July 23, 2010.
To the Editors of Evangelicals Concerned:
I think your reviewing the book by the Brown University student who went to Liberty University to see how it felt to be in such an environment is very interesting.
(And it is good that you included some of your own educational background to show how you viewed the book)
The book is certainly a great contrast to the current terrible TV news instant views of politics — such as the total mishandling of the Shirley Sherrod speech.
So I hope we hear more from the author, Kevin Roose. And the title, The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner’s Semester at America’s Holiest University is what these lousy TV talk people should think about.
This young man saw that there was a difference among most students at some secular universities and others at religious universities and thought it was his educational duty to learn about students who chose a religious school before he judged them. So he took time from Brown University to attend Liberty University. He found that he liked the students (I assume at Brown too) at Liberty and that they were not that radical.
I wonder if we should not go to Tea Party meetings to see how they think before we think we “know” them. And that applies to conservatives and liberals, as there are conservatives who don’t like what we are hearing about the politics at these meetings. We assume liberals would not like them — the ideas or the people.
It is relevant, from my experience at ONE/HIC, that if you are hosting an event you must be in control. Thus no posters should be there that are not relevant and any people trying to use your event to promote their agenda should be kicked out. So if Tea Party leaders are not racists, and I don’t think they are, or even anti-gay, they need to get rid of the few bigots with posters giving a different voice.
I think this is what Roose is saying. We need to hear what people at Liberty University are saying and doing, so if we speak against them we are doing so accurately. And once you/I know someone I might not have as negative a view. (But I gather their racial views are still as hard to understand as those of the Tea Party people since both are interracial yet appear to have trouble with interracial couples, etc.)
One thought on the News section: I had not thought of Ed Koch that way, but if he defends the Pope he is being a hypocrite.
