10 minutes with … Kevin Roose

(UNDATED) When Brown University senior Kevin Roose transferred to Jerry Falwell-founded Liberty University for a semester, he intended to be a secular fly on the wall, learning about his conservative Christian peers while gathering material for a book. But Roose soon found himself on bended knee in prayer groups, getting “swept up in mass joy” […]

(RNS1-APRIL11) Ron Jeremy has starred in a record 1,750 porn films. For use with RNS-10-
MINUTES, transmitted April 11, 2007. Religion News Service photo via Beliefnet.

(RNS1-APRIL11) Ron Jeremy has starred in a record 1,750 porn films. For use with RNS-10-
MINUTES, transmitted April 11, 2007. Religion News Service photo via Beliefnet.

(UNDATED) When Brown University senior Kevin Roose transferred to Jerry Falwell-founded Liberty University for a semester, he intended to be a secular fly on the wall, learning about his conservative Christian peers while gathering material for a book.

But Roose soon found himself on bended knee in prayer groups, getting “swept up in mass joy” as he sang resurrection hymns — even sitting in Falwell’s office, discussing the evangelical icon’s fondness for Diet Peach Snapple.


Roose chronicled the experience in his new book, “The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner’s Semester at America’s Holiest University.”

Some answers have been edited for length and clarity.

Q: What prompted you to study at Liberty and write this book?

A: I had the ultimate secular/liberal upbringing, but during my freshman year at Brown, I ran across a group of Liberty students, and I started to feel really irresponsible for knowing so little about evangelical culture. So I decided to round out my education by doing a domestic “study abroad,” and trying to see how my Christian peers lived.

Q: What were your expectations?

A: I really didn’t know what to expect. The only thing I knew about conservative Christianity was based on very slim exposure to it in the media. I expected I’d get there and people would be caricatures of placard-waving angry ideologues, and this was not what I found at all. I had to do a lot of adjusting. It was surprising and refreshing to see I was welcomed there warmly, and people were much more normal than I expected.

Q: Speaking of adjustments, what was the biggest one you had to make?

A: Not cursing! Liberty has this 46-page code of conduct that outlaws drinking, smoking, R-rated movies, dances, hugs that last longer than three seconds — so there goes 95 percent of my day. Instead of cursing you’re supposed to say “Mercy!” So I had to buy a self-help book called “30 Days to Taming Your Tongue.”

Q: Did any aspect of your upbringing help you at Liberty?

A: My parents always gave me the freedom to go into new situations with an open mind and that helped me immensely. If I had gone in with an axe to grind, I don’t think I would have had nearly as much fun, or learned as much. I have to say that my Quaker upbringing was not very helpful as far as the Bible stuff was concerned. I had to buy “The Bible for Dummies.” It was intensely hard.

Q: By the end of the book, you write of your “shifting beliefs” during your time at Liberty. Which beliefs shifted?


A: The biggest shift was my attitude towards prayer. Growing up, I never prayed except during airplane takeoffs and landings. Now I try to pray every morning, because even if God is not in heaven checking his cosmic in-box for my prayers, the process of praying helps makes me more compassionate and treat people better. Prayer doesn’t change things, prayer changes me, and then I change things.

Q: In your book, you talk about “learning to interpret the world the same way Liberty students do.” Do you think you succeeded?

A: I still pray, I still read the Bible from time to time, and more importantly, I have a new attitude about how to approach people who are different from me. I used to be scared of Christian culture, the other side of this “God divide,” and now I actively embrace those differences.

Q: You write of discovering that Liberty is “every bit as messy and diverse as a secular college.” Tell me about that.

A: We, and I mean secular liberals, tend to think that Christian colleges, especially one started by Jerry Falwell, would be one where people are 100 percent certain all the time — dogmatic, inflexible. That’s not what I found at all. Some people are like that — they could tell you five reasons why homosexuality is wrong and why Catholicism is a false religion — but the students are not monolithic. They have the same doubts as I have, and that’s refreshing.

Q: What do you know now that you wish you’d known before you started the project?


A: I wish I’d known that, for example, Liberty students didn’t actually go around saying “Golly” and “Mercy.” That would have been helpful socially! I think I would like to warn myself, “You’re going to change this semester; you’re not going to be a neutral observer in an environment like this.”

Q: Would you do this again?

A: Of course — it was transformative, something that profoundly affected me. My Liberty friends see me as an intermediary between their world and the secular world because I’m not quite one of them but yet I’m not quite secular either because I get “it.” I can quote the same C.S. Lewis, I can sing the same Sunday school songs. I’m not quite an outsider. I’m like this concierge to the godless.

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