The Unlikely Disciple by Kevin Roose

UnlikelyDiscipleYou know it is going to be a good book when the subtitle is “A Sinner’s Semester at America’s Holiest University.” 😀

Kevin Roose – a mentee of A.J. Jacobs – is a typical liberal, non-religious, secular Brown University student who realized that he had no clue about those on the other side of the “God divide.” Therefore, in an effort to get to know more about them, he decided to attend Liberty University for a semester – similar to how other college students spend a semester overseas.

As a college student who doubles as a journalist, what fascinated me most about Liberty was its student culture. I still have so many unanswered questions. Like what do Champions for Christ learn in class? Do they date? Do they use Facebook? What exactly do they believe? And are we really that different?

The result of his experiment is very telling and amazing.

I spent the entire book laughing, crying, or reading passages out-loud to everyone I could!

  • Laughing because of Kevin very real and funny look at the evangelical Christian culture
  • Crying because of the disconnected and rule driven evangelical Christian culture
  • Reading passages out-loud because what he wrote was SO true!

One of the things I love about this book is how real it is – Kevin could of went to Liberty and wrote a shallow, one dimensional critique of evangelicalism. But he didn’t.

Instead, he wrote about real people with real complex lives, beliefs, and actions.

And his conclusions – wow…they are powerful!!

Yet, I won’t tell you them here because I would recommend reading it – only, if you do, please keep an open mind and read it with a heart to learn, not to defend or critique Kevin’s experience. If you that, you will miss a great opportunity to see the plank in our eyes.