Amazon and Barnes & Noble are both selling paperback copies for $10 and change (click here to order a copy), and the audiobook is available on both iTunes and Audible.com.

But here’s the really big news.

If you’re a regular visitor to this site, you probably noticed a big blue button up on the right.  It’s there because I’m running a new social campaign based on my experience at Liberty University.  I’m biased, but I think it’s really exciting.

It’s called The Jonah Project, and its goal is to give pairs of people from opposite sides of the political and religious spectrum a chance to have civil, non-violent conversations about faith, politics, and the culture wars.  (The name comes from one of my favorite Bible stories, one in which God and Jonah argue about the fate of a city called Ninevah.)

I’m giving away 500 books as part of the Jonah Project’s initial push, and here’s how the giveaway works.

You can receive two copies of The Unlikely Disciple absolutely free, no questions asked.  BUT, you have to be willing to:

1. Give the other copy to a friend, relative, co-worker, classmate, or acquaintance who disagrees with you about politics, religion, or both.
2. Talk about the book (or any related issues, really) with your partner, making sure to keep things civil.
3. Post a recap of your conversation (in text or video form) on the Jonah Project blog.

My hope is to create 250 of the world’s strangest two-person book clubs, and to show that talking with people who disagree with you completely (as I did every day at Liberty) can be fun and beneficial to both people involved.

I wrote an introductory post on the Jonah Project site, which explains a bit more about the project and how to participate.

There’s an FAQ page if you’re interested in participating but still a bit confused.

Once you’re sold, you and your partner can sign up here to get your free books.

My friend/mentor A.J. Jacobs was nice enough to plug the Jonah Project on BoingBoing.

And here’s a video of my talk at this year’s GEL (Good Experience Live) conference, where I introduced the Jonah Project and the motives that led me to start it – relevant info begins at around 11:00.

Kevin Roose at Gel 2010 (author, The Unlikely Disciple) from Gel Conference on Vimeo.

• I went back to Liberty U. to watch two of my friends – both from Dorm 22 – get married.  (Not to each other, mind you.)
• I continued to speak to colleges, churches, and book groups (still booking dates for 2010!) about my experience at Liberty.  Most recently, I visited Bristol, Tennessee, home of King College, where I had a great time doing my spiel as part of the Buechner Institute lecture series.
• I wrote about trashy romance novels and college dating sites.
• I narrated the audio version of The Unlikely Disciple, which will be released along with the paperback version in June of this year (not January 2011, as I’d originally reported).  Check back here in a few weeks for details about the paperback launch.

And, with apologies for burying the lede…

• I’M WRITING ANOTHER BOOK! The ink on the deal has barely dried, but I’m really excited about the topic, the chance to work with the wonderful folks at Grand Central again, and the opportunity to dive into one more insular, politically powerful subculture my parents can’t stand.

Anyway, I’ll leave the description to Publishers Lunch:

THE UNLIKELY DISCIPLE author Kevin Roose’s CRASH BABIES, an embedded narrative that will follow several first- and second-year Wall Street financiers, examining their hopes, dreams, and schemes, and sketching a nuanced, human portrait of young Wall Street culture in the post-collapse era, to Ben Greenberg at Grand Central, by Kate Lee at ICM (NA).

If you’re surprised that I’m writing about young financiers, well, that makes two of us.  Finance is a relatively recent obsession of mine, but I think (and I hope you’ll agree) that it’s high time for an in-depth exploration of young Wall Street culture in the post-collapse era – when being a twenty-something investment banker isn’t exactly fashionable.

I’ll save the rest of my elevator pitch for a later post, but suffice it to say that I’m really excited to dive into this project.

Happy Easter week, y’all.

Until then, a few noteworthy nuggets:

• Thanks to all who have written, commented, and tweeted about The Unlikely Disciple in the past few months. The book is still moving around in hardcover – garnering the odd news hit from time to time – and has gone into three more printings since the summer.  So that’s good!  I just got word from Grand Central that the paperback version (and the audiobook!) will be appearing in January 2011 – I’d tell you to mark your 2011 calendar, but I don’t think they’re selling those yet.
• I’ve gotten a few e-mails asking about my Liberty friends, and what they’re up to these days.  I can happily report that although 2009 hasn’t been the best year for Liberty’s public image, my friends from LU – or at least the ones I keep in touch with regularly – are doing quite well.  I’ll be back in Lynchburg this winter for a couple of my hallmates’ weddings (got to love those ring-by-spring Christians) and I’ll report back with news from campus.
• Speaking of friends, Year of Living Biblically author (and my former boss) A.J. Jacobs has a great new book out.  It’s called The Guinea Pig Diaries, and it’s a collection of his funniest, most radical lifestyle experiments – everything from outsourcing his entire life to India to spending a month living like George Washington (complete with tricorner hat).  Check it out at A.J.’s site, or read some (less overtly biased) reviews on Amazon.
• The September issue of Christianity Today had a long article about Liberty, its massive growth, and the new directions it’s taking under the leadership of Jerry Falwell Jr.  It’s an interesting (if relatively uncritical) look at what’s been going on in Lynchburg since I left LU, and sheds some light on the fascinating, often contradictory forces at work behind the scenes.  For example, the article makes a big deal out of the growing ideological diversity on Liberty’s campus – the fact that it’s no longer just an enclave for Baptists and homeschoolers.  The writer even quotes a Nepali student, Priti Sitoula, who says (surprisingly, if you ask me) that her Hinduism “has never been a conflict” in her Liberty classes or her social life.  But a few paragraphs later, when talking about changes in Liberty’s admissions process, Jerry Falwell Jr. is quoted saying that he wants to be “a little more selective in the type of kids who are compatible with our mission spiritually.”  Which makes me wonder: would a new emphasis on spiritual mission mean that non-Christian students like Priti would no longer be welcome at Liberty?  Is Chancellor Falwell actually making an attempt to accommodate students of all faiths? Or is Liberty trying to narrow its focus to conservative evangelicals?  It seems like an important question, and it’s one I hope somebody will address soon.
• On a lighter note, thanks to the blog reader who forwarded me a link to Liberty Counsel (LU’s legal arm) and their new “Adopt a Liberal” program.  (Tagline: “Have you prayed for a liberal today?”)

Also, just as a reminder: if you like your updates from me frequent and short (or just short), feel free to connect on Twitter or Facebook, where I’m (slightly) less negligent.

Of note in the segment: my mediocre Frisbee skills (which NECN kindly edited to remove the worst flubs), the slightly stilted but nevertheless funny cameos by my friends Jason and Jenny, and my chat with Beth Shelburne, the anchor who produced the piece, and who is a lovely interviewer and a consummate professional.  Big ups to everyone involved.

Now off to work on my Frisbee…

The highlight of my trip to NPR’s New York bureau was writing my name in the official NPR guestbook.  I scribbled my signature, looked at the line above mine, and saw “T. Morrison” in large, loopy letters.

“Is that…?” I asked the receptionist.

“Toni Morrison?” he said.  “Yeah.  She was in the studio right before you.”

Luckily, I came down from lit-geek euphoria (and the anxiety of having to follow a Nobel laureate) in time to have a relatively smooth interview with charming Weekend ATC host Jacki Lyden, which you can listen to here.

A few other book-related items of note:

• Jon Acuff, founder of the hugely popular Stuff Christians Like blog, is giving away five copies of The Unlikely Disciple on his site.  The giveaway ends TOMORROW, so enter now!  If you’ve never been to SCL before, go to the full roundup and poke around – there’s some hilarious stuff.  (i.e. #90: “The Tankini”)
• A great review came in this week from The Christian Manifesto, a well-written Christian culture blog.  Check it out here.
• Not much of substance has happened on the Liberty College Democrats front, it seems – the Dems are still revising their group’s constitution to meet some (or all) of the requirements set forth in last week’s meetings, and Chancellor Falwell is still demanding a public apology for certain statements made by members of the club.  A sad situation all around.
• Nathan Schneider, a Brown grad and writer who blogs at The Row Boat (among other places), has written an extremely good review-essay on my book.  His piece, titled “Undercover at Falwell’s Liberty University, Finding Common Ground,” seeks to explain why, after so many years of galvanized culture warring, the American public seems to be taking a conciliatory turn and seeking to build bridges rather than tear them down.  The whole thing is available at Religion Dispatches, and here’s an excerpt:

Throughout Barack Obama’s presidential campaign and into his administration, he has tried to work his words around the culture wars. He speaks of “abortion reduction” rather than “choice” or “life.” A supposedly new-and-improved faith-based initiatives office stands at the center of the domestic agenda. We press on in Afghanistan and Iraq, even as the president heads to Muslim countries in search of dialogue. Meanwhile, Newsweek has proclaimed “The End of Christian America”; with the Bush administration gone and churchgoing on the decline, perhaps the great, religion-infused culture wars of recent decades are over.

…We no longer need (since we are all “we” now) to muckrake and expose the other. Now, the necessary work is understanding, compromise, and shared humanity.

As I sat in the pews of the First Baptist Church in America – a nod to Brown’s Baptist heritage – listening to the Baccalaureate ceremony unfold, I was struck by how many different faiths, traditions, and viewpoints were being successfully incorporated into the same ceremony.  In the course of two hours, I heard a Protestant invocation of Jesus.  A Muslim call to prayer.  A Hindu dance.  A rabbi reciting the Shehechiyanu.  A poem from Emily Dickinson.  A reading (in Hebrew) of Colossians 3:12-15.  Taiko drums.  A reading from The Prophet.  In fact, the ceremony was almost laughably inclusive – Fareed Zakaria, the Newsweek International editor who gave the keynote address, noted that Brown’s Baptist founders “wouldn’t be too happy” with the ceremony’s ecumenicism.

But in that moment, peering down from my balcony pew and seeing a full spectrum of symbolism represented in the service gave the whole occasion a warm glow, a dignified sheen that enriched the meaning of commencement for all 1,443 graduating seniors, even the ones who weren’t Muslims or Hindus or Taiko drummers.

I thought of that warm glow when I read about Liberty’s decision to revoke the official status of its College Democrats chapter, and when I saw the conversations about diversity and inclusiveness that the ensuing PR frenzy inspired.  (For background, check out my earlier post.)  A few random thoughts that have crossed my mind since then:

• I have no doubt that Jerry Falwell Jr. (whom I’ve met, and who seems like a genuinely nice guy) wouldn’t mind having a Democratic group on campus.  But, as this episode has demonstrated, the people whose opinions really matter in matters like these are Liberty’s parents and trustees, the longtime Moral Majority donors who fill the coffers, and the deacons of Thomas Road Baptist Church (who technically control the school, due to a bizarre organizational hierarchy Dr. Falwell put in place before he died).  These groups, of course, tend to be older and more conservative than Liberty’s average student. (Chancellor Falwell hinted at this when he noted in his op-ed defense that “donors, parents and trustees” had called him “complaining that the club had been endorsed” in the first place.)  Knowing the pressures Chancellor Falwell faced doesn’t excuse his decision, of course.  But it makes it easier to understand why he did it.  Liberty, more than most colleges, is shackled to its past.
• It’s generally accepted among the commentariat that this fracas will be bad for Liberty.  It won’t.  Liberty doesn’t have to please Democrats any more than West Point has to please anti-war activists, and it’s hard to imagine that the extra cash Liberty gets from Republican donors over this controversy won’t outweigh any losses.  Also, to the people suggesting that Liberty’s tax-exempt status could be revoked over the Dems decision, I say “good luck.”  Liberty has faced these church/state legal challenges for more than three decades, and has always emerged unscathed, either by shuffing things around (such as moving Creation Studies out of the Biology department when a Virginia education board ruled that it made Liberty’s science programs non-certifiable) or by lying outright (such as when Liberty beat an ACLU lawsuit in the 1980s by saying that its students weren’t being required to go to Thomas Road Baptist Church – when, in fact, they were).  This week’s media controversy will dent Liberty’s public image, but it won’t ruin its finances.
• I’m by no means the first person to notice this, but it’s odd and telling that while Liberty has invited as guest speakers in the past few years the likes of Michael Behe (the intelligent design guru — a Roman Catholic), Newt Gingrich (a thrice-married former Baptist who recently converted to Catholicism) and Ben Stein (an anti-evolution Jewish moderate who gave the commencement address this year), it refuses to grant equal footing to its campus Democrats.  It really raises the question: Is Liberty a religious university?  Or a political one?
• In the wake of the controversy, Chancellor Falwell has offered the LU Dems a deal: re-affiliate under a new Democratic organization, one that stands for pro-life, anti-gay principles, and we’ll give you official status again.  Unless he backtracks further in the coming weeks, here’s what the LU Dems should do: tell him no.  As young Democrats, you should able to endorse whichever candidates you choose, no matter their views on abortion or gay marriage or any other single issue.  When classes start next fall, say this.  Loudly.  Start Facebook groups and Twitter feeds.  Go canvassing for new members.  Put up posters.  They’ll get taken down, but not before someone sees them.  When you’re censored, take an iPhone photo and e-mail it to a blogger or a reporter (or me).  And remember that although it may not seem like it, you’re not alone.  Based on the e-mails I’ve gotten in the last few days, there are Democrats at Liberty – including professors and administrators – and it’s only a matter of time before people start speaking up in your defense.

To be clear: I loved my time at Liberty, and I have a ton of friends who still go there.  I’m not sympathetic with the Huffington Post commenters who rave about the “clowns” and “automatons” that populate LU, and I don’t fantasize about the school being blown up.  But I do think Liberty students deserve better.

A couple people have chastised me for my earlier post, saying that it’s Liberty’s right, as a private institution, to sanction whichever student groups it wants to sanction.  They’re right, of course.  Liberty doesn’t have to do anything in response to the LU Dems controversy (and, as I noted above, it would probably be stupid of them to do so).  But after Chancellor Falwell stated last month that he wanted to “enter a new phase of history” by limiting enrollment to the truly qualified and adding oomph to Liberty’s academic programs, I took him at his word.   It seemed like finally, after 35-odd years of clinging to galvanized ideology and unflexing political rhetoric, the world’s largest evangelical college was ready to bridge the divides of the past, drop some of the paranoia, and become a true Christian liberal arts school.

And now I’m disappointed.

(Cross-posted from the Huffington Post.  Regular blog readers, sorry for all the basic background stuff in here.  I’ll be posting some other thoughts on the controversy later today, including actionable tips for the College Dems and more of my own views on the kerfuffle.)

Last week, Liberty University made the national news when, while implementing a new funding scheme for student organizations, it revoked approval for the campus Democratic organization.

Liberty’s College Democrats club - the first in school history - was formed during last fall’s election season, and was given an award for “Up-and-Coming Chapter of the Year” by the Virginia Young Democrats in April. But earlier this month, Liberty VP Mark Hine wrote to club president Brian Diaz that the club’s status was being dropped because it had supported candidates whose views were “contrary to the mission of LU and to Christian doctrine,” even though the club itself was officially pro-life and anti-gay-marriage. Following a maelstrom of criticism, Chancellor Jerry Falwell Jr. offered to reinstate the club, providing it aligns itself with a pro-life, anti-gay Democratic group, and not the Democratic Party in general. (Which is kind of like saying that you’ll allow penguins at your zoo, but not the black-and-white kind that waddle.)

On one level, reading a news story about a fledgling chapter of the Young Democrats having its club status revoked by Liberty University is completely unsurprising. After all, since its founding in 1971, Liberty’s mission has always been to cultivate generations of conservative Christian voters and activists. Before his death, Rev. Falwell often said that he wanted his school to be the “Harvard of the right,” and to this day, Liberty’s official brochure touts the school’s “strong commitment to political conservatism, total rejection of socialism, and firm support for America’s economic system of free enterprise.”

During my semester at Liberty, I learned that much of what skeptical outsiders say about the school is true.

Yes, Liberty is a bastion of arch-conservatism. Yes, I was required to listen to lectures like “Myths Behind the Homosexual Agenda” and answer questions on a science exam about Noah’s Ark. Yes, I heard sermons called “The Myth of Global Warming” and guest speeches by Sean Hannity. Yes, Liberty stifles free speech by censoring its student newspaper, refusing to give tenure to its faculty, and suppressing students who wish to speak out. (This last point is particularly troubling - there’s actually a rule in Liberty’s student handbook that mandates 12 reprimands and a $50 fine for any student found guilty of “participation in an unauthorized petition or demonstration.”) And yes, I’ll add my voice to the chorus of people calling for Chancellor Falwell to reverse his decision and reinstate the Young Democrats’ official club status.

But during my semester there, I learned that Liberty is a much more diverse place than people give it credit for, and that speaking about the Liberty Young Democrats as if they were bizarre outliers (like “Jews for Jesus” or “Skydivers Afraid of Heights”) ignores the fact that Liberty students, like many other young evangelicals across the nation, are rethinking what it means to be a Christian in the 21st century.

When I arrived at Liberty for my semester “abroad,” I expected to find a campus full of ballot-punching Republicans. I found those, but I also met Christian feminists, Christian civil libertarians, Christians opposed to the war in Iraq, Christian gay-rights activists, and other Liberty students who challenged the norms of their parents’ generation. As evidenced by the 32% of evangelicals between the ages of 18-29 who voted for Barack Obama last November, “Christian” and “Republican” are no longer synonymous in America, and Liberty’s pathetic attempt to maintain a unified political stance by silencing dissent shows how out of touch the university is with its own student body.

I’ve never met Brian Diaz, the Liberty freshman who started the Young Democrats chapter, or Maria Childress, the club’s faculty adviser who has drawn heat for openly disagreeing with her employer. But I do know that they’re not alone.

A few days ago, I got an e-mail from a longtime Liberty professor who confessed that he’d voted for President Obama last fall, and told me that due to the “the dictatorial atmosphere” at Liberty, he could lose his job if anyone discovered his secret. Since my book came out, I’ve heard similar stories from former and current Liberty students, alumni, and faculty members, many of whom share that professor’s worry. The evangelical world is changing, and regardless of the fate of the Young Democrats club, Liberty is changing with it, becoming less wedded to the GOP and more open to ideological diversity every day.

What Liberty’s administration needs isn’t just a lesson in tolerance - it’s a long, honest look in the mirror.

Some highlights from the tour:

• In Lynchburg, Virginia, getting to catch up with a bunch of my Liberty friends and professors, some of whom I hadn’t seen in many months.  And all of whom, luckily, were at least marginally satisfied with the way I portrayed them in the book.  Although one guy did take issue with the pseudonym I’d given him, saying that it made him sound too metrosexual.  I told him I’d be open to changing it to something manlier for the paperback.  Bubba?  Rambo?  I’ll have to think about that one.
• At Yale Divinity School, being told about the horrible puns and bits of biblical wordplay that make up YDS life.  Some of the worst ones include “Holy Grounds” (campus coffee shop), the “Paracleats” (intramural soccer team), the “Bible Belters” (men’s a cappella group) and “Left Behind” (the atheist student group).
• At Oberlin College, learning that my audience included a gay Episcopalian priest, a gay Unitarian Universalist minister, and a gay Baptist seminary grad.  Which sounds like the start of a joke you’d find in Penthouse, but it’s true.

Anyway, big thanks to everyone who hosted, transported, or otherwise helped me over the course of the tour.

A few press hits from last week:

• The Religion News Service did an interview for their “10 Minutes With…” series.
• Failure Magazine did a piece.
• J.D. Greear, the Lead Pastor at the Summit Church of Raleigh-Durham, NC, debated my views.
• I did some radio spots, including a Republican from Seattle, a Republican from Rhode Island, and Barry Lynn.

Also, I’m obliged to mention that with two sex-related felony charges, a fallen hero, and a commencement speaker who pandered so hard his audience almost forgot he was Jewish, Liberty University is not having a good month.  Let’s hope the summer vacation restores and renews.  Keep your head in the game, Champions.

Surprises from Liberty University: What I Learned as an Undercover Evangelical

[Cross-posted from The Huffington Post]

When I stepped on to the campus of Liberty University for my first day as a new transfer student, I thought I knew what I was getting myself into.

I knew that Liberty was a Christian college in Lynchburg, Virginia, founded in 1971 by the late Reverend Jerry Falwell to train “Champions for Christ.” I knew it had required courses in Creationist Biology and Evangelism 101, a student body whose political views ranged from conservative to arch-conservative, and a 46-page code of conduct - called “The Liberty Way” - that outlawed drinking, smoking, cursing, dancing, R-rated movies, and hugs that last for longer than three seconds.

I knew all those things, which is why I decided to transfer to Liberty from Brown University, one of the nation’s most liberal colleges, and write a book (The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner’s Semester at America’s Holiest University) about my experience. Before Liberty, I’d never been exposed to conservative Christian culture - my parents are secular Quakers who once worked for Ralph Nader - but during my sophomore year at Brown, I decided to break out of my left-wing enclave and learn about my Christian peers by experiencing their world firsthand. For an entire semester, I took Bible classes, lived in Liberty’s single-sex dorms, and sang in Rev. Falwell’s church choir, trying to expand my horizons while studying “abroad” in a subculture more foreign to me than Barcelona or Tokyo. A slew of adjectives could describe my Liberty semester - “enlightening,” “difficult,” and “weird,” to name a few - but perhaps the most apt one is “surprising.”

Some of the surprises I saw at Liberty were off-putting and worrisome. I remember opening my first Creationist Biology exam to find the question: “True or False: Noah’s Ark was large enough to accommodate various species of dinosaurs.” (According to my professor, the answer was “True” - since dinosaurs and humans cohabited the earth after the Flood, they would have had to find a way to squeeze onto the Ark. He suggested that they could have been teenage dinosaurs, so as to take up less space.) Also troubling was Liberty’s extreme social and political conservatism, which made for classroom lessons like “The Consequences of Immoral Sex” and textbook chapters like “Myths Behind the Homosexual Agenda.”

A few surprises were strange but harmless. I’m thinking of my spring break mission trip to Daytona Beach, Florida, where a group of Liberty students and I tried (and mostly failed) to convert drunken coeds to Christianity. Or when I paid a visit to “Every Man’s Battle,” Liberty’s on-campus support group for chronic masturbators. (Insert your own “hands-on research” joke here.)

But many - maybe even most - of the surprises I encountered at Liberty were much more pleasant. For starters, I learned that my stereotypes about evangelical college students - that they were all knuckle-dragging ideologues who spent their free time writing angry letters to the ACLU - were almost entirely wrong. Far from crazy, the friends I made at Liberty were some of the warmest, funniest, most intellectually curious college students I’ve ever met. After a few weeks of frantic acclimation to life in the dorms (aided by a Christian self-help book, 30 Days to Taming Your Tongue, that helped me kick my cursing habit), I began to fit in on my hall, and I found that Liberty students had a lot of the same day-to-day anxieties as my friends back at Brown. They gossiped about girls, complained about their homework, and worried about their post-graduation plans. Many even doubted their faith.

I was also surprised to learn that Liberty’s strict religious discipline can actually be a good thing. I’ve always assumed that college students and freewheeling social climates went hand-in-hand, but most of the students I met were thankful for Liberty’s rules. (Although I did find a few subversive Facebook groups, like one called “I Hug For Three Seconds, Sometimes Four.”)

A sociologist named Margarita Mooney has shown that college students who attend regular religious services report being happier, more diligent, and more satisfied with their college experience than students who practice no religion. I still don’t consider myself an evangelical Christian, but I can understand now what millions of Christian college students see in faith-based education, and why Liberty’s enrollment has grown at a rate that few colleges, secular or religious, have ever matched.

Since the book came out, I’ve taken some heat from people who have argued that, by going to Liberty with an open mind, I was turning a blind eye to intolerance - or worse, that I’d been brainwashed by my time under Rev. Falwell’s tutelage. But no community is all bad, and to dismiss Liberty as a place of wall-to-wall insanity is to reduce it, and the evangelical movement that birthed it, to a lazy caricature.

I still disagree with a lot of the values Liberty stands for, but seeing the human faces on the other side of the American culture wars made me question my own assumptions and realize that, in some ways, I had just as much to learn about tolerance as the most hard-line fundamentalist.

We can all be surprised by our ideological opponents. We just have to give them a chance.

Meet Lara Patterson, this week’s “Jerry’s Kid.”  She’s from Ohio, likes Death Cab and John Mayer, and works as a writing tutor on campus.  She also lists her Religious Views on Facebook as “YHWH – Shalom,” which is confusing, because she’s not Jewish.  Regardless, Lara’s views on life and doubt at Liberty are well worth hearing.

Name: Lara Patterson
Class year: Senior
Major: Biblical Studies with a Youth Ministry minor

What’s your favorite thing about Liberty?  Your least favorite?

It is probably cliché, but the people are my favorite thing about LU.  I’ve met my best friends here, been inspired by amazing professors, even become friends with random staff around campus.  People can and will disappoint because they’re human and that’s what humans do best,  but overall the people here are what kept me here.

As to least favorite: I could make jokes about The Liberty Way or the dining hall, but honestly, the most troubling thing at LU for me is the lack of access to quality counseling.  I respect those who run Student Care, but in my half dozen or so visits there, almost all have been negative experiences.  I suspect that SC is intended to be a portal to outside counseling if needed, but so often it seems that they want control.  And in a place where you can be fined $250 just for swearing….yeah, personal self-disclosure isn’t happening.

What did you think of Dr. Falwell?

I spent my first semester-and-a-half passionately disliking the guy.  However, the more I listened, the more I came to realize that, while we disagreed immensely on some issues, the guy was never afraid to admit when he was wrong.  I remember during one convo, he admitted that he had a tendency to put his foot in his mouth and that he regretted that.  And when Jerry loved people, he really meant it.   So I guess I love and miss the guy and can’t wait to see him in heaven where we can argue.

Who’s the most inspiring person you’ve met at Liberty?  Why is he/she inspiring?

Dr. Fowler.  His Old Testament Backgrounds class opened my eyes to a serious love for the Old Testament that I didnt know was possible.  However, he is also not your typical Bible professor. He’s sarcastic, deeply honest and sometimes refreshingly cynical of some aspects of religion.  I dont know of anyone who has inspired more respect from his students or inspired me more personally.

Do you think Liberty students are more or less tolerant than their non-Christian counterparts?

Instead of saying more or less, I would say LU students are a different brand of intolerant.  I’ve met so many people who mean well and strive to love people, but then they shun the words tolerance and open-mindedness like they were symptoms of a chronic spiritual disease.  Too often, Christian students have grown up being told which issues, sects, and political parties are out to destroy morality and faith.  I believe in moral absolutes as much as the next guy, but the world is a complex thing and you cannot just program yourself to respond to it.  Basically, I think LU students mean well, but they need to recognize their “intolerance” by putting themselves in the shoes of those they are mocking.

What’s one thing you’ve learned at Liberty that will stay with you long past graduation?

Never stop asking questions and wrestling with truth.  [Word. -- Ed.]   Far too many people are either afraid to ask tough questions or too burnt out from not being sure of the answers.  However, one of the beauties of faith is working it out & discovering truth.  You dont have to shut down logic, reason or compassion to love God and serve Him.

Liberty students/faculty/alums: Want to be interviewed? Drop me a line.