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D'Souza's Christianist Crusade - Andrew Sullivan



Andrew Marantz reports on Dinesh D'Souza's new role as president of King's College, a small evangelical school located in the Empire State Building. Money quote:

"We are living, for perhaps the first time in history, in a society whose basic assumptions are secular," D'Souza told the 36 ­members of the King's class of 2011. "Some Christians hope to change this through bottom-up, grassroots techniques. But I'm skeptical about that approach. Consider minority groups like Jews and gays, groups whose influence far outweighs their relatively small numbers. How do they do it?

By focusing on strategic institutions—finance, media, law. At the King's College, our mission is to prepare you to go into that world. It's, frankly, an elitist mission, which says that culture is formed from the top down. I can only hope we have given you the tools to complete that mission, the tools to be dangerous Christians."

Sounds like Opus Dei's pitch to me. But there is dissension in the ranks:

[S]igns suggest that the King's community may find D'Souza more divisive than galvanizing. Some King's professors are considering resignation next fall rather than pledging allegiance to their new president. "I mean, I'm a conservative," one tells me. "I didn't vote for Obama. But I don't hate him.”

Rynn Reed, a rising sophomore from Dallas with blonde hair and a nose ring, identifies herself as a progressive. "The students and most of the professors are totally smart and open to argument," she says, but D’Souza can be too strident. "I would hate to see King’s written off as a right-wing breeding ground, but there's definitely potential for that with him."

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