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

This book made me laugh out loud in many cases and smirk in many others. The classic fish out of water story that this book is makes it quite entertaining. I especially liked the parts where he had to stop swearing and quit his habit of masturbation. This man is far more brave than I am, since I don't think I could see myself going over to an ultra-conservative Christian college. I wouldn't be able to take the creationism courses and other stuff like that. I don't think the rules would have been that bad, but some of them are positively draconian. Then again, there were some people that felt that the rules were too lax.

I suppose it takes all kinds though. This book was thoroughly enjoyable, and I would like to read it again, but I have a lot of other stuff to read. ( )

Excellent book. Blows away stereotypes on both sides of the "God Divide." ( )

Brown University student (raised as a Quaker) defers "study abroad" for becoming a mole at Liberty University for a semester. Roose writes well beyond his years. Well researched and written with a good flow. ( )

A friend told me about this book. Sounds intriguing. A Brown university student takes a semester "abroad" at Liberty University and is surprised at what he learns. ( )

Roose, a Sophomore at Brown, a liberal Democrat, the only child of lapsed Quakers, also liberal Democrats, attended one semester at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University. This book is his chronicle of those three months.

Based on that, one expects fish-out-of-water type hijinks, of which this book has plenty. For example, early in the semester, a group of Liberty U student-Evangelicals descend on Spring Break in South Florida in order to to witness to the gone-wild wicked. Picture earnest, clean-cut, rosy-cheeked kids asking drunk, bikini-wearing, pot-smoking, raucous-music-listening, flip-flops-flapping, sun-burnt, red-eyed, fuzzy-toothed, body-abusing, pleasure-seeking sinners whether they'd like to get saved. Imagine the sinners' own four-letter invitation. Our man Roose, along for the ride, plays his role to the hilt, witnessing right along with the best of them. Well, actually, he does a pretty poor job of witnessing because he really doesn't believe in the Christ he's putatively espousing the asking of salvation from. Awkward, yes, but you've got to admire him for being game.

The best part is the depiction of the student-Evangelicals' own fake night-club located across the street from a real night club. Outside the fake Evangelical night club were B-girls and a restive line of obnoxious frat guys waiting for admittance, strobe lights, neon, techno beats, etc.; i.e., all the hip-hop signifiers of night-club sin. However, inside the fake club was a calm room, well-lit and quiet but for the hum of earnest conversion conversations, and (one imagines) the here-and-there indignant howl of a reveler recognizing that he's been duped. One wonders if any of the revelers so duped initially -- like in the first few disorienting seconds when they first stepped into the light from the nighttime darkness and din -- if initially they thought they'd died and gone to the Great Judgment Bar. It's fun to imagine the slow change in facial expression.

Liberty University is a strict, religious institution of higher learning, and Roose has much to say about the myriad differences between his LU roommates and his Brown U friends. But let me switch gears here and say that making snarky fun of true-beliver Evangelicals is not what this book is about. In fact, Roose is to be commended for giving his semester in the ideological-abroad a good-faith effort. The students and faculty at LU are depicted as 3D, blood-red people, complicated and real, not at all what we've come to expect to from the stereotypical media portrayal of this demographic.

In fact, it should say something that Roose's book is positively blurbed by members on both sides of the ideological divide. If you're looking for a fun, funny, well-written chronicle of what a responsible portrayal of the religious and irreligious alike, you'll want to read /The Unlikely Disciple./

Also, you'll want to read /TUD/ for Jerry Falwell's very last media interview, with the author, wherein the divisive Damnation-and-Hellfire demagogue endorses Diet Peach Snapple Iced-Tea and comes across as winningly avuncular. It says something about Jerry Falwell that he counted as friends not only the clerical and religious, but also Hustler's Larry Flynt. What that very odd friendship says, aside from the initial, what-the-heck cognitive dissonance, is that whatever else Falwell publicly was, he took seriously the admonition to love the sinner, to turn the other cheek to his enemy. And it's ultimately that last sentiment that Roose takes great rhetorical pains to manifest in his account. ( )