By Sarah Pride
March 19, 2008
Farris with mentorees
Older, wiser folks often counsel young people to locate mentors for college, career, and family life. Dr. Michael Farris, co-founder of the Home School Legal Defense Association and Chancellor of Patrick Henry College, has created one such program, Tyndale’s Ploughmen, for PHC students who are especially politically-minded. The group is named after William Tyndale, who worked against all odds to publish the Bible in English so that everyone, even “lowly ploughmen,” could know God for themselves.
Farris recalls the conversation that sparked the Ploughmen. “Several years ago, Don Hodel (former president and CEO of Focus on the Family) asked me, ‘How many PHC students are interested in running for office?’ I tucked away from that conversation a desire to do life mentoring,” he relates. “When I became Chancellor, this is one of the first things I did.”
In Fall of 2006, Farris extended an invitation to Patrick Henry College students to apply for the Ploughmen. If accepted, students would be able to travel into DC with him, meet with lawmakers and attend high-level meetings on Capitol Hill; in other words, participate in “real politics.” A few dozen young men and women submitted applications.
“I wanted to join the Tyndale’s Ploughmen the moment I learned of the program,” explains sophomore Carmen Pettus. “I want to be active in local, perhaps even statewide, politics—not necessarily as a candidate, but I am very open to the possibility.”
Echoes junior John Anderson, “I am interested in both politics and law. I don’t necessarily want a political career, but I would serve a term if that’s where God leads.”
Farris has taken his group into DC with him to witness lobbying in progress. In 2006, they wrote background papers used by Republican interviewers who were asking questions of the Presidential candidates. They have also visited personally with some influential political figures, from whom they have gleaned lessons more important than those in any textbook. Pettus, for example, was surprised at what she learned from eating dinner in the house of Attorney General Ashcroft.
“Every political figure we had spoken to until this point had warned that politics takes a toll on your family,” she explains wryly. “To a certain extent, this is simply the price one must pay. But the consensus in the car as we drove home that night was that Mrs. Ashcroft, more than anything else, accounts for her husband’s success. Her intelligence and graciousness are probably his greatest assets.”
Through the Tyndale’s Ploughmen and other means, PHC students continue to obtain real-life experiences in their majors that they could not have anywhere else.
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