O ff the Shelf The Unlikely Disciple by Kevin Roose Grand Central Publishing Reviewed by Joshua Cradic The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner’s Semester at America’s Holiest University is, according to its author, an “amateur ethnography.” Kevin Roose’s goal was to experience Liberty University, considered one of the most conservative Christian colleges in the US, for one semester, taking on the role of participant observer in order to gain insight into his peers on the religious right. The discoveries he made on Liberty’s campus included the following: a general strand of homophobia, mainly among his male dorm mates; a pervasive idolization of Liberty University founder Jerry Falwell; a rigorous academic demand, with which he struggled despite having had a measure of success at an Ivy League institution (Brown); and a legalistic atmosphere which, at its best, bred into its army of Christian soldiers the sin-management doctrine (to use Dallas Willard’s term) which has become common within the evangelical right. Roose learned a valuable lesson in confession during his time at Liberty—a lesson which prompted him to come clean about his true identity as an “outsider” 11 months after transferring back to Brown. He returned to Liberty and reunited with his closest friends for the big reveal, which garnered a mixed response, from laughter to concern for his salvation. He spoke of his discomfort with deceiving his peers, some of whom he had come to love and respect. I have my own confession to make: I wanted real scandal about what goes on at Jerry Falwell’s “Bible Boot Camp,” and instead I got a rather tame and unsurprising account of a people group and the experiences of one outside observer as he acclimated to their habitat. The challenges Roose faced had less to do with the fact that Liberty is a university accustomed to controversy and scandal, particularly from the late Jerry Falwell, than they did with the fact that Roose was simply grafted into a new environment. In other words, Roose experienced culture shock, a phenomenon typical for new students at any university, even if the content of that experience varies from one campus to another. My greatest disappointment, however, was with the authenticity of the author’s Liberty experience, which was necessarily affected by his decision to maintain journalistic distance. While understanding why he might need to do so, I feel it ultimately hindered him from having a completely genuine experience. An example of this was when he decided to end a budding romance primarily because he thought it would compromise his research. One valuable contribution the book makes is the light it sheds on how culture influences religious experience. Given that Roose was raised in a liberal Quaker home where he enjoyed a particularly close bond with his aunt and her same-sex partner, it comes as no surprise that he finds the attitude on Liberty’s campus toward gay people to be offensive and perplexing. It is
42 PRISM Magazine
Book Reviews likely, however, that a majority of Roose’s classmates did not have the same exposure to same-sex couples as he did. Therefore, to most Liberty students, gay people represent “the other” just as much as the evangelical right does to Roose. All things considered, I would recommend The Unlikely Disciple to anyone who is a professing member of the evangelical right and to anyone interested in—or harboring some trepidation toward—the experience of the other. Roose’s exposé is a socio-anthropological experiment that reveals the range of human emotions—fear, love, anxiety, anger, and even hate— that are common to all of us when faced with the challenge of acclimating to a way of life to which we were previously unaccustomed. Joshua Cradic is a musician and freelance writer who blames his wife, a cultural anthropologist, for his propensity for considering culture alongside faith. Somebody’s Daughter by Julian Sher Chicago Review Press Reviewed by Francesca Nuzzolese From the investigative eye and pen of journalist Julian Sher comes Somebody’s Daughter: The Hidden Story of America’s Prostituted Children and the Battle to Save Them, a sobering picture of underage girls being trafficked across the US. Sher takes us from the drug-infested alleys of New York City to the flashy casinos of Las Vegas, tracking “runaways and throwaways,” children escaping the brutality or neglect of their own homes only to find themselves caught in the vicious business of sexual exploitation. The business, to be clear, is for the pimps who prey on these girls’ vulnerability and powerfully manage to get them hooked into selling their young bodies in exchange for a false sense of protection and care. Night by night, girl by girl, “trick by trick,” the sexual exploitation of children builds up the pimps’ empires, deprives the girls of their right to a dignified existence, and washes away any illusion that our country has progressed beyond, and learned from, its sad history of slavery. Defying the myth that human trafficking is mostly a “foreign affair” involving only girls in developing countries, Sher provides a detailed and gruesome account of the violent, dehumanizing, and often fatal conditions in which these girls end up living—in our very own cities, neighborhoods, and jails. Woven into the fabric of the girls’ tales of horror (and occasional redemption), is Sher’s exposé of the glorification of pimps (who often get away with little or no punishment) and of a justice system which is too coarse to provide constructive solutions and more often than not ends up revictimizing the victims and absolving the offenders. Particularly informative (albeit disturb-