God & politics

They look like graduates waiting to march across the stage to get their diplomas.

But the students, seated around a granite table at Grace Church, dress in long, black academic robes every day.

All in their early 20s, they are the first class of fellows at the Colorado Springs-based John Jay Institute for Faith, Society and Law.

The six men and six women politely call each other by courtesy titles and last names, and engage in Socratic discussions four hours a day, four days a week. They are learning how to spread their moral beliefs in a thoughtful manner, without beating people over the head with their faith.

The yearlong program combines their calling to public life with their conservative Christian worldview. After a semester of academics, they will be interns at conservative think tanks in Washington, D.C., and elsewhere, where they can further hone their skills in Christian persuasion.

“We are teaching students of faith how to engage a secular society,” explains Alan R. Crippen II, John Jay Institute’s founder and president. “It’s leadership development. We take bright, promising students and give them the intellectual and spiritual foundation for service in the community.”

Crippen founded the institute in 2005 in Virginia and moved it with him when he relocated to Colorado Springs in 2006. The institute has sponsored several academic lectures for the public.

The institute is the latest evidence of an intellectual movement that is taking the conservative Christian message beyond buzzwords such as anti-homosexuality and anti-abortion to attract better-educated and younger people who are interested in wider social issues such as the environment, science and law.

Proponents see institutions like John Jay as antidotes to secular universities, which they believe are intolerant of conservative views. Others fear such programs will train professionals to wage war against the separation of church and state, and infuse government and the Constitution with religion.

The conservative intellectual movement is a far cry from the stance of some fundamentalists, who shun intellectualism and refer to opponents as pointy-headed liberals. Many conservatives now believe that focusing on intellectualism will help win the culture wars.

William Armstrong, president of Colorado Christian University in Lakewood and a member of the John Jay advisory board, calls the institute’s academics “impressive, intense and high-quality.” The former U.S. senator says the program follows the tradition of intellectual standard-bearers such as Carl Henry, first editor of Christianity Today, and Os Guinness, an Oxford-educated philosopher who has been a headliner at the John Jay public lecture series.

Barry Lynn of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a nonsectarian group that defends separation of church and state in courts and educates on religious-freedom issues, says scholarship is a fairly new venue for some in the Christian right.

“Since they captured talk radio and religious broadcasting they have been looking for a new forum and the academic world is it.”

The push to recruit young intellectuals is an “investment in future allies,” says Chip Berlet, senior analyst for Bostonbased Political Research Associates, a progressive think tank.

“It’s a complicated time for the Christian right. They regrouped after the last election and decided they won’t be able to capture the presidency, so they are digging further into the grass roots for the future.”

Berlet explains, “If you are trying to set aside a secular republic you set up a John Jay Institute to hook people early to help create a Christian nation which they imagine is historically real.”

Crippen, who does most of the teaching at John Jay, says otherwise. “Some people think that if you scratch a person of faith, underneath is a theocrat. That is not what our (nation’s) founders set up and those fears, in most cases, are utterly unfounded.”

Crippen says separation of church and state does not have to mean exclusion of religion from the public square. John Jay supporters have similar views.

“So much education in the last few decades has tended to ignore religion, but now you are seeing a resurgence of traditional intellectualism and recovery of historical roots,” says Kenneth Starr, who is on the John Jay advisory board and is dean of the Pepperdine University law school in Malibu, Calif.

Starr, the former Independent Counsel whose investigation and report led to the impeachment of President Bill Clinton, says law has always been rooted in morality and informed by religious thinking. He notes that the institute’s namesake, John Jay, was president of the Continental Congress and arguably the most religious, social and political conservative of the principal founders. Jay believed religion and morality were necessary for good government.

Starr says the John Jay Institute is promoting a belief that “voices of faith should be allowed equal dignity in the marketplace of ideas, and not excluded from democratic conversation.”

The institute is patterned loosely after several others in the country, including the Focus on the Family Institute and the Witherspoon Fellowship at Family Research Council.

The Family Research Council is a Christian-right nonprofit think tank and lobby organization founded in 1981 by James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family. Internal Revenue Service concerns led to administrative separation in 1992.

Crippen was founding director of Witherspoon and led it for nine years. He was a founding faculty member of the Focus on the Family Institute.

Chapel and classes are held rent-free at Grace Church, where Crippen is an ordained deacon in the Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA).

The church is headquarters of a CANA congregation headed by the Rev. Donald Armstrong, who is on the John Jay Board of Governors.

The institute’s governing and advisory committees are a who’s who of conservative academics. Jeffrey F. Bone, who is John Jay Institute’s chief fundraiser, was a financial controller for Chuck Colson’s Prison Fellowship and chief technology officer for American Bible Society.

Claude O. Pressnell Jr., president of Tennessee Independent Colleges and Universities, is the chairman of the board. He has written extensively on conservative issues.

Another advisor is Allan C. Carlson, head of the Howard Center for Family, Religion and Society, which promotes “the natural heterosexual family.”

Advisory member Guinness says he sees the institute’s training as a way to promote civility and a Christian worldview in public debate over profound issues.

In one of the institute’s public lectures, Guinness said people should be taught to negotiate and disagree in the public square without “going for the jugular.” He explained that many Christians are part of the problem, thus “building up against themselves the most massive backlash against religion.”

John Jay uses “low-key” recruitment of students, Crippen says, getting names of potential candidates through religious and professional contacts.

It’s an expensive endeavor for the nonprofit institute. It will take more than $800,000 each academic year for the 24 students who go through the program. Each student receives $37,000 in benefits, including the academic program, room and board and a $7,000 cost of living stipend.

The Institute obtained seed money from major conservative donors — officials won’t say who — and is raising money now to pay for next year’s scholars.

Recently, the John Jay students were discussing the integration of faith, society and law as set forth by Daniel Elazar’s book “Covenant and Polity in Biblical Israel.” It argues that the Bible is a source book for political theory and practice, that God governs all and that modern jurisprudence misses that point.

“The classes are hard. It demands diligence,” says Adrienne Morehead, 22, of Atlanta, who got her undergraduate degree from Lee University, a Christian college in Tennessee.

The students’ days are highly structured, beginning with chapel at 8 a.m. at Grace Church followed by four hours of classes, afternoon study, chapel at 5 p.m. and more study.

Each day, the students read at least 100 pages from tomes that are densely philosophical and theological, and then write 500-word essays they must defend in class.

Morehead notes that her classmates come from many Christian backgrounds — reformed, evangelical, Pentecostal, orthodox and others. “We don’t agree on certain doctrines, but we agree on the basics.”

She says she plans to study international development and diplomacy in graduate school, and says the fellowship is teaching her how to positively present her faith in the public arena.

She says she believes the institute’s teachings that it is time to return to natural law.

Natural law says that basic moral principles are inherent in human consciousness. At its most basic, it means that God’s laws trump any human-made ones.

It’s used by conservative intellectuals to explain their stance on abortion, stem cell research and same-sex marriage. They say rights come not from government but “are endowed by their creator” as penned — not in the Constitution — but in the Declaration of Independence.

Lynn of Americans United for Separation of Church and State is not sure the push for conservative intellectualism will accomplish the goals of Christian conservatives.

He recently was part of a panel discussion with conservatives in North Carolina.

“The conversation got so esoteric I wasn’t sure what they were saying. I can’t imagine anyone can follow some of it,” he says.

But much of it is used to emphasize that the United States was formed as a Christian nation, Lynn says.

“Nothing in the Constitution says that. Jesus is not mentioned, but they look at the tiniest of detail. For example, they said that because the signing (of the Constitution) says ‘in the year of the Lord’ that is proof.”

Brandon Showalter, 22, a John Jay fellow and Bridgewater College graduate, sees much worth in using faithbased intellectualism in politics and public policy debate.

“Sometimes the evangelical debate has been immature. We are learning to rise above it. Intellectualism will give more credibility to the debate.”

He says he plans to use what he is learning at John Jay when he attends graduate school in theology.

Showalter, whose faith traditions have included Mennonite and Assemblies of God, says it is vital to bring “God’s design for the social order” into the public square.

“Politics seems like a dirty field to go into. But Christians need to be there to make a difference.”