and Ques­tion­able Associations

Since the post yes­ter­day, “Far­ris’s Fer­ris Wheel…”, a num­ber of indi­vid­u­als have sent addi­tion­al links with more research and back­ground infor­ma­tion on the dis­turb­ing activ­i­ties of Michael Farris.

Below are some fur­ther items for read­ers to explore. Again, read this your­self and draw your own con­clu­sions. Warn­ing: the infor­ma­tion pre­sent­ed in this post is very disturbing.

Far­ris & Gen­er­a­tion Joshua
Many have expressed con­cerns about Far­ris’s involve­ment in cre­at­ing a “Gen­er­a­tion Joshua” (“GenJ”) move­ment of young activists. The Bap­tist Stud­ies Bul­letin pub­lished an arti­cle in Feb­ru­ary 2007 titled “In Response To … Turn­ing Our Chil­dren Into God’s War­riors.” Below is a quote:

Michael P. Far­ris, the founder of HSLDA whose books are sold by Life­Way, wants con­trol of Chris­t­ian chil­dren from ele­men­tary school through the teenage years and beyond.  He is also the founder of Patrick Hen­ry Col­lege, a Chris­t­ian col­lege for home­school­ers locat­ed near Wash­ing­ton D.C. and devot­ed to pro­mot­ing a theo­crat­ic agen­da by trans­form­ing the U.S. gov­ern­ment to “adhere to prin­ci­ples of bib­li­cal moral­i­ty.”  The HSLDA, in addi­tion, is the founder of Joshua Gen­er­a­tion Min­istries, a theo­crat­ic orga­ni­za­tion which recruits young peo­ple aged 11 to 19 to “become a force in the civic and polit­i­cal are­nas” and ban­ish plu­ral­ism and sec­u­lar human­ism from Amer­i­ca: “We believe His promise that one of us can put a thou­sand to flight and two can put ten thou­sands to flight.”

The web­page below includes a video of Gen­er­a­tion Joshua: “The Home­school Move­ment: Recon­struc­tion­ist Move­ment, Michael Far­ris, HSLDA, and Patrick Hen­ry College” 

This Joshua Gen­er­a­tion con­cept seems to fit the con­text of the ris­ing devel­op­ment of a rad­i­cal reli­gious youth move­ment in the evan­gel­i­cal world. If you want to do more research read the fol­low­ing 6‑part series: “The PASSION of the PRESENCE & the Pur­pose of the Pas­sion.” Part 6 includes a state­ment made by a leader who claims to be a prophet.

An extrav­a­gant Youth Move­ment is com­ing to the glob­al Body of Christ that will “rock the nations”.

Far­ris & His Mod­el UN Team
Far­ris has an army of young peo­ple engag­ing in debates and work­ing with the Unit­ed Nations. To fur­ther glob­al gov­ern­ment?! This whole idea rais­es huge red flags. Here is just a brief sam­pling of infor­ma­tion. The blog Unmask­ing of Maine post­ed an arti­cle “Michael Far­ris Patrick Hen­ry Col­lege…. Mod­el Unit­ed Nations team” which links over to an April 2009 arti­cle at Far­ris’s Patrick Hen­ry Col­lege which described the team and its work (depict­ed below)

• Arti­cle: “Stu­dents Tri­umph in Inter­na­tion­al Arena.”

• See the arti­cle: “Mod­el Unit­ed Nations”

•  See the arti­cle: “Nation­al Par­lia­men­tary Debate”

• 

Far­ris & the Mon­ey Trail
Fol­low the mon­ey trail! The Far­ris Mon­ey Motive web­site cit­ed yes­ter­day turned out to be chock full of inter­est­ing cur­rent infor­ma­tion. Read­ers sent in addi­tion­al links from this site. See for exam­ple this page depict­ed below: http://michaelfarrismoneymotive.org/node/4

Far­ris & Fallout
Turns out that lots of peo­ple have been rais­ing ques­tions about Far­ris’s close involve­ment with sex­u­al preda­tors Bill Gothard and Doug Phillips. See the fol­low­ing arti­cle where Far­ris’s state­ments are ana­lyzed: “From Silence to Expo­sure: Why did Home­school Leader Michael Far­ris Speak Out Now?”

The indent­ed quotes are Far­ris’s statements

Far­ris & His Spooks 

Anoth­er inter­est­ing book is God’s Har­vard: A Chris­t­ian Col­lege on a Mis­sion To Save Amer­i­ca by Han­na Rosin. It might be worth a read for those who want to know the back­ground his­to­ry of Far­ris’s Patrick Hen­ry Col­lege. Avail­able at amazon.com it is described as:

Since 2000, America’s most ambi­tious young evan­gel­i­cals have been mak­ing their way to Patrick Hen­ry Col­lege, a small Chris­t­ian school just out­side the nation’s cap­i­tal. Most of them are home­school­ers whose ide­al­ism and dis­ci­pline put the aver­age Amer­i­can teenag­er to shame. And God’s Har­vard grooms these stu­dents to be the elite of tomor­row, dis­patch­ing them to the front lines of pol­i­tics, enter­tain­ment, and sci­ence, to wage the bat­tle to take back a god­less nation. Han­na Rosin spent a year and a half embed­ded at the col­lege, fol­low­ing the stu­dents from the cam­pus to the White House, Con­gress, con­ser­v­a­tive think tanks, Hol­ly­wood, and oth­er cen­ters of influ­ence. Her account cap­tures this nerve cen­ter of the evan­gel­i­cal move­ment at a moment of max­i­mum influ­ence and also of cri­sis, as it strug­gles to avoid the temp­ta­tions of mod­ern life and still remake the world in its own image.

Accord­ing to researcher Cyn­thia Weath­er­ly, on page 49 of God’s Har­vard, in chap­ter 2 enti­tled “Har­vard for Home­school­ers,” there is a dis­turb­ing para­graph that divulges:

In 2003 the col­lege began offer­ing a major in strate­gic intelligence–students in the pro­gram learn the­his­to­ry of covert oper­a­tions and take intern­ships that allow them to grad­u­ate with a secu­ri­ty clear­ance. In their junior year, they write “open-source” intel­li­gence reports as free research for the CIA and dream of becom­ing spies. “Thou shalt not lie” hangs heavy over these majors, but they bal­ance it with God’s com­mand­ing Moses to send spies to the land of Canaan. In the hier­ar­chy of cam­pus cool, SI majors con­sid­er them­selves on top; to guard their secre­cy, they’re not allowed to be quot­ed in the stu­dent paper or even to tell fel­low stu­dents their major, a warn­ing they take very, very seri­ous­ly. Sev­er­al grad­u­ates have land­ed at the FBI and the CIA, and one worked for the Coali­tion Pro­vi­sion­al Author­i­ty in Iraq. One per­son work­ing in mil­i­tary intel­li­gence sent Far­ris an e‑mail say­ing a Patrick Hen­ry stu­dent was the best intern he’d seen in six­teen years. [empha­sis added]

Notice 2 “Strate­gic Intel­li­gence” work­shops for Far­ris’s “Teen Lead­er­ship Camps”

Anoth­er MUST READ arti­cle dug up by Weath­er­ly comes from the Free Repub­lic in 2004: “Slam­ming Patrick Hen­ry Col­lege (the col­lege of home­school­ers)” Below is an alarm­ing excerpt:

What I find most alarm­ing about PHC is it’s Strate­gic Intel­li­gence Pro­gram (SIP). It’s cur­ric­u­la is direct­ly tied into devel­op­ing “careers in the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty (Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency, Defense Intel­li­gence Agency, etc.), domes­tic counter-ter­ror­ism and law enforce­ment (Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty, Fed­er­al Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tions, etc.), and diplo­ma­cy (For­eign Ser­vice, State Depart­ment, etc.). These grad­u­ates will even­tu­al­ly work their way into posi­tions to pos­i­tive­ly influ­ence and shape this increas­ing­ly impor­tant part of our culture.”

While PHC links to the White House, Con­gress and the Supreme Court have been doc­u­ment­ed, Far­ris could not pro­vide infor­ma­tion as to how many stu­dents in the school’s Strate­gic Intel­li­gence Pro­gram, which start­ed this year, have intern­ships with the CIA, the FBI or the nation’s oth­er intel­li­gence agencies.

In the fall semes­ter, SIP stu­dents toured some of the most secure intel­li­gence facil­i­ties in the entire Unit­ed States (as per our agree­ments, we may not dis­close the names of these 3‑letter agen­cies), and they were invit­ed to observe train­ing exer­cis­es at the FBI Train­ing Acad­e­my in Quantico.”

While the extent of their access to intel­li­gence infor­ma­tion is unknown, SIP stu­dents have enough infor­ma­tion to pen “a week­ly digest of all major drug, immi­gra­tion, and secu­ri­ty inci­dents at Amer­i­ca’s bor­der cross­ings called the Bor­der Secu­ri­ty Alert. The BSA, pro­duced entire­ly by Patrick Hen­ry stu­dents, is dis­trib­uted by sub­scrip­tion to nation­al secu­ri­ty pro­fes­sion­als and is avail­able to the intel­li­gence and law enforce­ment com­mu­ni­ties through a clas­si­fied net­work.” [bold added]

Far­ris & Con­Con Revisited 
From across the polit­i­cal map one can find arti­cles rais­ing ques­tions about Far­ris and his grandiose plans for a new con­sti­tu­tion. The fol­low­ing arti­cle from the left-ori­ent­ed RightWing­Watch is a must read: “Michael Far­ris’ Iron­ic Plan To Remake The Supreme Court”

Home­school­ing advo­cate Michael Far­ris has a new cam­paign, the Con­ven­tion of the States Project, which seeks to intro­duce a con­sti­tu­tion­al convention.…

Far­ris also said that the Supreme Court should be replaced by a sys­tem of “50 jus­tices and have the states appoint the jus­tices for a spe­cif­ic term (six or eight years) with no right of reap­point­ment” that is mod­elled after the Euro­pean Court of Human Rights.

This is more than a lit­tle iron­ic since Far­ris reg­u­lar­ly crit­i­cizes the Supreme Court for cit­ing inter­na­tion­al law, includ­ing cas­es from the Euro­pean Court of Human Rights. But Far­ris him­self is now propos­ing “recon­fig­ur­ing the Supreme Court after the mod­el of the Euro­pean Court of Human Rights” in order “to ensure a con­sti­tu­tion­al government.”…

“I [would] pro­pose recon­fig­ur­ing the Supreme Court after the mod­el of the Euro­pean Court of Human Rights. There are 46 nations in that court’s juris­dic­tion, and every nation appoints one judge. We should expand the Supreme Court to 50 jus­tices and have the states appoint the jus­tices for a spe­cif­ic term (six or eight years) with no right of reap­point­ment. That one change would do more to ensure a con­sti­tu­tion­al gov­ern­ment than any­thing I know,” Far­ris said.

Anoth­er arti­cle, from the polit­i­cal right, is filled with many inter­est­ing links: “Con­ven­tion of States’ Michael Far­ris is Grasp­ing at Poi­son Straws”

Far­ris & His Legacy
Unfor­tu­nate­ly the home­school­ing move­ment has much revi­sion­ist his­to­ry. Some of the pio­neer­ing home­school­ers like Vir­ginia (Gin­ny) Birt Bak­er are not men­tioned. But the fol­low­ing account may be of inter­est: “A HISTORICAL TIMELINE OF THE MODERN U.S. HOMESCHOOLING MOVEMENT”

Again, read­ers are urged to do their home­work. All of the infor­ma­tion pre­sent­ed here and in the pre­vi­ous post rais­es impor­tant ques­tion about this man and his work.

Par­ents: Are you sure you want your teen going HERE?