The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner’s Semester at America’s Holiest University
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- ISBN13: 9780446178433
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Product Description
No drinking.
No smoking.
No cursing.
No dancing.
No R-rated movies.
Kevin Roose wasn’t used to rules like these. As a sophomore at Brown University, he spent his days drinking honest-trade coffee, singing in an a cappella group, and fitting right in with Brown’s free-spirited, ultra-liberal student body. But when Roose leaves his Ivy League confines to spend a semester at Liberty University, a conservative Baptist school in Lynchburg, Virginia, obedience is no longer discretionary.
Liberty is the late Reverend Jerry Falwell’s “Bible Boot Camp” for young evangelicals, his training ground for the next generation of America’s Religious Right. Liberty’s ten thousand undergraduates take courses like Evangelism 101, hear from guest speakers like Sean Hannity and Karl Rove, and follow a forty-six-page code of conduct that regulates every aspect of their social lives. Hoping to connect with his evangelical peers, Roose decides to enroll at Liberty as a new transfer student, leaping across the God Apportion and chronicling his adventures in this daring report from the front lines of America’s culture war.
His journey takes him from an evangelical hip-hop concert to choir practice at Falwell’s legendary Thomas Road Baptist Church. He experiments with prayer, participates in a spring break mission trip to Daytona Beach (where he learns to preach the gospel to partying coeds), and pays a visit to Every Man’s Battle, an on-campus support group for chronic masturbators. He meets pastors’ kids, closet doubters, Christian rebels, and conducts what would be the last print interview of Rev. Falwell’s life.
Hilarious and heartwarming, respectful and thought-provoking, THE UNLIKELY DISCIPLE will inspire and entertain believers and nonbelievers alike.
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The leader’s reasoning is understandable but I do not condone his lies and deception in writing this book because the end never justifies the means.
I, too, attended Liberty University both as a skeptic and a naysayer … but later I returned as a person committed to Jesus Christ. As a result, I can attest to the vast differences in my own experiences because they were completely dependent upon my worldview at each individual time. For example, the people I hung with were different, the sermons I listened to were different, my feelings toward the rules were different and the amount of excellent and evil I saw or veteran was very different.
I judge Kevin has capabilities as a writer but my prayer is that he will allow his heart to be captured by Jesus Christ and then write the additional side of the tale.
Reader’s Rating: 2 / 5
Parts of the book are excellent and informative. Get’s bogged down in details sometimes. Appealing assessment of an outsider on a Christian university and it’s students. There is a resistance by the writer to buy into the truth of The Bible, but he points out that even persons who say they are believers, regularly will be selective.
Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5
I used to go to a smarts college then I read this book for a semester but god didn’t send me a hot chick so I didn’t convert
I’m wondering what do additional people reflect about the part where he enters into the matrix
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
This book is written by a self-admitted liar–a Judas who chose to live amongst followers of Christ and then turn on them for his own gain. So when he admits to lying at the start of the book, how can you judge anything else you read?
He lied to get into Liberty University (he had to lie on the Admissions form even though he submitted it agreeing that it was the truth). He even lies in the book about what was on the Admissions form (go look it up online). He then lies to people at Liberty, pretending to be a Christian to get them to trust him and to get the “real” tale. He lies adage he has never met an evangelical before–then a couple pages later admits that there was one female ex- school friend who was a born-again Christian that he questioned to help him prepare to fake his way at Liberty (it’s hard to judge any serious Christian would help this guy prepare his deception). And that is all in the first 15 pages!
He then commits the essential sin–he makes a fictional testimony to tell others about when he became a born-again Christian. At least he admits to being a sinner in the book’s sub-title.
He finds “research” that backs up his incredible claims against Christianity (adage that 51% of the people in America have never met an evangelical Christian, which ignores the dozens of additional polls that show the opposite) and repeats a lot of fake gossip about Jerry Falwell. He also proudly touts his really bigoted Ralph Nader-supporting parents and lesbians “aunts,” who are so anti-Christian that the book he should have written was about how they became so bitter and ignorant. The leader spends way too much time promoting his own agenda, pushing for gay rights in pretty much every chapter and subtly mocking the hicks that judge evolution is just a theory or that life starts at conception.
Persons at Liberty who come across the best are the ones that try to skirt the rules, even though when they all signed up they agreed to follow the “Liberty Way.” The leader praises the “rebels” who don’t really judge what the school teaches and regularly don’t judge evangelical Christianity. So the liar praises additional liars.
It is nice that this admitted off-the-deep-end liberal leader got to like some of the kids he met there. And the Falwell-founded institution comes off much better than one would expect. He makes fun of the odd evangelicals while adage “Aren’t they cute in their Puritanical, backwards thinking?” This book is filled with quotes from scripture, Christian books and professors (though it’s hard to judge that he got such lengthy quotes from friends, pastors and teachers exactly right since he was recording none of it). He does seem to get what believers are adage and comes to admire their happiness–he just doesn’t ever accept it. In the end the reader is left to marvel–if he liked it so much, why didn’t he become a Christian?
He does go back a year later to admit he lied to them all–and then is shocked that virtually all of them not only forgive him but laugh about it with him. Imagine–genuine believers who accept him just the way his is! Maybe he should have done it that way in the first place. That, along with more introspection regarding his family tree background, may have made this a 5-star book.
For evangelicals the book is a fascinating view from an outsider and worth reading, but as you can see by the additional Amazon reviews, when liberals read it they have their own fears about the religious right reinforced. As a replacement for they need to open their minds to hear the leader clearly state that these evangelical people are not to be feared and are pretty normal. Probably his most accurate (and saddest) conclusion is that evangelical students aren’t much different than non-Christian college kids.
But, his portrayal of students are regularly caricatures and hard to judge. He has them adage things this long-time Christian has never heard evangelicals say, especially constant talk about sexuality. That means either young people in the Christian world have become as terrible as persons in the secular world (which is possible)–or this guy has fictionalized his facts just to make a buck. After all, Judas valued silver more than the faith-filled people around him.
Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5
This is a fantastic book and provides an insight into a slice of American culture that as a northerner in Hedonistic Boston I have wondered about. Although I reflect the book is sound factually there are a few coincidences that seem just a small too clean. Lacking revealing any of the plot they have to do with the timing of the leader’s stay at LU and two point events in particular. It makes me marvel if he took a small literary license.
Reader’s Rating: 4 / 5