THE UNLIKELY DISCIPLE

While perusing the April 1, 2009 online website of Christianity Today magazine, I found a most interesting article about a young man from Brown University, who instead of opting for a semester of cross-cultural experience in another county, chooses to experience his at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. This fellow, Kevin Roose, admits he is irreligious and an unlikely candidate for this "bastion of conservative evangelicalism." He says he could "barely name the four gospels" and was fascinated by the idea of a school where every student had to follow a 46-page code of conduct, with no smoking, no drinking, no R-rated movies, no cursing, et cetera.

The article itself is a fascinating read and is set in a question/answer format. He admits to being very surprised as well as very impressed with what he found. He talks about what he liked and what he disliked, his missperceptions, his thinking about conversion experiences, and how his experience changed his life. (No, he was not converted). This article can be found at the following site: http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2009/marchweb-only/112-51.0.html

After reading this eye-opening article, I went to Kevin's blog where I read an excerpt from his book. Coupled with the Christianity Today interview, it is some of the most interesting reporting that I've read in a long time. Although I went to a Christian College so many years ago, attending Monday Morning Chapel was the only mandatory obligation we had to fulfill. The denomination itself didn't approve of smoking, drink, or dancing, but all that happened anyway, mostly off campus and often at college-permitted but not sponsored events. To read in this excerpt what standards today's Liberty College students are expected to measure up to is a real surprise.

Kevin's blog can be found at http://www.kevinroose.com/excerpts.html

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Now there is another article from Christianity Today and printed on November 1, 2007, in which a book by A. J. Jacobs called "The Year of Living Biblically" is reviewed. Jacobs is a secular Jew and he says in spite of his own detachment from religion, he became increasingly curious about the ways it influences 21st-century American life. He decided he would spend a year living all the commandments of the Bible. He set out to include both the Old and New Testaments, but as one would expect, the Old Testament took center stage. Christianity Today calls it an achingly funny memoir.

And somewhere in reading about these two fellows I came across the fact that Kevin Roose apparently served as an intern for A. J. Jacobs.

I've put the latter book on reserve at my local library and can't wait to get it into my hands. I have not yet located a copy of Roose's book to borrow; libraries are very picky about what religious books go on their shelves, I think. However, I will eventually find one and read it too.

As I have said before in a fairly recent blog, I am not religious but I do find religious books among my very favorite reading material. In case you are interested, the books are as follows:

The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner's Semester at America's Holiest University
By Kevin Roose
Grand Central Publishing, March 2009
336 pp, $24.99

The Year of Living Biblically
A. J. Jacobs
Simon & Schuster, 2007
400 pp., $25.00