An Unlikely Disciple

A month or 2 ago I read An Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner's Semester at America's Holiest University by Kevin Roose. I have been wanting to write about it but time passes too quickly so I will just give a brief overview. Kevin Roose was a student at Brown University and was tagging along on a trip to Liberty University because an author friend of his needed to interview Jerry Fallwell for a book. As Kevin was hanging out and waiting he spoke with some of the students there and when they found out that he was not an evangelical Christian the conversation changed in an obvious way. So Kevin decided that he wanted to find out about these evangelical Christian students without the boundaries of not being one of them. His university approved a semester off so that he could attend Liberty and write about his experience there. So yes, he entered Liberty as an undercover liberal posing as an evangelical. I think Kevin did a fine job of being open minded and his purpose was not to bash this group of students but to find out about what makes them tick and how they think. He brings up attitudes that really upset him but he is also able to see and experience a lot of the good things about this group. Kevin also was able to interview Jerry Fallwell and that ended up being one of the last interviews before Jerry Fallwell's death. Even though I am a Christian I have never been to a university of this type. I enjoyed this glimpse into life at Liberty University and I appreciate the work that Roose accomplished.