The New Establishment: How Evangelicals (like Monica Goodling) Became Part of Washington's Fabric

WP: The New Establishment
How Evangelicals Became Part of Washington's Fabric
By Hanna Rosin
Friday, May 25, 2007; Page A19


Former Justice Department official Monica Goodling appears on Capitol Hill Wednesday. (By Mark Wilson -- Getty Images)

....The age of the televangelist is as dead as Jerry Falwell, and the Regent (University) Web site treats (Pat) Robertson like a fondly remembered patriarch from a bygone era, when it was suitable to call yourself a "fundamentalist" and scream on TV.

(Monica) Goodling is part of a new generation of evangelicals ushered in by Falwell, who insisted that Christians get involved in politics. They are graduates of the exploding number of evangelical colleges, which no longer aim to create a parallel subculture but instead to train "Christian leaders to change the world," as the Regent mission statement reads.

It used to be that being 33 and in charge of 93 U.S. attorneys would mean you'd been top of your class at Harvard or Yale or clerked at the Supreme Court. Now, Christian schools are joining that mix. Regent has had 150 of its graduates working in the White House; the school estimates that one-sixth of its alumni are in government work. Call them the Goodlings: scrubbed young ideologues, ready to serve their nation, the right's version of the Peace Corps generation....

Falwell and Robertson were outsiders and always behaved like it. Goodling's Christian contemporaries grew up with Bush as their president, speaking their language. Even after this administration is gone, they can work for one of the more than 150 members of Congress who call themselves evangelical or dozens of conservative think tanks and activist groups. Or they can run for office: Robert McDonnell, Virginia's attorney general, is a Regent alum. They are part of the Washington establishment now and, much to Bill Maher's chagrin, they will be around long after Bush is gone....

***

It took the conservative political movement 30 years to become a fixture in American politics, and it's taken evangelicals about the same. Like conservatives, evangelicals may remain chronically ambivalent, afflicted with a persecution complex despite their obvious successes. But they are embedded firmly enough into Washington to provide jobs for smart young Christians for generations to come.

(Hanna Rosin, who covered religion for The Post, is the author of "God's Harvard: A Christian College on a Mission to Save America," due out in September.)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/24/AR2007052402032.html?nav=hcmodule

:puke:

All of these US Attorney's and mid-level lawyers in the Justice Department will have to be removed, along with all of the neo-con civilian employees in the Pentagon.

And anti-packing standards will have to be established for the future.

You can't have a REAL Job.

Other countries have them. I guess it's just good old American Exceptionalism to allow any ignorant nut to call his garden shed a University.

and wars of aggression?

and we taxpayers get stuck with these government employees who have never been expected to think in 3-D. From home-schooling to Christian college, they're kept to the narrow path of fundamentalism. Our own American Taliban at work.
So much for separation of church and state. The church is running the state. Badly.