris can and should take part in homeschooling — not just in teaching, but in supporting their wives.” Patrick Henry College was featured in the Post in 2003 and boasts its class of 2008 has SAT scores that rank it “firmly within the top tier of the nation’s colleges.”