The Unlikely Disciple Part 5

"And you remembered to hold the doors for her?"

"Of course."

"Please tell me you didn't make a move."

"Nope, nothing. Just told her goodbye as she got out of the car."

Paul lets out a nervous chuckle. "Heh. You mean after you walked her to the door, right?"

I hesitate a beat too long.

"You didn't walk her to the door?!"

And just like that, the guys explode in laughter. Paul pounds the desk. Jeremy lets out a high-pitched howl.

"You mean to tell me you took her out for dinner, you got her number, got her number, but you didn't walk her to the door?" Paul says. but you didn't walk her to the door?" Paul says.

"You didn't tell me I had to!"

He mimes shooting himself in the temple. Wayne shakes his head.

"Man, you thought you were riding high," Paul says. "You're a fool, man. Freaking northerners."

Midway through my third week at Christian college, I'm realizing that this semester is going to be an exercise in balance.

On one hand, I'm settling into my cla.s.ses, I'm fitting in much better on my hall than I expected to, and I've been pretty effective at battling homesickness. Making it through the whole semester doesn't seem so far-fetched anymore, especially now that I've got a love interest. On the other hand, I'm seeing a fair number of foreign, sometimes frightening things here, and I'm seeing them regularly enough that it keeps Liberty from feeling comfortable for more than a few hours at a time. A few revelations of note from the past week: * Liberty students aren't allowed to hold demonstrations. This Orwellian twist isn't widely publicized, and it didn't come up during orientation week, but I was browsing "The Liberty Way" the other night, and that's what I saw: "Student partic.i.p.ation in on-campus demonstrations, pet.i.tions, or picketing" without university permission is punishable with twelve reprimands and a fifty-dollar fine. There are several other rules Liberty doesn't tell you about during orientation week. For example, a girl found to have had an abortion is subject to thirty reprimands, a $500 fine, thirty hours of community service, and possible expulsion. The same penalty awaits a Liberty student found guilty of "involvement with witchcraft, seances or other satanic or demonic activity." * Liberty students aren't allowed to hold demonstrations. This Orwellian twist isn't widely publicized, and it didn't come up during orientation week, but I was browsing "The Liberty Way" the other night, and that's what I saw: "Student partic.i.p.ation in on-campus demonstrations, pet.i.tions, or picketing" without university permission is punishable with twelve reprimands and a fifty-dollar fine. There are several other rules Liberty doesn't tell you about during orientation week. For example, a girl found to have had an abortion is subject to thirty reprimands, a $500 fine, thirty hours of community service, and possible expulsion. The same penalty awaits a Liberty student found guilty of "involvement with witchcraft, seances or other satanic or demonic activity." * I went to a Love4Life relations.h.i.+p conference at Thomas Road last weekend, which turned out to be a bad idea. Although it was advertised as an event for singles and married couples alike, I was one of maybe a dozen bachelors in attendance and was forced to sit through seminars like "Time-Starved Marriages" and "The DNA of Commitment." About half of the conference was spent denouncing same-s.e.x marriage efforts, with representatives of conservative lobbying groups like the Family Research Council handing out books like * I went to a Love4Life relations.h.i.+p conference at Thomas Road last weekend, which turned out to be a bad idea. Although it was advertised as an event for singles and married couples alike, I was one of maybe a dozen bachelors in attendance and was forced to sit through seminars like "Time-Starved Marriages" and "The DNA of Commitment." About half of the conference was spent denouncing same-s.e.x marriage efforts, with representatives of conservative lobbying groups like the Family Research Council handing out books like Outrage: How Gay Activists and Liberal Judges Are Tras.h.i.+ng Democracy to Redefine Marriage. Outrage: How Gay Activists and Liberal Judges Are Tras.h.i.+ng Democracy to Redefine Marriage.* During my History of Life cla.s.s yesterday afternoon, we spent some time learning about the precise physical dimensions of Noah's Ark. According to Dr. Dekker, the Ark was 73 feet wide and 437 feet long with a gross tonnage of 13,960 tons and the freight capacity of 533 railroad stock cars. "This thing had s.p.a.ce for 125,280 sheep-size animals," he said. "It was basically a floating skysc.r.a.per." * Last night, my hallmates told me about Scaremare, a famous Liberty attraction. Every October, Liberty sets up a ma.s.sively popular haunted house (twenty thousand people attended last year) that features various frightening characters and gory death scenes. After making their way through the house, visitors see a b.l.o.o.d.y, agonized Jesus hanging from a cross--"the ultimate death scene"--and are taken into white tents, where Liberty students counsel them on how to accept Christ as their savior and avoid the fate that awaits them when they die. As one hallmate put it, "Most haunted houses try to scare the h.e.l.l out of people. We try to scare people out of h.e.l.l." * Last night, my hallmates told me about Scaremare, a famous Liberty attraction. Every October, Liberty sets up a ma.s.sively popular haunted house (twenty thousand people attended last year) that features various frightening characters and gory death scenes. After making their way through the house, visitors see a b.l.o.o.d.y, agonized Jesus hanging from a cross--"the ultimate death scene"--and are taken into white tents, where Liberty students counsel them on how to accept Christ as their savior and avoid the fate that awaits them when they die. As one hallmate put it, "Most haunted houses try to scare the h.e.l.l out of people. We try to scare people out of h.e.l.l."

The weird thing is, I already feel myself becoming numb to Liberty's oddities. Last night, I was at the gym with some guys from Dorm 22, and someone called someone else a f.a.ggot. I made a mental note of it, but it didn't make me wince. Dr. Falwell gave a convocation sermon about Christian missionaries the other day, and although I recognized that some of what he was saying was dangerous (e.g., "what the developing world needs is not food or water, but the word of G.o.d"), it didn't faze me like it should have.

A few days ago, a friend e-mailed me a New York Times New York Times article about a science professor at Liberty named Marcus Ross. Ross, who is also a PhD candidate in geoscience at the University of Rhode Island, wrote his dissertation on mosasaurs, a type of marine reptile that went extinct about 65 million years ago. The hook of the article is that Ross doesn't believe the earth is 65 million years old. Like Dr. Dekker, he believes in a six-thousand-year-old earth created by G.o.d in six days. When asked how he reconciles his creationist beliefs with his secular doctoral work, Ross says that he does his secular research within one framework (mainstream scientific consensus) and his creationism work within another framework (the Bible). article about a science professor at Liberty named Marcus Ross. Ross, who is also a PhD candidate in geoscience at the University of Rhode Island, wrote his dissertation on mosasaurs, a type of marine reptile that went extinct about 65 million years ago. The hook of the article is that Ross doesn't believe the earth is 65 million years old. Like Dr. Dekker, he believes in a six-thousand-year-old earth created by G.o.d in six days. When asked how he reconciles his creationist beliefs with his secular doctoral work, Ross says that he does his secular research within one framework (mainstream scientific consensus) and his creationism work within another framework (the Bible).

When I first read the article, I was confused. How can you work with ancient fossils and then turn around and claim that G.o.d made them five thousand years ago? It seemed intellectually dishonest, if not downright fraudulent.

I still don't know how Ross does it, but I have realized this: the mental compartmentalization he talks about is a real thing. Over the past two weeks, I've felt it happening in my own life. I still feel very connected to my secular self, and it still responds quickly whenever I hear about something like Scaremare or the no-demonstration rule. But I can feel myself carving a second, smaller self out of the first, sort of a religious version of W.E.B. DuBois's double consciousness. And the Christian slice of my brain is more apt to give these things a fair shake. I hear Dr. Dekker talking about a 437-foot Ark, and most of me says "no way." But a little part--maybe 5 or 10 percent--wants to be allowed to toy around with the possibility that it actually was a floating skysc.r.a.per.

This is probably not something I should tell my family.

On Friday night, nearly everybody on campus heads over to the Vines Center for Coffeehouse. Coffeehouse is a ma.s.sively popular student talent show that occurs once a semester, and unlike other talent shows I've seen, this one is audition-only, which might explain the ridiculously high level of talent. When I walked in, I steeled myself for a few hours of cut-rate student schlock. But from the interpretive dance set to the Mighty Mouse theme song to the country band called Derek and the Hee-Haws, every act is professional quality. Well, almost every act. There are one or two patchy spots, like the guy who does an SNL SNL-style Robert Goulet skit that sounds more like a laryngitic Robin Leach. But everything else is top-notch.

Every Coffeehouse features one or two professional Christian musicians brought in to give the event some gravitas. Tonight, the featured performer is KJ-52, a well-known Christian rapper. KJ-52 comes to the stage to huge applause. He's a lanky, goateed white guy, wearing a white sleeveless T-s.h.i.+rt, a baseball hat flipped backward, and a bandana around his neck. KJ-52 fas.h.i.+ons himself as the evangelical Eminem and has even written songs comparing himself to the secular rapper. (One such song, in which KJ-52 offered to pray for Eminem, was featured on a VH1 show called 40 Least Hip-Hop Moments 40 Least Hip-Hop Moments.) KJ-52--or Five-Tweezy, as he calls himself--explains that his name does not stand for King James as his Christian fans all a.s.sume. In fact, it's a combination of his old stage name, King J Mack, and the numbers five and two. "Not fifty-two," he raps, a giant gilded crucifix swinging like a pendulum from his neck. "It's five-two, and it means five loaves, two fishes, baby."

Five-Tweezy's performance is actually not terrible, considering that most of rap's usual subjects--money, drugs, loose women--are off-limits to him. He drops verses like: Back in the day when I was a teenager Back in the day when I was a teenagerI was only fifteen when I just met my saviorAnd he came in straight in my heart and he just changed theWay I used to live in ill behavior.

After he finishes, a hip-hop group composed of Liberty students comes on to close out the concert. They're not bad either, and they have the distinction of providing my new favorite rap lyric: Tryin' to find purpose in life without Christ Tryin' to find purpose in life without ChristIs like findin' Wesley Snipes in the dark with no flashlight.

For me, the biggest surprise of the night wasn't the fact that Christian rap exists, or that a Christian rap group made a Wesley Snipes reference. It was the fact that all the Liberty students in attendance knew exactly who they were talking about.

When I came to Liberty, I expected to find ten thousand students who had been reared entirely on Christian pop culture. I expected to hear a lot about Michael W. Smith and VeggieTales VeggieTales and nothing about Eminem and and nothing about Eminem and Entourage Entourage. But nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, aside from the prayer that kicked off the evening, everything about tonight's Coffeehouse, from the Wesley Snipes reference to the montage of 1990s TV clips that played at the beginning of the night (Full House! Doug! Saved by the Bell!), was steeped in secular pop culture.

Of course, there is some Christian pop culture on campus. In addition to KJ-52, my hallmates listen to artists like Chris Tomlin (the evangelical John Mayer) and tobyMac (think Kid Rock plus Justin Timberlake plus Stryper). They play video games like Left Behind: Eternal Forces Left Behind: Eternal Forces, and the other night, a few of us watched a DVD of Christian stand-up comedy called Thou Shalt Laugh Thou Shalt Laugh, which contained an amazing number of jokes about parenting.

But more often, the pop culture I see around campus is secular. In Dorm 22, Jack Johnson and Dave Matthews make much more frequent appearances on iTunes playlists than BarlowGirl, and for every copy of Thou Shalt Laugh Thou Shalt Laugh, there are two or three Sopranos Sopranos box sets. In fact, some of my friends here are more in touch with secular pop culture than I am. Last week, I kept hearing a new catchphrase being tossed around--something about "give me a chicken sandwich and some waffle fries." I thought it was a Christian in-joke I didn't get, but when I asked my roommate Eric, he pointed me to a viral YouTube video called "Unforgivable," which features a very angry black man saying things that are definitely not found in box sets. In fact, some of my friends here are more in touch with secular pop culture than I am. Last week, I kept hearing a new catchphrase being tossed around--something about "give me a chicken sandwich and some waffle fries." I thought it was a Christian in-joke I didn't get, but when I asked my roommate Eric, he pointed me to a viral YouTube video called "Unforgivable," which features a very angry black man saying things that are definitely not found in 30 Days to Taming Your Tongue. 30 Days to Taming Your Tongue.

Liberty used to take a stricter approach to secular pop culture. The 1976 student handbook prohibited "rock music, country-western music, songs with anti-biblical or anti-American words or any Christian music which without the words sounds like rock music." But today's Liberty students are urged only to "choose music that honors the Savior and is in harmony with G.o.d's word," with no specific genres or artists prohibited. Secular TV shows, video games, and non-R-rated movies are permitted, though university-sponsored events are often held to higher standards. Last week, I got an e-mail invitation to a student screening of Nacho Libre, Nacho Libre, the PG-13 Jack Black comedy about a Mexican priest who moonlights as a masked wrestler. The e-mail said: "You can dress up like Nacho Libre, except you'll have to wear Liberty Way-appropriate nonspandex pants, and you'll have to wear a Liberty Way-appropriate s.h.i.+rt. Other than that, you can dress up like Nacho Libre!" the PG-13 Jack Black comedy about a Mexican priest who moonlights as a masked wrestler. The e-mail said: "You can dress up like Nacho Libre, except you'll have to wear Liberty Way-appropriate nonspandex pants, and you'll have to wear a Liberty Way-appropriate s.h.i.+rt. Other than that, you can dress up like Nacho Libre!"

I'd guess that Liberty has loosened its prohibitions on secular pop culture partly because the Internet age has made enforcing those sorts of rules nearly impossible. But I suspect it also has to do with the changing tastes of students. Some of my hallmates, for example, don't just prefer secular pop culture--they actively dislike the Christian stuff.

The other day, I hung out with James Powell, the SLD from Dorm 22. Powell was telling me about G.o.dTube, a new Christian website (Motto: "Find Your Purpose") that purports to be the evangelical equivalent of YouTube.

"It only allows Christian videos," he said. "There's a site called MyPraize, too. Have you heard of that? It's the Christian Mys.p.a.ce. Started by a Liberty grad."

"That's awesome," I said.

"Are you kidding me?" he said. "Ugh, I hate that stuff."

Powell proceeded to explain that although he understands why Christian pop culture exists and although he thinks there's some good Christian music out there, he doesn't like it when Christians simply coopt elements of secular pop culture, rename them, and claim them as their own. He calls this "cheesy Christianity," and he claims that nothing irritates him more.

"I think it gives us a bad name," he says. "And really, why should we want to create a separate culture? It makes no sense. G.o.d tells us to be the salt of the earth, and we're afraid to interact with the world on its own terms. When I see something like MyPraize, I just want to shake whoever created it and tell him, 'Brother, if you think creating a Christian Mys.p.a.ce and giving it a corny, cliched name is the best way you can possibly honor G.o.d, something is very wrong.' "

Powell's seems to be the dominant view on my hall--Christian pop culture can be worthwhile if done well, but bad Christian pop culture isn't redeemed merely by the fact that it's Christian. My hallmates would rather chance it in the secular world than listen to Michael W. Smith warble his way through "Our G.o.d Is an Awesome G.o.d."

At the same time, while some Liberty students don't totally identify with Christian pop culture, they recognize the dangers lurking in secular pop culture. There's a process of discernment, of partaking in the secular world cautiously while keeping one eye on your soul.

Last night, I walked into Powell's room as his roommate, a guy named Jake Myers, was deciding whether or not to watch the new James Bond movie playing at the Lynchburg multiplex. Jake, who serves as the second SLD in Dorm 22, had enlisted the help of a website called Kids in Mind. The website rates thousands of movies on a one-to-ten scale in three categories--s.e.x and nudity, violence and gore, and profanity--and provides detailed descriptions of the more salacious scenes. For the PG-13 Bond movie, the warnings included: "A man and a woman exchange flirtatious barbs in a couple of scenes." "A man and a woman exchange flirtatious barbs in a couple of scenes.""A man and a woman kiss pa.s.sionately, they pull each other's clothes off (nothing is visible), they kiss, lie on a bed, and they roll over and fall out of the bed and onto the floor (it is implied that they have s.e.x)."

Jake read the scene descriptions out loud, mulled it over for several minutes, emitted a little sigh, and decided to switch to a movie about cartoon penguins, which was rated PG and which got much lower rankings in all three categories. "This one's better," he said. "I think it'll be good."

While he was deciding on movies, I asked Jake where he draws his line. Is one topless scene enough for him to cross a film off his list? What about curse words? Is the F-bomb a deal-breaker?

"I dunno," he said. "I guess it depends how I'm doing in my walk with the Lord at a given point in time. You know, I like action movies as much as the next guy, Roose, but I work too hard at this holiness stuff to stumble just because of one lousy movie. Why not just keep myself pure?"

We All, Like Sheep, Have Gone Astray

Even in its weather patterns, Lynchburg, Virginia, is a fundamentalist city. Unlike the fickle New England winters I came from, where snow, sun, fog, and rain operate on a twenty-minute loop, Lynchburg in late February has good days and bad days, and nothing in between. On a good day, the temperature hovers around fifty, the sun never dims, and you can get away with short sleeves. On a bad day, the wind is piercing and cold, and it thunderstorms from sunrise till dusk.

Today is a good day, so I'm working outside. Behind DeMoss Hall, there's a courtyard with a dozen picnic tables and a decently scenic view, so after cla.s.ses, I took my books there, kicked my feet up, and began to study for my two favorite cla.s.ses: Theology and Old Testament.

In Theology, we're learning about the rift between the Calvinist and Arminian views of salvation. To condense two dense and nuanced philosophies into a paragraph: John Calvin and Jacobus Arminius, two sixteenth-century theologians, disagreed on several points of Christian doctrine, the most contentious of which was the doctrine of election. Calvin believed that G.o.d chooses, or "elects" people to be saved before their birth (this is also known as the Reformed view). Arminius, on the other hand, believed that people are able to choose whether or not to be saved (the free will view). Even more simply, Calvinists believe that G.o.d chooses people, and Arminians believe that people choose G.o.d.

Surprisingly, not everyone at Liberty agrees. Dr. Falwell takes a free will approach to salvation. But Liberty has a large and vocal Calvinist population, and they've formed their own Facebook groups, like "Reformed and Proud of It." Naturally, the Arminians have fought back, with groups like "Calvinists Have Cooties" and mocking T-s.h.i.+rts like "CALVINISM: THIS s.h.i.+RT CHOSE ME." It's this school's version of a Red Sox-Yankees rivalry, and until this week's Theology lecture, I had no idea what everyone was arguing about. It's this school's version of a Red Sox-Yankees rivalry, and until this week's Theology lecture, I had no idea what everyone was arguing about.

My Old Testament cla.s.s has stopped being so defensive, and we're diving into the rest of the Pentateuch. It's fascinating, difficult stuff. For example, most people know that G.o.d loosed ten plagues on Egypt in the book of Exodus, but did you know that each of those plagues was targeted to parallel and discredit a specific Egyptian G.o.d? The plague of frogs was based on the Egyptian G.o.ddess Heqt, who had the head of a frog. The plague that brought disease to Egypt's livestock was an affront to Hathor, a cow-headed G.o.ddess that was the symbolic mother of the Pharaoh. When Pharaoh had to ask Moses to pet.i.tion G.o.d to remove the plagues, he was in effect conceding that the G.o.d of Israel was more powerful than the Egyptian G.o.ds to whom those tasks had been a.s.signed for centuries.

Of course, not every cla.s.s is as stimulating as those two. Like History of Life, which is shaping up to be quite a production. Last cla.s.s, Dr. Dekker opened his lecture by showing us a cartoon of a group of aristocrats fawning over a man clad in his underwear.

"Evolution," he said, "is like 'The Emperor's New Clothes.' What we have in our society is a public school system, media, museums, zoos, the Discovery Channel--all of these avenues built off the 'fact' of evolution [here, he air-quoted]. A lot of people have the same opinion, that evolution is all this 'evidence' [again], and if I want to be perceived as 'intelligent' [again] I need to go along with it. But all it takes is one person to point out the obvious flaws in the 'theory' [one more time] and then everyone can see evolution for what it is: a fraud."

So far, I've gleaned a few dominant themes from my cla.s.ses--a few things Liberty really, really wants us to know: * Evolution didn't happen. Of course, History of Life is singularly concerned with the topic, but all of my other cla.s.ses, from Theology to Old Testament to GNED to Evangelism 101, have touched on it as well. I've heard several strains of anti-evolution jabs so far. One is when a professor points out that both creationism and evolution are based on faith--faith in G.o.d on the one hand, faith that man evolved from pond sc.u.m with no divine help on the other. Another is when a professor makes a case for creationism using all of the well-worn scientific canards about gaps in the fossil record and the flaws of carbon dating. The most popular weapon, though, is garden-variety sarcasm. Depending on which Liberty professor you ask, believing that life evolved via natural selection is as plausible as believing that a dynamite stick thrown into a printing factory would produce an exact copy of the Declaration of Independence, believing that a tornado hitting a junkyard would produce a fully functional Boeing 747, or believing that placing all the parts of a wrist.w.a.tch in a box and shaking it would produce an intact Rolex. I've heard several strains of anti-evolution jabs so far. One is when a professor points out that both creationism and evolution are based on faith--faith in G.o.d on the one hand, faith that man evolved from pond sc.u.m with no divine help on the other. Another is when a professor makes a case for creationism using all of the well-worn scientific canards about gaps in the fossil record and the flaws of carbon dating. The most popular weapon, though, is garden-variety sarcasm. Depending on which Liberty professor you ask, believing that life evolved via natural selection is as plausible as believing that a dynamite stick thrown into a printing factory would produce an exact copy of the Declaration of Independence, believing that a tornado hitting a junkyard would produce a fully functional Boeing 747, or believing that placing all the parts of a wrist.w.a.tch in a box and shaking it would produce an intact Rolex. * Abortion is murder. This one also seems to find its way into lessons of every stripe, and it's often thinly veiled, if it's veiled at all. In my New Testament cla.s.s, for example, we don't simply study the pa.s.sage in the Gospel of Luke when John the Baptist leaps for joy in his mother's womb at the arrival of the Virgin Mary. We study how John "could listen and think in the womb, which proves that the abortionists are wrong." * Abortion is murder. This one also seems to find its way into lessons of every stripe, and it's often thinly veiled, if it's veiled at all. In my New Testament cla.s.s, for example, we don't simply study the pa.s.sage in the Gospel of Luke when John the Baptist leaps for joy in his mother's womb at the arrival of the Virgin Mary. We study how John "could listen and think in the womb, which proves that the abortionists are wrong." * Absolute truth exists. At Liberty, unlike many secular schools, professors teach with the view that there is one right answer to every question, that those right answers are found plainly in the Bible, and that their job is to transfer those right answers from their lecture notes to our minds. It's a subtle difference in ideology, but it makes for big changes in teaching style. Most of my cla.s.ses use workbooks--thin, self-published transcriptions of the professor's notes with one or two words blanked out per sentence. As the professor teaches, his notes appear on PowerPoint slides, and we fill in the missing words in our workbooks. * Absolute truth exists. At Liberty, unlike many secular schools, professors teach with the view that there is one right answer to every question, that those right answers are found plainly in the Bible, and that their job is to transfer those right answers from their lecture notes to our minds. It's a subtle difference in ideology, but it makes for big changes in teaching style. Most of my cla.s.ses use workbooks--thin, self-published transcriptions of the professor's notes with one or two words blanked out per sentence. As the professor teaches, his notes appear on PowerPoint slides, and we fill in the missing words in our workbooks.

A sample filled-in page from my GNED workbook: GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF A BIBLICAL ETHICIt is based on G.o.d's unchanging nature. It is dependent upon G.o.d's revealed truth. What G.o.d says must matter to us. It is dependent upon G.o.d's revealed truth. What G.o.d says must matter to us. It is authoritative--it is G.o.d "breathed" (inspiration). It is authoritative--it is G.o.d "breathed" (inspiration).It is prescriptive--it tells us how we should live.

And from my New Testament workbook: JESUS COMMISSIONS TWELVE DISCIPLES1. His preparation. "All night in prayer" (Luke 6:12, NKJV). 2. Their job description. ". . . that they might be with Him and that He might send them out to preach" (Mark 3:14, NKJV). 2. Their job description. ". . . that they might be with Him and that He might send them out to preach" (Mark 3:14, NKJV). 3. Our application. We must have vision. "When He saw the mult.i.tudes . . ." (Matthew 9:36, NKJV). We must have compa.s.sion. "He was moved with compa.s.sion" (Matthew 9:36, NKJV). We must pray. 3. Our application. We must have vision. "When He saw the mult.i.tudes . . ." (Matthew 9:36, NKJV). We must have compa.s.sion. "He was moved with compa.s.sion" (Matthew 9:36, NKJV). We must pray.

I've gotten a lot of questions from my secular friends and family about my Liberty cla.s.ses. Of course, they want to know what's being taught, and when I tell them, their response is always something like, "Wow. That must be so hard for you." My aunt Teresa, the psychotherapist from Was.h.i.+ngton, e-mailed me the other week with some practical advice: "Carrying a rock in your pocket from your most comforting geographical location can help ground you," she wrote. "If your mouth is itching to open and say something, just fondle the rock and let it absorb the words and feelings."

My family is right to a.s.sume that I have trouble believing a lot of what I'm learning these days. I'm studying Calvinism and Arminianism out of academic interest, not because I think either one describes my personal journey to salvation. Same with creationism. But despite that, I actually haven't been itching to stand up and object during my cla.s.ses. Maybe I'm compartmentalizing my academic life the same way I'm compartmentalizing my social life, willfully ignoring the offensive things my hallmates say, but answering questions about Liberty's subject material doesn't feel all that different from the other kinds of academic posturing I've done, like when I pretended that I'd read Ulysses Ulysses to impress my Joyce-obsessed high school English teacher. to impress my Joyce-obsessed high school English teacher.

Plus, I'm not doing well enough in my cla.s.ses to criticize them. On two of the quizzes I've taken--one in Old Testament, one in GNED--I've scored in the mid-70s. So for now, I think I'll hunker down on my studies and let he who is without Cs cast the first stone.

" 'Ey Rooster, lookame go! Rooster! I'm flying!"

Jersey Joey is skateboarding naked, and he wants me to watch. This shtick varies only slightly from night to night. Last night, he created an on-the-spot interpretive dance to a Josh Groban song that involved dry humping a pillow. The night before, he organized a hallwide eighties-rock party, complete with water bottle microphones and tennis racket guitars.

Joey Morone is a freshman from Hoboken, New Jersey, who has a.s.sumed a role as the resident rebel of Dorm 22. It's hard to miss Joey, who looks like a young James Dean, speaks with the thick brogue of his home state, and sports a ma.s.sive amount of highly infectious charisma. One semester after Joey's arrival on campus, Dorm 22 is already starting to sound like a Goodfellas Goodfellas casting call. Small-town pastors' kids walk around telling each other, " 'Ey, tough guy, you're a friggin' joke, you hear me?" casting call. Small-town pastors' kids walk around telling each other, " 'Ey, tough guy, you're a friggin' joke, you hear me?"

Jersey Joey isn't a real rebel, of course. At nineteen, he's still a virgin, and he has never tried hard drugs, but he speaks with great pride about making out with girls at home and drinking beer "once in a while." He smokes an occasional cigarette, he lets a curse fly from time to time, and he's gotten fifteen or sixteen reprimands this semester for infractions like "sleeping in convo" and "improper sign-out." This set of accomplishments would qualify him as the cleanest-cut student at many other American colleges, but here, it makes him an unspeakable bada.s.s.

Joey lives in room 201 at the end of the hall, with a pastor's kid named Jonah and a brawny, bearded guy named Travis. Because Joey's rebellious friends congregate there every night after curfew, his room has gained a reputation as an enclave of sin. It's a bit of an exaggeration--the most indecent thing that happens in there is an R-rated movie or two--but Joey's friends revel in their renegade personas. A half-dozen room 201 regulars have started a running reprimand tally, taping their violation slips in rows on the wall as they acc.u.mulate. Joey has eighteen reprimands so far this year, the most recent of which he received for a decoration he put on his fridge--a ribbon-shaped magnet that read "Support s.l.u.ts."

I've been hanging around Joey a lot in the past few weeks, both because his room is two doors away from mine and because he, more than anyone else on the hall, reminds me of my secular friends. He's immature and boisterous, yes, but he's far enough from Liberty's mainstream that I get a certain reversionary comfort from watching him pee in somebody's sink or what have you.

The first time I met Joey, he and his friend Marco were in room 201, reminiscing about the 1990s TV show Boy Meets World. Boy Meets World.

"Dude, Joey, tell me you didn't have the biggest b.o.n.e.r when you saw Topanga on that show."

"Nah, man, she's a little thick for my taste."

"Now she is, yeah. But like, in the beginning of the show, she was so hot."

"Of course, but then she went to college and turned into a fata.s.s."

"I bet she would still give a great BJ, though."

The first thing to know about Jersey Joey and his friends is that for a bunch of virgins, they spend a staggering amount of time talking about s.e.x. It's almost pathological. Most nights, the topics of conversation include how hot Jonah's girlfriend is, why Joey should make out with Jonah's girlfriend's younger sister, and how it feels to squeeze a b.o.o.b.

The amazing thing about Joey and his friends is how they're perceived by the rest of Dorm 22. Far from being outcasts, the room 201 rebels are some of the most popular guys on the hall. Some of Joey's antics--like the naked skateboarding--are greeted with rolled eyes, but for the most part, he's accepted as just another personality. Fox the RA told me that he considers Joey a "pain in the neck," but he added, "I love the guy. He keeps things interesting."

The trick to being a rebel at Liberty, I've learned, is knowing which parts of the Liberty social code are non-negotiable. For example, Joey and his friends listen to vulgarity-filled secular hip-hop, but you'll never catch them defending h.o.m.os.e.xuality. (On the contrary, Joey's insults of choice are "queer" and "gaywad.") And although they might hara.s.s the naive pastors' kids on the hall by stealing their towels from the shower stalls--leaving them naked, wet, and stranded--they'd be the first people to tell you why Mormonism is a false religion. In other words, Liberty's true social code, the one they don't put in a forty-six-page manual, has everything to do with being a social and religious conservative and not a whole lot to do with acting in any traditionally virtuous way.

But back to room 201. Tonight, after Joey's skateboarding escapades are over, I'm sitting in his room with three or four other guys talking about our cla.s.ses.

"Rooster, you're a freshman, right?" asks Travis, Joey's roommate.

"Soph.o.m.ore," I correct.

"Wait, Rooster," says Joey. "You didn't start college this semester? Where'd you transfer from?"

"A school in Rhode Island."

"Which school?"

"Brown."

Joey's eyebrows rocket up his forehead. "You went to Brown? No, you didn't. You're lying."

"No, he's not, dude," says Marco, a freshman from San Diego. "He told me the same thing last week."

Joey looks at me sideways. "Why would you come here from Brown?"

I give him my standard yarn--I wanted to see what Christian college was like--and he sits a little lower in his chair, thinking hard, rubbing his chin.

"That's it?" he says. "No other reason? Your parents didn't make you come here?"

"Nope."

"And we're talking Brown University? Like, Princeton, Harvard, Columbia, Brown?"

"Yeah."

At this point, I'm feeling a little nervous. Unlike the other guys in the room, Joey seems to know enough about secular academia to know that a Brown student transferring to Liberty makes no sense whatsoever, and he's not letting it go. I'm expecting a string of tough questions, followed by a Google search and a background check.

But instead, he asks, "So Rooster, when you were at Brown, did you, uh, party?"

I should mention that until tonight, Jersey Joey and his friends have considered me a bit of a sanctimonious nerd. I think it had something to do with the two or three days after I read that Taming Your Tongue Taming Your Tongue book and went around saying "Golly!" and "Gee whiz!" Or maybe it was the time Joey caught me typing my notes into my laptop late on a Sat.u.r.day night and I told him I was working on a prayer journal. In any case, something I did marked me as less than rebellious in their eyes, and now that Joey's asking me about my old social habits, I figure I should take the opportunity to boost my rep. book and went around saying "Golly!" and "Gee whiz!" Or maybe it was the time Joey caught me typing my notes into my laptop late on a Sat.u.r.day night and I told him I was working on a prayer journal. In any case, something I did marked me as less than rebellious in their eyes, and now that Joey's asking me about my old social habits, I figure I should take the opportunity to boost my rep.

"I mean, I partied a little," I say.

"No way," he says. "Like, you drank and everything?"

Joey included, there are now five guys in the room, and they're all staring at me, waiting for my response.

"Yeah," I say. "I drank."

Joey laughs. "Wow, Rooster. I did not see that one coming."

My answer is all it takes to spur a huge drugs-and-booze confessional.

Apparently, before they were forced into sobriety by "The Liberty Way," the men of room 201 were normal, red-blooded high school kids. Joey tells us about the times when he got drunk with his baseball team. Marco tells us about smoking weed back in California. Travis talks about the parties at his high school and how he used to be his local beer pong champion. The next fifteen minutes are a blur of dude-I-was-so-drunk stories and raucous laughter, and just as I'm feeling a little guilty for having set this whole thing in motion, Joey turns to me.

"Look at you coming here from the Ivy League and taking us back to our sinful days. You're a bad kid, Rooster."

Travis smiles. "And we like it."

The next morning, I have my first History of Life exam, a multiple-choice test that draws from our first five lectures, with additional material from our two textbooks, The Answers Book The Answers Book and and Refuting Evolution Refuting Evolution.