Q&A with Kevin Roose

You started praying at Liberty. Do you still pray now?
I do. I try to pray every morning.

Besides praying, what aspects of Liberty have stayed with you? Do you have a secret love of Christian rock music?
I do. My dirty little secret is that most of the workout music on my iPod, the stuff that I run to, is Christian rock. For some reason, it keeps me going more than the secular stuff.

Is there a certain band that really gets you pumped up?
I love the Liberty campus praise band. I have their whole CD on there, and I totally miss hearing them three times a week.

What did you enjoy most about Liberty’s campus life?
One thing I miss is the dating atmosphere. I don’t miss the rules against hugs that last longer than three seconds, but I do think there is something to the way Liberty students go about dating. Because you’re not allowed to touch people of the opposite sex in any sort of romantic way, dates are almost platonic. They really do concentrate more on talking and getting to know the other person.

What was it like to interview (the late) Jerry Falwell?
It was nerve-wracking. Jerry Falwell, in my family, was sort of like Voldemort. You didn’t say his name if you didn’t have to. But I really wanted to see, “Is this guy as villainous as he appears in the media?” When I got to interview him, I actually found he was a likable guy. I didn’t agree with anything he said, but after meeting him, I understood why he had this huge following and why he had touched so many people’s lives. The Jerry Falwell that most Americans know is not the real Jerry Falwell, at least not the whole Jerry Falwell.

What’s was the most outrageous thing you saw at Liberty?
Probably the most outrageous thing I saw there was the “Every Man’s Battle” group, the group for recovering masturbation addicts. To be fair, most Liberty students that I’ve talked to about that also think it’s ridiculous and can’t believe it exists. I think it’s just one of the things where I have to pinch myself and say, ‘Yeah, I went there and it exists and it still exists and people are still going to it.’
But, you know what, more power to them. To put it in Christian terms, “I’ll let he who is without sin cast the first stone.”

Did you break any rules at Liberty, other than … falling asleep during convocation?
I was scared out of my mind that I was going to get found out, so I tried to follow all the rules. I think the biggest thing I ever did was that I faked sick for a convocation once. I wasn’t a real badass here. This was sort of my semester to be a straight-edge kid.

What do you miss most about Liberty?
The people, without a doubt. I have a lot of friends there now, and we still keep in touch.

Beyond the friends and the people you met there, is there anything else you miss?
The structure. . . . When there is a sense that your whole day is structured and you have this whole moral code you have to follow, every day seems sort of like a victory. … I shared in that euphoria. It’s powerful feeling.
I think when you get away from that structure and back at Brown where I can basically do whatever I want, I think a lot of that is missing, that sort of single-minded purpose. I think colleges, in general, could do better at cultivating a sense that there is structure and that people are there to support them, that there is a sense of purpose.