Kevin Roose
Grand Central Publishing, 2009, 325 pp., $24.99
Kevin Roose was a student at Brown University when he decided to go undercover, spend a semester as a student at Liberty University and write The Unlikely Disciple. Roose admitted that before he went to Liberty he knew no born-again Christians. He was curious about the student culture where college kids care about such things as sexual and spiritual purity and institutional culture. While conservative values determine a myriad of rules that, if broken, carry a point-system punishment and monetary fines, Roose found students much the same as college students anywhere.
“But that’s the secret at a place like Liberty: everyone doubts,” Roose writes. Theological doubting aside, he goes on to say, “…there does seem to be an overall personality trend at the school. Liberty students seem less cynical than the secular students I’ve known. They seem more optimistic, more emotionally fulfilled.”
When his semester ended, Roose found himself 50 percent glad to go and 50 percent sad to leave the friends he’d made and the place that turned out to be much more hospitable than he imagined. “I’m not a Bible-thumper, and I’m not a conservative evangelical. Do I find their faith compelling and beautiful? When it’s not being used to offend or exclude people, sure. But I’m not where they are.”
