Kevin Roose was one of the people who was helping A.J. Jacobs, the author of "The Year of Living Biblically", and when he and A.J. visited Thomas Road, the church of Liberty University, he was proselytized by the students there. But their incomprehension of why he didn't want to know Jesus or convert to their sort of faith got him thinking and wondering about this sort of Christian Community and the people who make it up, and he became determined to learn more about it, and learn more about the people who go to Liberty University.
So he took a semester off from Brown University, and transferred to Liberty. And the culture shock was immense. Liberty has a 49 page code of conduct. Some of it is the same as other academic institutions- no lying, no plagiarism. But other things struck him as rather bizarre. No coed dorms. No hugging a member of the opposite sex for more than 3 seconds. No contact with the opposite sex other than hand-holding (presumably family members are immune to these rules). No watching R-rated movies, no possession or smoking of tobacco, among others. Each transgression of the rules is punished with reprimands (called reps), monetary fines and in some cases, community service.
But if Kevin expected to find an army of Jesus clones who moved, spoke and thought in perfect unison, that definitely wasn't what he found. He made friends with many of the guys in his dorm, Dorm 22, and even found a girlfriend, Anna, who seemed just as much of an outsider to the Liberty Way of Thinking and Living as he was. But while the classes, on the whole, were neutered versions of University classes, he realized that in many cases, faculty were lying to the students, trying to get them to believe in reading the Bible only in the Liberty-approved way and rejecting things like Evolution.
But Kevin wasn't the only one that realized that the students were being lied to- other students realized it as well, and it made them angry and disappointed. They believed that Jesus's word is supposed to stand on its own, and to be shown that it doesn't was very much a letdown. When one of the professors Kevin was studying under did a debate with the Atheist Rational Response Squad, he was roundly defeated, and the students knew it.
The Biggest focus of the campus is on being born-again, and you'd think that all the students there would be secure in their faith. But Kevin learned the uncertainty and doubt that lie at the center of all the students who claim that they are or were born again. Once one is born again, they should make a real change in their life and not backslide. But when so many students do backslide or are tempted to do so, how can they be sure that anybody is truly born again? This causes the kids a lot of angst in the middle of the night, even if they don't talk about it with others.
Nor was Kevin immune to a change of attitude towards religion. His family is Quaker, Christian, but one of those denominations that the Evangelicals believe aren't really Christian. Attending the Thomas Road Church, even he found himself getting sucked in by the Pageantry and Rhetoric during the sermons- something he found troubling and confusing.
And once his time was up, coming home again proved a different kind of culture shock, as he had to adjust to classes that didn't open with a prayer, coed dorms and seeing his fellow classmates kissing or to girls wearing something other than skirts. He also had to own up to what he'd done to his former friends at the college, but most of them were okay with it, and he still remains friends with many of them today- and Anna, his LU girlfriend, also transferred out of the school, to a more liberal University. Is there a future for them? Who knows? But he can definitely understand where Evangelical Christians are coming from now.
This was a book I found as much horrifying as intriguing. Horrifying, because I have always viewed college as a place you went where you'd unlearn old prejudices and be exposed to people as unlike you as possible, who you'd learn from and who would learn from you in turn. Liberty University seems like the Anti-University, where you go to be more confirmed in your prejudices and where Your mind is closed, not opened, where you are spoonfed what your parents want you to know and no more, where knowledge that makes you question your faith is unwelcome and bad for you.
Me, I've always thought that, like the unexamined life, which is not worth living, the unquestioned faith is worthless and doesn't prepare you for life, which is challenging to all your assumptions, not just those of faith. What will many of these students do when confronted with someone who knows as much about Christianity as they do, but doesn't agree, or who knows more and is able to show them where they are wrong? I don't think that will end well for some of them, and I think it is places like Liberty that make Christianity so rigid and breakable a faith as it is. They are doing these kids a disservice by lying to them, and making them hew to a certain party line.
But the kids at Liberty seem to mostly realize that the picture they are being given is incomplete, but it also seems that they aren't being given the tools to come to a more mature understanding of faith by themselves. Liberty University didn't even have a Library until they were required to build one, and that's just sad. Sad for the students, of course.
I enjoyed reading this book and seeing the true face of Liberty University. While things seemed to be looking up at the end of the book, after Falwell died, I now see that they have banned the Democratic Club from the University, so the University seems to be reverting to type. Read this book to get a better understanding of the Evangelical faith and why it attracts people, and why many people wouldn't want their kids to get their education there. Recommended.
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