The Unlikely Disciple Part 3

In a 1971 book called Church Aflame Church Aflame, Elmer Towns, Liberty's cofounder, recalled a conversation he had with a young Falwell follower named Danny Smith. Towns quoted Danny as saying, "The greatest compliment in life is to be called a man of G.o.d. The second is to say I am like Pastor Falwell." There's little doubt in my mind that Danny's adoration is shared by the Liberty students of today, though his language has been updated for the twenty-first century. Outside the Vines Center on my way to lunch, I spot a guy walking hand in hand with his girlfriend. His T-s.h.i.+rt announces: JERRY IS MY HOMEBOY JERRY IS MY HOMEBOY.

Among the Falwell fans on campus is my roommate Eric, the pastor's kid from Michigan. Eric wants to follow his dad into the ministry, and yesterday he listed Dr. Falwell as one of his biggest professional inspirations. "I just like the way he preaches," he said. "All his jokes and stories and stuff. I could learn a lot from him."

Eric is the closest thing I've seen to a model Liberty student. He plays Christian rock on his stereo, wakes up early every morning to read his well-thumbed leather Bible (embossed in gold with his name), and speaks reverently--if a little warily--of his parents. "If I cursed at home, I'd get in so much trouble," he told me. "Oh my gosh, I don't even know what they'd do."

I haven't learned much more about Henry, the third resident of room 205. I still haven't figured out why he's starting at Liberty at age twenty-nine or what the rest of his story is, but he seems like a decent guy. He's a bit of a neat freak, and he tidies the room several times a day, but as a guy who tends to neglect things like cleanliness and basic hygiene, it's probably good for me to have a scrupulous roommate.

The only other notable thing I've learned about Henry is that he's very socially conservative. In fact, he may be the most conservative person I've ever met. Before bed tonight, he tells me about his old school, a state university in his home state of Missouri.

"There was just no morality on campus," he says. "All this partying, all these girls who dressed like prost.i.tutes prost.i.tutes. I had to get out of there."

Henry sips his Mountain Dew (he drinks four or five cans a night) and turns to me. "So, what about you? Where did you transfer from?"

"A school in Rhode Island," I say, using my tried-and-true minimal revelation strategy. Unfortunately, Henry isn't satisfied.

"Which school?"

"Brown."

"You went to Brown?" he says, his eyebrows arching.

I nod.

"Wow," he says, exhaling through rounded lips. "It must be terrible there. I wouldn't go to any of those schools. Yale, Harvard, Princeton. No way. I heard they have naked parties there. Lots of sinful behavior. And you can't go there without accepting their point of view."

After a few seconds of silence, he says, "So, how did you realize that Brown was morally corrupt?"

I decide to reframe his question slightly: "Well, you probably wouldn't have liked all the partying there."

"And what about the professors? I mean, what do they teach about how man was created?"

"I mean, I haven't taken any biology cla.s.ses," I say. "But I'm pretty sure they teach the evolutionary model."

He laughs. "Yeah, and they're they're supposed to be the best and brightest . . ." supposed to be the best and brightest . . ."

I've had the Brown conversation with ten or eleven guys on the hall so far, and Henry's is the first openly hostile reaction. The more common response has been sympathy. Most of the Liberty students I've met came from secular high schools and chose Liberty because of the ideological sanctuary it gave them. They a.s.sume I fled Brown to escape its atmosphere of secular hedonism. I get a lot of "Man, Liberty must be such a breath of fresh air for you."

I'm not sure breathing fresh air is the best metaphor for how I feel so far. If we're sticking with the respiration theme, it's more like violent, post-Boston Marathon panting. Everything I do here serves to remind me how out of place I am, from the conversations with Henry to the Bible mistakes I'm still making (when talking with Eric this morning, I mentioned that I liked the book of Philippians, p.r.o.nouncing it "Phillip-PIE-uhns." He looked at me askance and said: "You mean Phil-LIP-pee-uhns?").

During orientation week, blending in with Liberty students gave me a subversive thrill. Every time I did something right, I'd get a little head rush, like I'd just placed a dinner order at a Parisian restaurant and the waiter hadn't made a funny face at the way I p.r.o.nounced filet de boeuf. filet de boeuf. Even my cursing slipup was exciting in its own way. But now that the novelty has worn off, maintaining this kind of verisimilitude is just tiring. My mom asked me on the phone today if I missed my friends at Brown. And I know this sounds awful, but I honestly hadn't thought much about them. I'm too busy to exist fully in one world right now, never mind two. Even my cursing slipup was exciting in its own way. But now that the novelty has worn off, maintaining this kind of verisimilitude is just tiring. My mom asked me on the phone today if I missed my friends at Brown. And I know this sounds awful, but I honestly hadn't thought much about them. I'm too busy to exist fully in one world right now, never mind two.

A Bible that is torn and tattered usually belongs to a person who is not. This is Dr. Harold Thompson's daily devotion. It's projected in large letters on the whiteboard as we enter the lecture hall. Last cla.s.s, it was: "The road to h.e.l.l is paved with good intentions." This is Dr. Harold Thompson's daily devotion. It's projected in large letters on the whiteboard as we enter the lecture hall. Last cla.s.s, it was: "The road to h.e.l.l is paved with good intentions."

Old Testament Survey, which meets three times a week in the early afternoon, is an intimidating course. For one, Dr. Thompson is a severe man with frizzy, unkempt hair and very little humor about him, an archetypal grumpy teacher out of a Roald Dahl book. But my main issue with this cla.s.s is practical: I'm just not sure how I'm going to pa.s.s. As any casual Bible reader will attest, the Old Testament is no walk in the park. There's all that Israelite geography, all those genealogies and lists of high priests with sixteen-letter names who appear for a page or two and then disappear forever.

Luckily, I don't think I'll have to tackle the tough parts for at least another few weeks. We'll be going through the books of the Old Testament in order, beginning with the more familiar Genesis. And there's more good news: from what I can tell, Old Testament Survey isn't going to require a ma.s.sive amount of background knowledge. In fact, Dr. Thompson seems mostly concerned, like Dr. Dekker in History of Life, with teaching us how to defend the authority of the Bible in the face of skepticism.

I got this feeling on the first day of cla.s.s, when Dr. Thompson spent fifty minutes proving that Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible, also called the Pentateuch (or, in Judaism, the Torah). Secular religion scholars have largely abandoned this view, and the current prevailing theory says that the Pentateuch was composed of four separate literary strands over about five hundred years. Even most conservative theologians now admit that Moses didn't write all of the Pentateuch, though they maintain he may have had a hand in compiling it.

But as a literalist, Dr. Thompson considers it paramount that Moses himself, and only Moses, penned the five books. It's a tricky stance to substantiate--perhaps the biggest obstacle being that Moses' death is recorded in Deuteronomy, a book literalists believe he wrote. But Dr. Thompson has an explanation for this: "G.o.d gave Moses a prophetic vision of his own death, and he was able to write his own obituary into scripture."

This is shaping up to be his MO--finding parts of the Old Testament that require fancy footwork to be taken literally and working out a plausible solution. Today, for example, he brings up a theological roadblock posed in the Genesis creation story, when G.o.d rests on the seventh day.

"Why would G.o.d need to rest?" he asks. "He's G.o.d! He doesn't get tired!"

This verse bothered him for years, but he eventually came up with a fix. The word for "rested," he says, can also be translated from Hebrew as "refreshed himself." So when G.o.d rested, he wasn't worn out--he was "breathing a sigh of appreciation."

Or consider Noah's Flood, one of the hardest literalizations in the Bible. Dr. Thompson raises a series of common objections to the Flood narrative and then provides his own explanations.

Objection: There isn't enough water in the atmosphere for a flood that covers the whole earth, like Genesis says it did.

"Well, not now there isn't, but that doesn't mean there wasn't enough in Noah's time."

Objection: There couldn't have been enough s.p.a.ce on the Ark for all the food the thousands of animals would need.

"Well, that's simple. The animals would have been in estivation, a semicomatose state that happens to animals when they're traumatized. It's sort of like hibernation. In this state, animals on the Ark wouldn't require much food."

Dr. Thompson's defensive maneuvering is one way to deal with contradictions and textual problems in the Bible. The other way is to gloss over them entirely. This is the favored method of my New Testament Survey professor, Dr. Elmer Towns. Dr. Towns--Liberty's co-founder and longest-serving professor--teaches Sunday school at Thomas Road, and much of New Testament Survey is conducted in the same folksy, lay-audience tone, with little pause for a.n.a.lysis or critique. Consider this piece of yesterday's lecture about a star that appeared in the sky before the birth of Jesus: "I think--and this is just my conviction--that the star was supernatural. I think the wise men could see the star, and most other people looked up and didn't see it. If you saw the movie The Nativity The Nativity, the star was there, and they think it was the merging of two planets. Now, many Christians have thought that over the years, but I don't happen to agree with that interpretation."

On the whole, I enjoy my Bible cla.s.ses, even though my secular upbringing puts me miles behind my cla.s.smates. It's a little bizarre when the material gets hyper-literal, like in the last Old Testament cla.s.s, when Dr. Thompson spent ten minutes teaching us why Adam and Eve didn't have belly b.u.t.tons. (Correct answer: Adam was formed from dirt, and Eve was formed from Adam's rib, so neither of them needed umbilical cords.) Or when Dr. Towns, in an effort to keep us awake, tries to inject teen-speak into his New Testament lessons. ("Right here in Luke, when it talks about Jesus meeting a trollop, that's another word for . . . what do you guys call it these days? A ho. She was a ho.") But most of the time, the cla.s.ses deal with scriptural nuts and bolts. Stories from the Gospels. The lineage of Israel's patriarchs. Things that will be useful to know, even outside of Liberty.

In fact, I'm finding enlightenment in even my non-Bible courses. Like Theology. My professor in that cla.s.s, a warm, soft-spoken guy in his midthirties named Mr. Watson, spends each cla.s.s telling us about the history of Christian doctrine. It's by far the hardest cla.s.s in my schedule, with homework questions like "What is the semi-Pelagian view of predestination?" and "What did the Council of Trent decide regarding man's will and G.o.d's grace?" And, like Old Testament, I'm not sure how I'm going to pa.s.s. But I'll give it my best shot, and who knows? Maybe there's a Christian scholar inside me yet.

I will say this: it's good that History of Life, my creationist science cla.s.s, is held late in the afternoons, when I usually have almost twenty-four hours to wipe my mind clean of cynicism before my other cla.s.ses. That cla.s.s is still hard for me to sit through, and so far, I've only come up with one strategy to make it easier: I tell myself that by going, I'm learning things that will help me empathize with my new friends at Liberty. By listening to Dr. Dekker's vituperative anti-Darwin lectures and filling in blanks like "Outcomes of an Evolution View: Racism, Forced Sterilization, Abortion, and Euthanasia," I'm putting together the pieces of the creationist worldview. It's an hour of pain, but like childbirth or going to the dentist, it's productive pain.

It's Friday night, and I'm watching my roommate Eric play his twenty-sixth consecutive game of computer solitaire.

"There's nothing to dooooooooo," he says. "And it's only seven thirty. I'm so bored."

During the week, Dorm 22 is a fairly happening place. The enforced curfew brings all sixty residents back on the hall by midnight, where they hang out en ma.s.se until guys start to go to bed around 2:00 or 2:30 AM AM. Those two-ish hours are always filled with video game battles, push-up contests, and other thoroughly masculine activities. Last night, a bunch of guys decided to stage a poker tournament. (Proverbs warns against making "dishonest money" through gambling, but apparently doesn't come down either way on playing for Fritos.) The weekend is a different story, though. Students who live locally tend to go home, and aside from the occasional Christian concert, the university's weekend calendar is usually empty. So without the option of partying, those of us who remain on campus are left to our own devices. Earlier tonight, I took a trip to Staples to buy an ink cartridge for my printer, then went back to my dorm, where I installed the cartridge and played two games of Crazy Eights with my next-door neighbor Zipper (who calls it "Crazy, Crazy, Crazy Eights").

A few minutes after eight, my hallmate Paul Maddox comes into my room carrying his Bible.

"Roose, you want to come to Bible study? I need . . . what do you call it . . . a wingman."

Paul and I bonded during orientation week. He's a tall, buff, light-skinned black guy with a wide, pearly smile and triangular shoulder muscles that climb halfway up his neck. Paul is a fellow transfer student, and like me, this is his first time in an all-evangelical environment. He came to Liberty from a historically black college in South Carolina, partly for the Christian atmosphere and partly because he hopes to make the Liberty football team as a walk-on. Tryouts are next week, and he's been furiously preparing, lifting weights twice a day and running wind sprints late into the night.

But tonight, Paul has a romantic agenda. He wants to meet a Brazilian girl who is rumored to attend a certain Bible study group on Friday nights.

"I saw her the other day at the gym," he says. "She stopped me dead in my tracks, man."

It's a novel idea--Bible study as singles mixer. And since the alternative is to watch my roommate play solitaire until he claws his eyes out, I decide to go along.

The Bible study is held at the off-campus house of an older Liberty student named Jeremy. Every Friday night, a dozen or so students sit on the couches in Jeremy's bas.e.m.e.nt to discuss scripture and drink Caffeine-Free Diet c.o.ke. And as Paul promised, there is at least one very attractive Brazilian girl present, a tanned, brown-haired beauty with come-hither eyes and a thick accent that makes "G.o.d" into "Goad." Jeremy leads us through the book of Ephesians, stopping periodically to discuss important pa.s.sages. Paul and I are both relatively silent during the whole process--in my case, because I don't know anything about Ephesians, and in his case, because he's busy trying to sneak glances at the Brazilian girl (whose name, we learn, is Mariana).

After an hour of Bible study, Paul and I go upstairs to "fellows.h.i.+p" with Mariana. I didn't know what that verb meant when Paul suggested doing it, but judging from context, fellows.h.i.+p fellows.h.i.+p is Christian-speak for "hit on unsuccessfully." Paul is trying his best, alternating between laughing too hard at everything she says and telling his own stories with too much gesticulation, but it's hard to watch. is Christian-speak for "hit on unsuccessfully." Paul is trying his best, alternating between laughing too hard at everything she says and telling his own stories with too much gesticulation, but it's hard to watch.

After a while, Mariana's friend Anna comes over to talk. Anna is a tall, slender girl with long dark hair pulled into a ponytail, wearing a form-fitting green sweater and smart-looking gla.s.ses. Very cute, sort of a young Tina Fey.

When I introduce myself, Anna gestures to Paul and Mariana.

"Let's leave those two to flirt awkwardly in peace," she whispers.

I nod, and we amble over to the couch in the corner, where we sit and talk by ourselves. Ten minutes into our conversation, I am nursing a small-to-medium crush. Anna is an elementary education major from Delaware, a charming girl with a quick, playful wit. When I tell her I'm a transfer student, she talks candidly about her distaste for our school's strict rules ("Liberty is a pretty ironic name for this place, huh?") and gives me good advice on getting settled, including "never, ever eat at the dining hall," and "if you don't have time to clean your room before morning inspection, just throw your dirty clothes under your blanket."

After half an hour, I see Paul motioning toward the door. His efforts with the Brazilian girl haven't gone so well, and he's giving up. Strangely, I could swear I'm feeling a little chemistry with Anna.

"I should get going," I tell her. "But if you're not busy sometime . . ."

"I could show you around campus," she interrupts. "You need someone to stop you from s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up."

I laugh and grab my things, following Paul out the door.

"Ugh, this was such a bad night," he says, dragging his feet in the driveway.

"Really?"

"Well, maybe not for you," he says. "You looked like you were doing well over there."

I'm not exactly sure how I did, honestly. That chemistry with Anna may have been a figment of my imagination. All I know is that tonight exceeded my expectations by several notches. I wouldn't say it was a crazy, crazy, crazy night--maybe two-thirds of a crazy--but not bad at all.

When I wake up at 7:45 on Sunday morning, I expect to feel much worse. It's 7:45 on Sunday morning, after all. I sit up in bed and pat my torso like a sci-fi movie character after being teleported, checking to see if everything is in working order. And man, is it ever. My parts are loose and limber, like I could run a few consecutive 5Ks before breakfast with no real trouble. My mind is razor sharp, and my eyelids are defying gravity.

This is a relatively new phenomenon. Last semester at secular college, I spent a good number of my Sunday mornings in bed with head-splitting hangovers. I'd roll out of bed around noon, reach for the Advil, and spend the rest of the day in biological repentance. But today, I feel great. And it's a good thing, too, because I'm going to be on TV this morning.

A week ago, I was browsing Liberty's course offerings on the student website, looking for another cla.s.s to add to my schedule when I came across a half-credit course called TRBC Choir. I read the description, and it was exactly what it sounded like: an invitation to join the Thomas Road Baptist Church choir for cla.s.s credit. I couldn't believe it.

Thomas Road, of course, is one of America's largest and most legendary churches, sort of the St. Peter's of evangelicalism. It was among the first handful of American churches to host a television broadcast, and during its halcyon days, its services were seen in one of every four American homes. With Dr. Falwell in the pulpit, Thomas Road's congregation has always wielded tremendous political clout--it used to be said that no Republican could get to the White House without first pa.s.sing through Jerry's House. Today, the church remains influential, averaging fifteen thousand attendees every Sunday and a TV viewers.h.i.+p in the millions. It's the crown jewel of the Falwell empire, the inst.i.tution that made all the rest possible.

Even before coming to Liberty, I wondered what being on the creative end of a Thomas Road wors.h.i.+p service would feel like. Was it any different than viewing it from the congregation? Was there any secret backstage drama? And now, I was being offered a chance to join the choir, where I'd have an all-access pa.s.s to Thomas Road's inner workings in exchange for an hour of my time every week. How could I refuse? So I signed up.

I make my first blunder right away. I was told to arrive at church half an hour before the service for warm-up. I a.s.sumed this meant the nine o'clock service. When I get to the Thomas Road lobby at eighty-thirty, an elderly man working as an usher informs me that, in fact, the choir does not perform at the early service.

"Only eleven o'clock," he says. "You must be new. You made a new guy mistake."

I am, and I did. So with two hours to kill before warm-up, I take the time to case out Thomas Road.

Thomas Road, I should explain, is only partly a church. Yes, it has a sanctuary, a pulpit, a baptismal pool, and slots on the back of each seat containing t.i.thing envelopes. But to call it a church is really to miss the point. Thomas Road is located in a million-square-foot former cell phone factory, which Jerry Falwell obtained in 2004 and whose renovations have cost $24 million to date. Even in its semifinished state, the building already serves as a home to a staggering number of outfits. There's the Liberty School of Law, the Liberty Theological Seminary, a campus fitness center, a bookstore, an ice cream parlor, a doctor's office, an Olympic-size indoor track, and the Liberty Christian Academy, which serves more than 1,500 students in pre-K through twelfth grade.

Thomas Road's main sanctuary is a pristine, lavishly decorated Boeing hangar of a room. It seats six thousand on two levels, has a production booth in the balcony, a pair of giant Jumbotron screens flanking the stage, and two soundproof gla.s.s-walled "cry rooms" in the back for screaming babies and their mothers. Outside the sanctuary is main street, a s.h.i.+ny-floored hallway the size of an O'Hare runway. All along the hall, shelves of evangeli-kitsch cry out for attention. On offer are copies of Falwell: The Autobiography Falwell: The Autobiography, baskets of "Jesus First" lapel pins, DVDs of Dr. Falwell's old sermons. At the end of main street, the Lion and Lamb Cafe, an ersatz Starbucks, doles out m.u.f.fins and cappuccinos to the pre-and postchurch crowds.

As I'm staring at the Kids' Cove, a rubber-floored play area with a fibergla.s.s Noah's Ark as its centerpiece, I look at my watch. It's time for choir.

I walk into the choir room just as Linda, the choir manager, is a.s.signing robes to the Liberty students gathered around her. Thomas Road's choir is composed of about half Liberty students, maybe 120 students out of three hundred total singers. I stand in line in front of the rolling metal racks, and eventually get a purple polyester robe thrust at me. The tag identifies it as number 308.

As I slide it over my shoulders, I realize that it's far, far too big--an x.x.xL, at least. I'm pretty sure robe number 308 was designed to be worn on the body, but at this size, it could also be used to catch people jumping from burning buildings. I swallow my pride and take an empty seat in the back row. A big, burly man comes over to me almost immediately and introduces himself as Perry, the tenor section leader.

"I'm sorry young fella, but this is Frank's seat," he says. "He's been sitting here almost thirty years."

Perry suggests I take one of the seats in the front row.

Front row? He can't be serious. I was given a CD with the choir's repertoire a few days ago, and I've listened to it four or five times, but that hardly qualifies as rehearsing. Until I got up to speed, I planned to stand in the back and make myself inconspicuous. I tell Perry I'm nervous about being in front.

"It's my first week," I say. "I like to take my cues from other people."

He points me to a chair in the center of the front row and gives me a little push on the small of my back.

"Don't worry, son. There's a prompter in front of the stage. You'll be fine."

Within a few minutes, three hundred robe-clad singers are lined up in straight rows, ready to enter the choir loft. Section leaders pa.s.s out black folders with the morning's music. Our first song is "Days of Elijah," choir director Al announces. Al is a huge, rotund guy with a wide porcelain smile and a fair bit of pep in his step--think John Candy, but with the complete opposite disposition.

"Let's pray and get out of here, folks," he says. A few chatty sopranos shush each other, and all heads are bowed.

"Lord, may we sing today with such enthusiasm that people's hearts and minds are renewed, that they are reminded that you are the immutable, unchanging G.o.d. Blend our voices, Lord. I pray people would be directed to your son Jesus today. In his name we pray. Amen."

Al snaps his head up. "Okay folks, we're moving!"

We file down the back hallway of Thomas Road, climb the stairs leading up to the loft, and take our places. A purple curtain separates us from the audience, but I can hear the instruments tuning up on the stage below.

At 10:59 AM AM, Al pokes his head through the curtain to make sure we're ready. Then, three . . . two . . . one . . .

"Good morning folks, and welcome to Thomas Road!"

The curtain peels apart, the klieg lights come flooding down, and there they are--six thousand paris.h.i.+oners.

Before I know what's going on, I'm swept into action. The choir sings at full volume, accompanied by a fifteen-piece band: Behold he comes, riding on a cloud,s.h.i.+ning like the sun at the trumpet call.Lift your voice, it's the year of jubileeAnd out of Zion's hill salvation comes!

As advertised, there's a TelePrompter in the front row of the congregation with song lyrics in large yellow letters, so I'm playing a little game of karaoke that would be sort of fun if I weren't on national TV.

After I mumble my way through a few more songs and after the ushers come through the aisles to take the offering, Dr. Falwell pushes himself out of his chair and makes his way to the pulpit with his penguin-like shuffle--leading with his hips and sort of waddling behind them. He's wearing his trademark black suit and red tie, and from the back, I can make out the line behind his ears where his stage makeup ends.

"Today," he says, "I want us to take another step--moving to another level. For you as a believer, for you as a Christian family, and for us as a local church."

As he preaches, a clock on the prompter tells him how much time remains in the broadcast. Video cameras whiz around on mechanical arms, flying in for shots from all angles. From my seat, I can see the team of engineers in the production booth jostling around frantically, making sure everything goes smoothly.

"G.o.d has great things in mind for each of us. G.o.d wants to use you and bless you even more than you want to be used or blessed."

Thomas Road's televised service bears almost no resemblance to the shrieking, crying, miracle-healing church services most outsiders a.s.sociate with televangelism. The cameras play background roles here, and you'd hardly notice them if you weren't looking. Dr. Falwell works with no notes, and there's nothing on the prompter during his sermon. He stands and delivers calmly, sometimes s.h.i.+fting back on his heels, sometimes slipping his hands in his pockets.

When the clock on the TelePrompter begins running down (0:33 . . . 0:32 . . . 0:31), the piano player sprinkles in a soft background melody, and Dr. Falwell winds up for the altar call.

"Life is so short, and G.o.d has big things for us to do," he says. "G.o.d has something for you you to do today. Let's bow our heads and pray. While our heads are bowed, our pastors will position themselves at the head of every one of these aisles. If you need to be born again or confess your sins and get started over again or join Thomas Road Baptist Church, come down the nearest aisle." to do today. Let's bow our heads and pray. While our heads are bowed, our pastors will position themselves at the head of every one of these aisles. If you need to be born again or confess your sins and get started over again or join Thomas Road Baptist Church, come down the nearest aisle."

While choir director Al sings the invitation song, Dr. Falwell watches the aisles closely and prods his congregants to respond, growing a little harsher each time.

I'm forgiven . . . I'm forgiven . . .

"Come on down the aisles right now."