Monica Goodling, Messiah College, and the Persecution of Christians

Is Monica Goodling being persecuted for her Christianity and her evangelical educational background? Lots of newspaper stories and blogs have reported on her and they seem to be fascinated with her academic resume, which includes degrees from Messiah College and Regent University, two evangelical schools. For some of this in action, check out her testimony to the House Judiciary Committee on May 23, 2007. (The relevant testimony is on pg 31 & 32.)

What did Monica do to deserve this? First off, before capitulating and testifying before Congress, she originally pled the 5th amendment. That wouldn't be your first answer to the well-known question, WWJD? Nobody likes a hypocrite, and even less so a Christian hypocrite.

Secondly, as a graduate of a Christian college myself (Harding University) I can say that Rep. Cohen's appraisal of the quality of an evangelical college education, at least according to what I experienced almost 20 years ago, is correct. I believe that Mark Noll said it best when he wrote “The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind”….the scandal is that there isn't much of one. Evangelicalism’s legacy of anti-intellectualism is well-documented (try this for starters). What I experienced at Harding (except for the science and math courses which don't normally lend themselves to deep reflection anyway) could hardly be called an education. Indoctrination was the name of the game and if any real thinking threatened to break loose, it was quickly shut down. Thankfully, I transferred to Harding from two years at a state school where almost all of my intellectual development in college actually took place. Hopefully the situation at Harding and other schools like it has changed, but the negative public perception persists. Because I know several faculty members at Messiah, I know for a fact that it really does have great academic credentials, but unfortunately it gets lumped in with other evangelical schools.


So if Goodling is being persecuted for these reasons, then perhaps it's understandable.

The supreme irony of the Monica Goodling story, though, is that her alma mater, Messiah College, traces its roots to an Anabaptist sect. Historically, Anabaptism includes a strong current of pacifism and a worldview that assigns primary importance to Christians' citizenship in the Kingdom of God rather than the nation-state (but unlike the Religious Right today, they didn't try to wrest the nation-state INTO the Kingdom of God) . Due to their denial of the supremacy of the nation-state, members of this radical branch of Christianity REALLY WERE the target of severe and bloody persecution in centuries past. And to this day you won't find an American flag flying at Messiah College. If Goodling learned anything of this legacy, unfortunately she must have forgotten it, because now she is part of an administration that is steeped in a version of Christianity far, far removed from the peace-making counter-culturalism of Messiah's founders.