Total Page : 336
Publisher : Grand Central Publishing
Publication Date : 2009 03 26
>> Pure enjoyment
I cruised through this book and thoroughly enjoyed every moment of it except for one part in the middle that made me cringe You will know when you get there As someone who came from the fundamentalist tradition and left this book was both a kind acknowledgement that there are many great aspects to the conservative Christian lifestyle and also a great reminder as to why I left I would recommend this book to my Christian and my non Christian friends Oh and the author is extremely talented A great read
>> A hilarious and poignant look at a semester abroad
As someone quite familiar with American evangelical culture encompassing a smattering of endearing qualities and a host of ugly ones I had already formed some preconceived notions before embarking on my latest read The Unlikely Disciple A Sinner s Semester at America s Holiest University The book chronicles the journey of Kevin Roose the youthful author and aspiring guerrilla journalist as he transitions into a semester at Liberty University the late Reverend Jerry Falwell s brainchild and a conservative Christian utopia from an undergraduate program at Brown University a notch or two above Sodom and Gomorrah Warily I predicted that Roose s reflections would fit neatly into one of two know thy enemy categories Either he would feign empathy with his new classmates and faculty while cloaking all observations in a thinly veiled stream of sarcasm and condescension or he would overly humanize them anthropologist style like one might see in a probing wildebeest documentary on the Discovery Channel Even the cover art and various other promotional photographs the author in a Liberty University t shirt with Falwell s books scattered around sitting alone in a large grassy area directly in front of a spotless white church etc hinted strongly at satire
In the end spoiler alert neither prediction was entirely accurate Roose s memoir lacked a fatal flaw perhaps his greatest sin was engaging in a bit of self indulgent melodrama but and unlike the denizens of Sodom and Gomorrah his iniquities are easily forgivable In fact if Roose weren t so unnervingly honest in his evaluations of both the school and his own shifting perspectives his brief jabs of alarmism could easily come off as irony True he has a slightly grating tendency to close chapters with sentences like All semester I ve been worried about getting in over my head at Liberty but what if it s too late And true it is these passages that ring the least authentically a lifelong secular student from an Ivy League school stands on the precipice of conversion while studying at the epicenter of American religious anti intellectualism but it seems that Roose nevertheless wrote them out of a sincere desire to express his rapidly expanding gray areas
On the other hand the author s continuing revulsion with the institutionalized homophobia that he finds at Liberty provides a periodic gut check both for himself and his readers against growing too comfortable with the notion of right wing fundamentalism as warm and fuzzy This book is thus potent because it illustrates the fragile disconnect between abstract disgust and visceral well something approaching fraternit No it is not a call to ecumenism It is also not primarily a repudiation of some of the more disturbing facets of the evangelical lifestyle or more specifically of Falwell s most appalling public statements What this book undoubtedly is however is a gentle nudge away from demonization and towards if not empathy at least toleration And although conservative Christian readers may be unlikely to agree Roose s message applies to their anachronistic edicts on the outside world as much as it does to the ill informed heathens who mock them
>> interesting
the author spends a semester at Liberty University Jerry Falwell s conservative Christian college The descriptions of life at Liberty are interesting as is how the experience changed the author
