The Unlikely Disciple

On a lark, I picked up a copy of The Unlikely Disciple a few weeks back off of the Barnes and Noble bargain rack. It's the story of a non-believing student/writer who transfers from liberal, Ivy League Brown University to conservative, uber-Christian Liberty University. Yes, that Liberty, Jerry Falwell's baby. 

At its core, The Unlikely Disciple is a fascinating story of displacement. Displacement is the act of putting yourself into an atypical or uncomfortable situation. In our campus ministry context, we talk about displacement as a vehicle to serve other people (as when an American college student goes to Bosnia to teach English to Bosnian college students) and as a way to experience God's transforming touch (as when that same American college student is confronted by their cultural biases and internal brokenness). To take it a step further, in his book Being White, writer (and IV staff buddy) Doug Schaupp writes: "Jesus makes it clear that to be his follower is to follow him into crosscultural displacement and love." For the Christian, then, displacement is both a practical tool and a Biblical mandate.

But what about for the non-Christian? The Unlikely Disciple's author is named Kevin Roose, and for my money, Roose does a fair job engaging his displacement experience. A couple of observations:

1. The Christians he meets are friendlier than he anticipated. Knowing Falwell's rhetoric, Roose was anticipating a judgmental group of people in his dorm. Instead, on the balance, he found them to be nice, real and far less dogmatic than he imagined. Same is true for the Liberty professors and even for Falwell himself. In fact, Roose became the last person to conduct a print interview with Falwell before he passed away, an interview where he experienced a humanized Falwell. 

2. At the same time, he encountered a fair amount of disconnectedness. As Roose observes this brand of Christian culture from the inside, he notices that the community has an unfortunate ability to disconnect. For example, he experiences students who are serious about protecting their physical virginity on one hand but indulgent in their lustful comments on the other. Or, there are students who publicly espouse the "Liberty way" but privately berate it. This disconnectedness (bordering on hypocrisy) was for me the saddest part of Roose's experience at Liberty.

3. Displacement is more than an intellectual thing. Roose does not become a Christian after his semester at Liberty, but he's not unchanged either. For instance, he heads back to Brown actually enjoying time in prayer. In this sense, Roose experiences real displacement. Spend enough time immersed in a different context and you'll find your values, behaviors, yourself, changing. I don't have the same faith experience as the Liberty Christian community, but I'm glad that they influenced him toward Jesus, at least in some ways.

Three weeks ago, we put on a weekend conference centered on the theme of displacement. Our aim was to convince students that Doug is right, and that a lifestyle of displacement benefits others as well as our souls. It was a hit. Students went back to campus motivated to engage people who are different from them, be they athletes, Greeks, students from different ethnicities and cultures or the GLBT community. As Roose would no doubt attest, displacement is a powerful thing!