The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner's Semester at America's Holiest University

I really appreciate the guy that wrote this book. An honest look at Liberty University--and sometimes Christianity--by someone who isn't a Christian without condescension or mockery. Thumbs up to Rooster! ( )

A 'liberal' American student from Brown University decides to go undercover and spend a semester at Liberty Baptist University which is one of America's fundy Christian schools. It was interesting to learn about such a school ( only in America! ). I felt a little sorry about the budding romance he had with one of the other students. I felt he should have disclosed who he was better than he did. He writes amazingly well for someone his age. I think he was nineteen when he wrote it.

I'm not sure I could have done it. I would be too afraid of the brain damage it might cause. I agree with Marvin Minsky: fundy religion damages your brain - he did not mean that figuratively. ( )

Thought provoking and disturbing. Interestingly, Roose manages to make this entertaining enough that it's hard to put down. ( )

Before I go on about anything else, I have to say: this is surprisingly well-written and well-paced for an author who started writing it at nineteen. Goodness gracious.

The Unlikely Disciple reminded me a lot of A. J. Jacobs's book, The Year of Living Biblically (since Kevin Roose worked for a time as Jacobs's assistant while that book was being written, this isn't surprising). Both stories focus on the author's immersion into unfamiliar religious territory; in this case, Roose enrolls for a semester at Jerry Falwell's uber-conservative Liberty University, while posing as an evangelical Christian.

What most strongly tied the two books together for me, thematically, was that both authors struggled with long-term repercussions from this type of faith immersion. From the beginning, Kevin Roose intends to observe LU students interacting in their natural habitat, with the distance of an anthropologist-journalist-crunchy-hippie-liberal. However, he doesn't anticipate the close and meaningful friendships he'll develop with his fellow students. And after a while, the constant refrain of "Wow, evangelicals are people, too!" grates on the nerves of those who haven't excluded Christians from their social circles as a matter of fact.

He does make note of what I thought was a huge, but unavoidable, weakness: he was able to acclimate well and quickly as a straight, white, heterosexual male student. This book would have been quite different if the task had been taken up by someone gay, black, or female. Ultimately, what you get is a comparatively rosy and incomplete picture of Liberty's student life.

It's a shame this book had to be written at all. He starts out on this project without having known people from the opposite side of the political spectrum, and, while I already picked on him a bit for that, it's the way the U.S. seems to function. I'm a bisexual atheist from rural Texas, and if I had not come from rural Texas (where you can't throw a stone without hitting a Republican), I don't know if I would understand Christians, or ever chosen to associate with any. It's so easy to snugly wrap ourselves in the enclave of likemindedness. It's so, so easy. But what you end up with is more division, more fear, more misunderstanding. I came out of the book admiring the author's willingness to step out of his comfort zone. By the end, I was reassured that maybe the tolerance and compassion we want rests with everyone else's ability to step out in a like manner. ( )

The Unlikly Disciple: a Sinner at America’s Holiest University. Kevin Roose. 2009. This was one of the books I picked up at the Topeka Public Library book store. It is a fascinating account of the author’s semester at Pat Robertson’s Liberty University. He was a student a Brown who grew up with Quaker parents and knew nothing about Liberty except what he’d read or seen in the national media when he decided he wanted to see what life was like on the Christian campus. What he found was people are people and a “Christian jerk is still a jerk ( )