Going undercover at the nation’s largest Evangelical Christian university is no small accomplishment. For a person who was born and raised a liberal, sometime Quaker, it must be nearly impossible. Kevin Roose managed it, spending a semester as an undergraduate student at Liberty University. He just happened to be writing a book about his experiences, and The Unlikely Disciple is the result.
The Unlikely Disciple book cover
I enjoyed this book quite a bit. I had my hesitations going in, as many liberal interpretations of conservative, fundamentalist Christianity are heavy-handed and disdainful. Roose manages to be neither, making this book a rather interesting read. The best thing about The Unlikely Disciple is that Roose maintains his objectivity throughout the book. While he maintains that he doesn’t understand everything about what goes on spiritually inside the school he appears to make a determined effort to find out . While at Liberty, Roose becomes part of the Thomas Road Baptist Church choir, attends prayer groups, and even goes on an evangelistic Spring Break trip with students from the school.
Another thing that I thought came out of this book was the author’s realization that conservative evangelicals aren’t really all that different than their liberal counterparts. Not everyone lives at the extremes of belief. His submersion in the culture seemed to have an impact on him.
On the other side, this is something that also bothers me about the book. While I understand that many of the people portrayed in the book are late teens/early 20s, I often find it a little disheartening that they seem to take lightly the very thing that likely drew them to Liberty to begin with. The “rebels” on the author’s dormitory hall spend time sifting through Facebook pictures staring at the girls, commenting on various parts of their anatomy. Many of them brag about bending or breaking the rules on campus.
Maybe my experience was different, but when I attended an ultra-conservative Bible college, these weren’t things that students did out in the open with other students. I may have been even more insulated from the outside world than others though.
Another habit that Roose exposes to the outside world through this book is the tendency of young evangelicals to use homosexual references as insults to their peers. I remember that those slurs were common place when I was in high school, but I don’t remember them being used all that much at my various colleges. That it happens on a Christian college campus is unfortunate and downright disappointing. We should be different than those who don’t have Christ, different in the respect and love that we show to others, regardless of their belief or orientation.
I first read a review of this book a couple weeks ago at my friend Amy’s website, Backseat Writer. Her review piqued my interest, in no small way because I’m going to be a Liberty student in a few weeks. Granted, my Liberty experience will be much different than Kevin Roose’s, mostly because I’m going to be an online seminary student. However, I was an undergraduate student at Southwestern Assemblies of God University several years ago. I understand from first hand experience that the rules can sometimes be bothersome. My response to that is tough. People who attend Christian colleges that have these rules in place can either live with it, or move on. You choose to attend, you choose to follow the rules. Don’t get upset when you get caught breaking those rules intentionally, and don’t get angry that you get punished for it.
Overall, I thought that book was excellent. Kevin Roose aced a difficult assignment, and in doing so, exposed some of the soft underbelly of Christianity.
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