I recently read "The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner's Semester at America's Holiest University" which describes Kevin Roose's semester "abroad" at Liberty University in an attempt to bridge the gulf that separates evangelical culture from the mainstream. Liberty, the school that the Rev. Dr. Jerry Falwell built in the heyday of leading the Moral Majority movement, stands at Ground Zero of the culture war between Christian Fundamentalism and Secular America. Roose, a sometime Quaker at Brown University who assisted A.J. Jacobs writing "The Year of Living Biblically", spent a semester as a student at Liberty to search beyond the distorting stereotypes of evangelicals to find friendship and understanding.
Roose's ground rules (matriculate incognito and no cheap shots) dictated that this bridge crossed one way from his progressive point of view to the more conservative, dogmatic religious point of view. When Roose came clean and identified himself the following semester (during a return visit to Liberty from Brown) as an undercover writer, his friends at Liberty lamented the lost opportunity to reconsider the ways they might have cleaned up their act if they had related to him as an observer rather than an insider. That said, they trusted what they felt was a genuine friendship with "Rooster" enough to look forward to his book about his experience with them at Liberty.
That, and they grieve that he is not in fact a born again believer in Jesus.
The chief learning of this study involves the transcending power of friendship. If Roose fails to thoroughly explore the impact of some of the negative aspects of evangelical culture (e.g., tolerance for violent language toward homosexual persons and an educational model that stifles inquiry), he takes pains to describe Liberty students as a far more diverse, interesting and sympathetic group of people than their opinions reveal.
From the outset of his experiment, his family and friends fear that he will not be able to hide and will be singled out for ridicule. But their worst fears involve what might happen to him if he converts to evangelicalism - a fear Roose shares. In fact, he does convert to admiration for the power of profound support (love?) in this closed community. So while he refuses to cow to the young earth creationism taught at Liberty (one of only twelve post-secondary schools that teach it in America), he appreciates the depths of analysis involved in his Bible survey and religious and theological history courses. And though he cannot reconcile himself to the casual attitude about hostility directed against homosexual persons, Roose comes to crave the experience of love he feels when a Liberty student or professor prays over him.
During Roose's semester at Liberty, a student at neighboring Virginia Tech went on a killing rampage that prompted Liberty students to pray for healing for the victims (as well as interpreting the killing as a mysterious if troubling aspect of God's will). At the end of the semester, the legendary Dr. Jerry Falwell himself succumbed to a heart attack and died, days after Roose authored the last print interview Falwell granted. And as with the Liberty students themselves, Roose paints a complex picture of Falwell, ultimately praising him for his authenticity, even when that authentic style demonizes others in God's name.
Throughout the book, Roose wonders what will change in his life as a result of his semester "abroad" at Liberty. And though he is unwilling to acknowledge Jesus Christ as his personal Lord and Savior by semester's end, he returns to Brown powerfully affected by his Liberty experience. A Liberty professor articulates for Roose the power he has experienced in prayer by telling him that whatever else prayer accomplishes, prayer changes the one who prays. This change and the experience of being cared for and loved when being prayed over, stand as the most powerful aspects of Roose's experience at Liberty.
The other major impact Liberty has on Roose involves the "liberty" inherent in the many restrictions of the "Liberty Way", a massive code of conduct restricting everything from movie watching to relationships between women and men. On the down side, Roose questions Liberty's hyper focus on sexual morality while ignoring social morality. Yet Roose acknowledges the freedom he experiences as he attempts to live within the confines of the highly restrictive moral code.
At Liberty, Roose enjoys waking up in great physical health on Sunday mornings, refreshed instead of dehydrated and hung over. And the Liberty dating experience, confined to chaste conversation and chivalry, opens up an opportunity to relate on a powerfully intimate level that sexual intimacy ironically circumvents, in his experience. Even the worship experiences, while not convincing Roose of the soundness of the ideology in the sermons, nevertheless draw him into an experience of being cared for by a community that surrounds him with support and calls him to join in their expressions of praise and joy.
When Roose reveals his ruse, his former friends at Liberty express their dismay only that he has refused to receive the gift of salvation in Jesus they have offered and with which they have surrounded him at Liberty. Even so, they encourage him to take the better parts of his experience as to season the "world" outside Liberty with salt and light. And though Roose will never again threaten passers-by with eternal damnation in order to evangelize them (as he did as part of a Spring Break evangelization team in Ft. Lauderdale), he does offer to pray for a friend who travels to a dangerous country.
Perhaps the saddest moment in the book involves a statement a Liberty student makes after a day of "cold call" evangelism. After negative encounters with nearly everyone she approached, the woman tells the group that she has resigned herself to a life isolated from the non-Christian community, whose members will shun and ridicule her for her beliefs.
Roose stakes his semester on the premise that evangelical followers of Christ can enjoy friendship with non-evangelicals and people of other faith traditions, or no faith traditions, setting aside their theological and ideological differences. The fact that he managed to do so only by posing as an evangelical student at Liberty fails to support his thesis. Yet Roose was certainly aware of the divide, and managed to enter into genuine friendships with most of the students at Liberty. And while he did not convert to evangelical Christianity, he returned to Brown having made peace that passes understanding.
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