In this book Kevin Roose charts his journey as a transfer student at Liberty University (“Bible Boot Camp” according to Liberty’s founder Reverend Jerry Falwell).

 

Roose is from a quintessential liberal family. His parents are Quakers and the family’s church activity was limited. He has two lesbian aunts. He attends Brown University before he decides to transfer.

 

When I was in college, studying abroad was heavily encouraged. While Roose doesn’t exactly travel across the pond, I am sure some liberals believe going to Liberty is about as foreign as a semester in Greece. I laughed at how “worried” his family was that he might return home a proselytizing Christian.

 

This isn’t a book mocking evangelicals. Roose tries to observe and report about the religious divide that keeps increasing in America – and how much influence a school like Liberty can garner. But even if most of the students at Liberty are pre-tea party, how different can two 19 year old teenagers really be?  This is what Roose hopes to find out by the end of his trial.

 

During his Liberty odyssey he takes creationist courses, meets a gay conversion pastor, evangelizes at Daytona Beach (“Satan’s turf”), and during a service watches as an entire arena of students wave their hands in the air and drop to their knees in fervor.

 

He also meets some rebellious kids, a skeptical class president, out and proud feminists, and some hall mates who just want to get laid. He even goes on a few dates.

 

Kevin Roose was 19 years old when he wrote this book. He is erudite but also funny; not only is his book well written but very current. He is also naturally empathetic so the book never feels condescending. Instead of judging he wants to know why. It is easy to see why journalist A.J. Jacobs was his mentor.

 

And this is where a tiny, tiny complaint comes in.

 

Sometimes I found passages too neutral. It is like he skirts around some issues too softly, avoiding any real blast of opinion. Sometimes I wish he could have SCREAMED across the page how he actually felt about some of his ignorant classmates or the young-earth creationist courses. This could have been an editorial issue, too, so I am not giving it much clout. But the thing to remember is:

 

Kevin Roose can write. Beautifully. I am not going to lie about the small stabs of envy I occasionally felt while reading this.

It was an enjoyable read because Roose has an engaging, yet easy-going writing style, though the content was somewhat lacking. He admits himself multiple times that his "study" suffers from selection bias. It is likely that it was only the outsiders, the people who were likely to be more critical or to wash out that were willing to speak with him in such detail. It paints a somewhat biased picture of the life of young money.

He also admits (with anecdotes to back it up) that he became personal friends with many of the "subjects". Not that this is bad, per-se, but the book can't seem to figure out whether it is a full blown critique of Wall Street as a whole from an objective position, or if it is a memoir detailing how 8 of his buddies who were predisposed to have a shit time on Wall Street in fact had a shit time on Wall Street.

These issues aside, it was interesting, and parts were informative, especially the critique of the Wall Street recruiting process at the big name schools, Worth a read, if the subject sounds interesting.

I have to give him credit. Going into it I thought it would be more biased than it actually was. He did a great job of separating himself from what he already knew and trying to understand the things he didn't. I don't know if I could have been so forgiving to some of the things he witnessed. Also I think it would be a whole different experience for a woman (not to mention the fact that I was raised Catholic). 

But Roose takes a very open-minded stance, but he does this without losing himself. Many of the passages he wrote, I could feel the struggle within him between what he thought he knew about Liberty students and what he was seeing before his eyes.

If you are at all interested in religion and the perception thereof in modern American society, this is a great book, especially for the college sect. It was something I could relate to while learning a lot about a major religious demographic that I know next to nothing about.

 

Originally posted on GR in Aug 2010

I hit one of our local bookstores, Givens Books and Little Dickens, yesterday during my lunch break, and came away with a bookhaul for the Labor Day weekend. I plan on three days of reading, and it shall be glorious!

Started reading this last night and I am enjoying it. I'll offer a more in-depth review after I finish this.