Musings: Roose rivets and others

Odds and ends for a Sunday ...

—I just finished reading Kevin Roose’s “The Unlikely Disciple” about his semester “undercover” at Liberty University. And for those of you in the LU community who might be apprehensive about picking the book up yourself, this is how Roose ended it:

“When I arrived on campus in January of 2007, I never thought that the world’s largest evangelical university would feel like home, or even a home away from home. But by experiencing your warmth, your vigorous generosity of spirit and your deep complexity, I was ultimately convinced — not that you were right, necessarily, but that I had been wrong. Thank you for the lessons you taught me, even when you didn’t know you were teaching them.”

If this was a hatchet job, at least he applied soothing oil to the wound post-chop.

Reporter Liz Barry of our Lifestyle section interviewed Roose back in March and wrote an extensive piece on his experience. There is very little to add, except that the author, now safely back at Brown University, will be at Barnes & Noble at 7 p.m. April 10 and at Givens Books at 10 a.m. April 11 to sign copies of “The Unlikely Disciple” and participate in what could be lively discussions/Q&A sessions.

That, and a few personal impressions I drew from my own reading.

First was Roose’s realization that people on each side of the “God divide” labor under misconceptions. Just as he felt many of the Liberty students and administrators miscast those at secular colleges like Brown as unrepentant hedonists, so he made his way down to LU expecting a mob of religious zealots marching in perfect lockstep to Jerry Falwell’s ideology.

Instead, he made friends easily and forged a shaky peace with the school’s package of social rules, “The Liberty Way.” As he told Liz, he sang in the choir and played intramural softball. He even went along on an evangelical safari to Daytona Beach during Spring Break, an exercise that Roose considered dubious from the outset.

“Why not go somewhere where Jesus would be an easier sell?” he wrote. “Like Islamabad.”

His account of that trip, however, is far more sympathetic than critical. Indeed, the nervousness he and the other Liberty missionaries felt trying to “save” generally inebriated fellow college students intent on running wild casts roving evangelism in a very different light.

“Who’s the greatest person you know?” Roose asked one young man, in hopes of triggering a discussion about Jesus.

“The gayest person I know?” his target replied. “I guess Richard Simmons.”

Speaking of which, the prevailing attitude on the Liberty campus toward homosexuality was disturbing to Roose, who kept his own opinions to himself. Nor was he comfortable with a required class on creationism.

He did snag a one-on-one interview with Falwell, who died two days before Roose was planning to leave. That, too, gave him the opportunity to describe a watershed Lynchburg event from an insider’s perspective. In the process, Roose discovered that he had actually grown to like the school’s founder, enough that he was turned off by gleeful e-mails from some of his friends at Brown.

If you’ve always been curious about what it’s like to be a Liberty student, “Unlikely Disciple” is almost like auditing there for a semester. If you already know, you might be intrigued at how an outsider perceived Jerry Falwell’s greatest legacy.

—A succession of chamber of commerce types has taken on the challenge of selling Appomattox to the rest of the world, only to eventually surrender. The newly hired Will Simmons is the latest.

“It sounded like a great challenge to see how much progress we can make in terms of getting it at that level, getting it on par with Gettysburg and Antietam,” he told News & Advance reporter Sarah Watson. “I think Appomattox’s name is just as famous as Gettysburg, and yet it’s not getting the same level of visitation.”

Well, no. But there are reasons for that.

Primarily, there is the inescapable fact that Appomattox isn’t really on the way to anywhere. It’s off the grid, so to speak, miles from a major interstate.

Moreover, the segment of the National Park Service that runs what is popularly known as “the Surrender Grounds” hasn’t exactly created a 1960s Disneyland. Most days, the park is a rather static affair — you pay a few dollars at a checkpoint and wander around the restored buildings by yourself. There is a museum, but nothing like the modern equipment used to present Gettysburg’s story.

Appomattox appeals to Civil War purists, which is a nice thing. And Will Simmons has no control over how the national park is operated.

Still, perhaps some collaboration could be achieved. What if the epic surrender were to be re-created every April, instead of just on “anniversary” years? With all the re-enactors currently in uniform, it wouldn’t be hard to put together a gray-clad army that would march from Petersburg to Appomattox, attracting attention all along the route.

Meanwhile, better signage off Virginia 24 around the park would go a long way to help close the disconnect between park and community. As country singer Steve Earle once put it in a song about another forgotten place in Dixie, “They don’t even know that there’s a town around here.”