[Kevin] Roose passed himself off as an evangelical Christian to blend in with students at the school founded by the late Moral Majority leader. The experience led to a book, The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner’s Semester at America’s Holiest University.
Roose, the product of the “ultimate, secular, liberal upbringing,” got the idea to go undercover after meeting a group of Liberty students while a freshman at Brown. “I had never really come into contact with conservative Christian culture,” he says. “It became clear very quickly that we had almost no way to communicate with each other.”
He decided to investigate. “My goal was to see the real, unfiltered picture of life at Liberty University,” he says. Even though his method required deception, Roose says the intent was honest. It “really did allow me to get a more accurate ”” and actually a fairer picture ”” of what life at Liberty was like.”
I’d read about this book a while ago. Glad it turned out Win-Win and that the students he “betrayed” were so forgiving. Also thrilled to see that those real relationships did have a huge impact. That he is still praying is very exciting to me! He’ll never be the same, and at least for now he is open to the working of the Holy Spirit.
My favorite couple paragraphs from the article which really made me laugh: “Roose tried to follow all the rules, even buying a Christian self-help book to help him avoid cursing. For a couple weeks he walked around campus saying “Glory be!” and “Mercy!” Turns out Liberty students don’t actually talk like that, Roose reports. “They would look at me like, ‘Who is this guy, and what strange, isolated home school did he come from?'” Roose laughs.”
LOL Too great!
Hmmm. One semester at one Christian college and the young author imagines himself to be an expert on “evangelical” Christianity. If he had a broader knowledge of conservative Protestantism, he might realize that Liberty University is more representative of Fundamentalism than of Evangelicalism. And whether it was Roose himself or the publisher that chose the rather silly title, the claim that Liberty is “America’s Holiest University” is, of course, highly dubious.
I suspect this book by Roose is a ruse. It looks like just an attempt to get published and make a name for himself as an aspiring writer. But I haven’t read the book, so I can’t say much more than I have those suspicions.
Still, it’s always helpful for us Christians to know how we’re coming across and how others see us.
David Handy+
Roose: Hey, these guys are human, too! Not like I was told by the MSM that they would be monsters!
I pray that a mustard seed was planted there that will one day grow into a magnificent tree!
What he experienced was self-induced discipleship living. Liberty is an example of an attempt at living as early Christians did – to build each other spiritually. We can do it at any age. I did it by joining voluntarily a Foursquare Church at the age of 40 after having attended Episcopal churches since birth and having little to show for it spiritually. I moved in with an intact spirit-filled family ( kind of a spiritual boot camp – very weird for me at the time ), am now 67, a spirit-filled Episcopalian married to another spirit-filled Episcopalian. Maybe if some future judge ordered Kathryn the Hyphenated, Jon Bruno and David Beers to move for six months into a discipleship living environment it might save the Episcopal Church a heck of a lot of money and restore spiritual order to the Body.
Last week Liberty announced the Democrat Party is not allowed to set up shop on campus because it is in favor of abortion.
I can’t help but wonder how NPR would view things if someone infiltrated their DC office and did an exposé on office political shop talk. Still I see a kind of good coming out of this book on Liberty University in spite of the dishonesty involved in writing it. Such institutions offer a kind of accountability and in-loco-parentis protection that used to be granted at all institutions of higher learning just a generation ago.