The Unlikely Disciple Part 4

. . . because you were forsaken.

"Step out and come."

I'm accepted, you were condemned.

"Sing the next stanza, Al. Come on to the Lord right now."

Sitting in the choir, watching this spectacle of convincement, I get a throbbing adrenaline rush. It hits me: I'm in Jerry Falwell's choir, on national TV, in the middle of one of the world's most famous church services, as probably the only non-evangelical ever to sit in this choir loft. It's a thrilling notion, and a slightly terrifying one.

After church, I'm back in the choir room, hanging my enormous robe back on the rack, when section leader Perry comes over to me.

"How was your first day?" he asks.

"Really interesting," I say. "I learned a lot."

He puts his hand on my shoulder. "Buckle up, kid. You're in for the ride of your life."

As my second week at Christian college winds down, I'm making my home in Dorm 22. I'm a little nervous about being too social too soon, mostly because I'm still breaking in my sanitized Christian vocabulary, but it's hard to be anonymous with this crowd. Every night, guys come into my room after curfew, introducing themselves and inviting me to various hall activities. Most of them have decided to drop my first name--I'm now Roosey, K. Roose, or Rooster--which probably has nothing to do with Christianity, but sort of makes me feel like I'm back on my high school soccer team.

Speaking of my Christian vocabulary, I want a refund for that 30 Days to Taming Your Tongue 30 Days to Taming Your Tongue book that was supposed to teach me how to speak to evangelicals in their own language. After reading it, I went around for several days saying things like "Mercy me, that was a doozy of a cla.s.s, wasn't it?" But instead of credibility, I mostly got looks of pity. As it turns out, although it's true that most Liberty students don't curse, they don't walk around saying "Glory!" or "Good heavens!" Instead, they use network TV versions of standard curses. Nerf curses. "Darn" and "c.r.a.p" seem to be popular. While watching an NFL game with the hall's jock crowd tonight, I discovered some new options: book that was supposed to teach me how to speak to evangelicals in their own language. After reading it, I went around for several days saying things like "Mercy me, that was a doozy of a cla.s.s, wasn't it?" But instead of credibility, I mostly got looks of pity. As it turns out, although it's true that most Liberty students don't curse, they don't walk around saying "Glory!" or "Good heavens!" Instead, they use network TV versions of standard curses. Nerf curses. "Darn" and "c.r.a.p" seem to be popular. While watching an NFL game with the hall's jock crowd tonight, I discovered some new options: "What a gee dee kick return!" "What a gee dee kick return!""b.u.mp you, ref!""Catch the ball ball! Son of a friggin' biscuit biscuit!"

Another surprise: although evangelicals are usually stereotyped as earnest and humorless, the guys on my hall seem to deploy sarcasm just as well as your average secular nineteen-year-olds. Last night, Stubbs the RA told a guy named Luke that he needed to cut his skater-length hair to comply with Liberty's dress code. They haggled about it for a few minutes, and then Luke said, "Hmm . . . you know, Stubbs, I seem to remember reading about a guy in the Bible who had long hair. What was his name again? Started with a J J, I think. . . ."

All in all, the Liberty students I've met are a lot more socially adjusted than I expected. They're not rabid, frothing fundamentalists who spend their days sewing Hillary Clinton voodoo dolls and penning angry missives to the ACLU. Maybe I'm getting a skewed sample, but the ones I've met have been funny, articulate, and decidedly non-crazy. They play pickup basketball, partake in celebrity gossip, and gripe about homework just like my friends in the secular world. In fact, I suspect a lot of my hallmates at Liberty could fit in perfectly well at a secular college.

Of course, Liberty students depart from the mainstream in fairly obvious ways. Politically, for example, your average secular student is somewhere left of center, whereas your average Dorm 22 resident is somewhere right of Alan Keyes. And I haven't even started plumbing their specific religious beliefs. But already, I'm seeing some more surprising, deeper differences at work.

Last week, I was walking to the gym with Zipper, my ultra-happy next-door neighbor. Zipper (whose outgoing voicemail message starts, "You've reached the magical world of Zipper's phone!") told me about his most recent prayer walk, and the thoughts it had inspired.

"I was walking around the parking lot, and out of nowhere, I had this crazy realization: As a follower of Christ, I should be known by my actions, not my words. I need to show Christ's love to the world in everything I do. Because I want people to see something different in me, so they'll ask where it comes from. And then I can tell them, well, there's this dude, see? And he lives inside me, right? This guy, he rose from the dead! He transcends mankind! And if I didn't have him, I'd be just an ordinary guy!"

While Zipper was talking, I was trying to figure out why he was giving me this spiritual soliloquy. Was it because he didn't think I was saved? What was he playing at here?

In the last few days, though, I've learned that at Liberty, it's perfectly socially acceptable to pour your soul out to everyone within earshot. There's no such thing as TMI. Today, after church, I had coffee with James Powell, one of the two Spiritual Life Directors on my hall. Powell is a slim, faux-hawked pastor's kid from Georgia. We're both fans of the Drowsy Poet Cafe, a popular gathering place just outside Liberty's campus, so when our visits coincide, we sit and chat.

Today, Powell was talking about an awesome church service he attended this morning, and he uttered the phrase, "Man, I love being a Christian," which prompted me to ask him why. He paused, put down his coffee, and rubbed his chin.

"Roose, my whole life, Christianity came easy to me," he said. "And for a long time, I was totally self-centered, especially when high school came around. The car I drove, the girls I dated, my clothes, my grades--I had to have the best of everything. It was all about me. And then one day, I realized: I'm not alive because of me. I'm here because G.o.d wants me to live for him. For years, I couldn't pick myself up when I was going through hard times. But I realized that if I rely completely on G.o.d, if I give my life completely over to his service, he'll pick me up. He'll see me through. And now, I feel really, truly alive for the first time in my life."

I'm still adjusting my mind to all the earnest G.o.d talk I'm hearing at Liberty. From time to time, it still feels like I walked onto the set of a Lifetime movie. But one thing has become clear: these Liberty students have no ulterior motive. They simply can't contain their love for G.o.d. They're happy to be believers, and they're telling the world.

The philosopher William James once wrote that although he himself was not religious, seeing believers who were transformed by their faith made him feel "washed in better moral air." And so far, I think I see what he meant. It's hard to watch Liberty students singing along to worship songs during convocation, raising their hands and smiling beatifically, and not wonder whether they've tapped into something that makes their lives happier, more meaningful, more consistently optimistic than mine.

I still don't get what that something is, or how it changes them, or how it can coexist with the sorts of sociopolitical beliefs that have made Jerry Falwell one of America's most reviled public figures. It still feels like everyone on this campus is tuned in to a radio frequency I don't get on my antenna. But with the help of my hallmates, I'm starting to piece things together.

Let Us Learn Together What Is Good

Recently, I've been spending some time on Facebook, the annoyingly ubiquitous social networking website that wastes the time of secular and religious college students alike. I still have my account from Brown, but I hadn't thought about signing up for a second one until I was advised by my friend Janine, who writes me weekly e-mails from Brown, that not having a profile in Liberty's Facebook network would probably rouse some suspicion among my Christian cla.s.smates. Actually, the way she put it was, "You should just carry a sign that says: I'M A JOURNALIST I'M A JOURNALIST."

Fair enough. So I signed up for an account with my liberty.edu e-mail address. I don't have many Facebook friends at Liberty yet, but I've been enjoying a page called Network Statistics, which compiles the most listed items in a given college's network. For example, among Liberty students, the most popular books are three solid Christian cla.s.sics: the Bible, Redeeming Love Redeeming Love by Francine Rivers, and C. S. Lewis's by Francine Rivers, and C. S. Lewis's Mere Christianity Mere Christianity. In Brown's network, on the other hand, those spots go to Harry Potter, The Great Gatsby The Great Gatsby, and Lolita Lolita--which concern witchcraft, bootlegging, and pedophilia. (Sadly, this Network Statistics page is confirming more stereotypes than it breaks--Liberty's most listed interest is G.o.d, and Brown's is Ultimate Frisbee.) Whatever you think of it, Facebook is the perfect tool for the kind of amateur ethnography I'm doing here. How else could I keep track of a hundred Liberty students' lives with a few clicks? If social networking sites had existed in Margaret Mead's day, she wouldn't have had to do all that messy field research in the South Pacific. She could have logged on to the Samoa network, browsed some profiles, poked the chieftains, and formed her conclusions, all from her neighborhood Starbucks.

The most surprising thing about Facebook at Liberty is that in the safe s.p.a.ce of the Internet--or the perceived safe s.p.a.ce of the Internet--Liberty students air all the grievances they don't feel comfortable airing in public. In fact, with the exception of a few up-with-Liberty Facebook groups like "Jerry's Kids" (not to be confused with the muscular dystrophy support group), a lot of the content on Liberty's network is downright subversive.

Consider the Facebook group "You Know You Went To Liberty If . . . ," which contains submissions like: . . . You know all three verses of "Victory in Jesus.". . . You've learned more about t.i.thing than your major.. . . After you tell people where you went to college, you follow it up with the phrase "It wasn't that bad."

Or the groups formed as send-ups of the most byzantine rules in "The Liberty Way": Couples Who Kiss At LU (12 members) (12 members) I Hug For 3 Seconds, Sometimes 4. I Hug For 3 Seconds, Sometimes 4. (73 members) (73 members) The second surprise about Liberty's Facebook network is the ma.s.sive amount of faith-related content it contains. I mean, I probably could have predicted that Liberty students' profiles would be heavy in Christian sentiment, but I never expected this much. Liberty students post wall messages to share inspiring Bible verses with each other. They fill the Religious Views section of their profiles with sentences like "I desire for my life to be modeled after Christ" and "Jesus Christ is the only truth I've found." And of course, there's the Facebook status, which is used at Liberty as a moment-to-moment indicator of spiritual well-being--sort of a Reuters for the soul. Just now, on the first page of my Friends list, I see: Status: Chris is in need of prayer. Status: Chris is in need of prayer.Status: Sam is finding security in Christ.Status: Bethany is enjoying some good coffee! Praise the Lord!Status: Brittany is so happy that she has a G.o.d who LOVES HER!!Status: Sean is happy, and praising Jesus even though he's feeling a little sick.Status: Caroline is completely and totally in love with Jesus. Every waking moment is illuminated by his grace.

Spending all of this time on Facebook raised the question: what should I put on my Liberty profile? I don't think I can pull off anything like "every waking moment is illuminated by his grace," but I should probably have some identifiably Christian details on there. As it is, my personal information is blank, and my default photo is a big blue question mark. It might work at a Unitarian school, but at Liberty, I'm not so sure.

So tonight, I craft my Facebook ident.i.ty. First, I settle on a photo. I fill out my hometown, my date of birth, my mailbox number. I set my Religious Views to "Christian" and my Favorite Books to "the Bible, Mere Christianity Mere Christianity, and East of Eden East of Eden" (which are the last three books I read, but close enough), and I write a short personal paragraph for my About Me section.

Starting a Facebook account from scratch is an unexpectedly gratifying experience. This new profile feels somehow cleaner, more virtuous than the old one. All the photos from sweaty frat parties are gone. No more wall posts from my ex-girlfriend. I've never really reinvented myself, so this micro-makeover gives me a little head rush. I'm feeling so good, I even post a status update: "Kevin is a new man!"

Five minutes later, I find myself looking at the profile of a tanned, long-haired blonde who lives in Dorm 17, who enjoys "music that glorifies the Lord!" and who went to Jamaica over Christmas break, judging from her photo alb.u.ms. Hold on. Is that a bikini I see? Then I realize: I'm back to my old ways--trolling for girls on Facebook. Old habits die hard, I guess.

When I walk into Old Testament on Wednesday morning, an acrostic is written on the whiteboard in large, blocky letters: For G.o.d so loVed the world, that He g that He gAve His on His onLy begott begottEn So SoN, T That whosoever believeth believeth I In Him should should N Not perish, but have but have E Everlasting life. --John 3:16, KJV Today, Liberty is celebrating two holidays. Since it is, in fact, February 14, campus is filled with the traditional Valentine's Day hoopla. Heart-shaped boxes of chocolate and long-stemmed roses are everywhere, and people are eating those conversation hearts that taste like sweetened sidewalk chalk.

But at Liberty, romance has its limits, because today also doubles as the National Day of Purity, a conservative Christian holiday designed to promote abstinence before marriage. On Valentine's Day 2003 Mat Staver, the dean of the Liberty School of Law, started the holiday as a way to give Christian teens the opportunity to make a public declaration of their chast.i.ty by wearing plain white T-shirts. Here at Liberty, the administration loosened the dress code for the day to allow students to wear their purity shirts to cla.s.s.

Two days ago, Dean Staver, a minister turned lawyer, spoke at convocation to explain the Day of Purity.

"G.o.d created s.e.x for good," he told the a.s.sembled undergraduates. "s.e.x is the capstone of intimacy. But s.e.x cannot produce intimacy apart from love and commitment. In Chern.o.byl, when radioactive material was contained in the reactor, it produced power, light, and heat. But as soon as the reactor broke and melted down, it produced destruction and death. The nuclear reactor that G.o.d created is husband and wife, committed to each other in a lifelong commitment. And when s.e.x is contained within that reactor, it produces unity and intimacy. But when it is taken outside, it results in abortion, disease and death, harm and hurt. It tears apart husbands and wives and damages children."

Dean Staver flitted between all kinds of social conservative talking points--everything from the dangers of p.o.r.nography to the sinfulness of h.o.m.os.e.xuality to the liberal redefinition of gender boundaries-- before landing on s.e.xually transmitted diseases.

"Think about your wedding night, guys," he shouted. "Do you want to know that you're going to be killing your wife killing your wife by not knowing you're carrying an incurable STD?! You don't by not knowing you're carrying an incurable STD?! You don't ever ever want to go down that way!" want to go down that way!"

I've been thinking a lot about s.e.x this week. Or, more specifically, about Liberty's s.e.xual climate. On the surface, this school's s.e.xual mores seem completely pure and innocent. Many of the Liberty students I've met have freely admitted that they're virgins, and a lot of the girls on campus wear some form of abstinence jewelry--purity rings, "Love Can Wait" bracelets, and the like. Last week, a girl named Dayna explained the symbolism of her purity ring to me. Pointing to the three large diamonds on top, she said, "This one represents my dad, and this one represents my mom. They're the people holding me to purity. And this big one, the one in the center, that represents G.o.d."

So, yes, most Liberty students take abstinence seriously. But here's the confusing part: while Liberty isn't a s.e.xual place in the same way most college campuses are, it's certainly s.e.xualized. Liberty girls might be virgins and they might not wear two-piece bathing suits to the pool, but they do wear thigh-hugging jeans, clingy blouses, and dresses that leave some, but not all, to the imagination. On the male side, while s.e.x is clearly frowned upon, talking about s.e.x is completely de rigueur. There was a heated debate in my dorm the other night about which s.e.xual positions are best for stimulating the G-spot. Probably wouldn't shock Larry Flynt, but it seemed pretty racy for a bunch of Baptists.

Then there's the Day of Purity, which I must admit I don't understand at all. If the day is a celebration of premarital abstinence, as Dean Staver said, then why was 50 or 60 percent of his convocation speech about h.o.m.os.e.xuality and the redefinition of gender boundaries? What does that have to do with not having s.e.x? Is the implication that if gay marriage is legalized, Christian boyfriends and girlfriends will turn to each other, shrug their shoulders, and say, Well, gee, might as well Well, gee, might as well? From what I can tell, not a whole lot of forethought has gone into the holiday.

The best evidence for this comes this afternoon, when I walk out of the dining hall after lunch. Outside, I see six guys from my hall huddled on the sidewalk, snickering to each other in a circle. They call me over, and a guy named Ben whispers in my ear: "Don't make it obvious, but look at that girl."

With his eyes, he motions to a very attractive blonde standing behind him. She's wearing tight jeans and a white Day of Purity T-shirt, leaning back against the building and talking on her cell phone.

"What about her?"

"Just . . . look."

Swiveling around slowly, I laugh out loud. White T-shirts? In thirty-degree February? What was Liberty thinking? The blonde stands unaware, gabbing into her phone while six G.o.dly men stare at her nipples, poking through her shirt like a pair of Cupid's arrows.

After curfew, a hallmate named Rodrigo comes into my room. He plops himself down on my bed while I'm doing my New Testament homework.

"Roose, right? Just thought I'd come say hi. You know, meet the new guy."

Rodrigo is a short, wiry soph.o.m.ore from Mexico City. He's gregarious and friendly, and he offers to help me with my work, since he's a religion major. We talk for a while about the Religion Department, he helps with a few of my short-answer questions, and then, before leaving, he leans in close to my face.

"So, Roose," he says. "Tell me about your relationship with Christ."

I've come to antic.i.p.ate this question. It's been foisted on me, in some form or other, by a different hallmate almost every day this week. First, it was Eric, my roommate, who asked me about my salvation while we were getting ready for bed. Then, the next morning, I got it from Zipper, my next-door neighbor, on our way to convocation.

I planned from the very beginning to be truthful when Liberty students asked about my faith. I wasn't going to mention the word Quaker, Quaker, but but Christian Christian would suffice, I thought. However, I've learned that would suffice, I thought. However, I've learned that Christian Christian is a narrow category at Liberty. To be considered a true Christian, you must have experienced a moment of salvation in Christ, you must believe the Bible is the infallible word of G.o.d, and you must place at least some emphasis on bringing nonbelievers into the faith. According to evangelical theology, this means that lots of people who think of themselves as Christians, such as Catholics, Episcopalians, and mainline Protestants (including Quakers), are still considered lost or unsaved. is a narrow category at Liberty. To be considered a true Christian, you must have experienced a moment of salvation in Christ, you must believe the Bible is the infallible word of G.o.d, and you must place at least some emphasis on bringing nonbelievers into the faith. According to evangelical theology, this means that lots of people who think of themselves as Christians, such as Catholics, Episcopalians, and mainline Protestants (including Quakers), are still considered lost or unsaved.

"You know," Rodrigo says, "when I came to Liberty, I was a Catholic. I grew up in a Catholic family, went through confirmation, all of that. And then I got here, and my roommate started talking to me. He showed me that I wasn't saved, even though I had been going to church all my life."

When I found out how strictly Liberty defines its theological in-group and how much flak I'd catch for being outside it, I decided I had no choice but to craft a testimony, the story evangelicals tell about their conversion. My fictional testimony is as bare-bones as I can manage: I say I got saved six months ago, when a friend brought me to a church service in Providence. (The six-months-ago twist was my friend Laura's suggestion--my unfamiliarity with the Bible is a lot easier to explain if I don't paint myself as a lifelong Christian.) It's not an iron-clad story, but it seems to satisfy Rodrigo.

"So you've been growing in Christ since then?" he asks.

I nod.

"And you believe the Bible is the word of G.o.d?"

I nod again.

"Well, tell me about your devotions."

Devotions is the name given to a Christian's daily Bible reading, and it serves as an approximate spiritual barometer among believers. If you do an hour of devotions every morning, you're probably growing in your faith. Ten minutes twice a week? You'll get prodded to pick up the pace. I tell Rodrigo the truth--I've been reading the Bible for about half an hour every morning, though I forget some mornings and cut others short by a few minutes.

Rodrigo smiles. "Good, good."

At first, I was almost offended by the nonchalance with which people probed my soul. Within five minutes of meeting a new hallmate, I've been asked how often I pray, which is not something I'm used to. But after answering enough of these questions, I'm starting to realize that in the evangelical world, prying can be an indicator of compa.s.sion. In Liberty's theology, there are only two categories of people: believers and nonbelievers, people headed to heaven and people condemned to h.e.l.l. So Rodrigo's attempt to suss out my faith isn't intended to be obnoxious. He just wants to make sure I'm safe.

The next day, campus gossip revolves around two questions: who got engaged on Valentine's Day, and how did they do it?

I guess I should explain that outside of Jane Austen novels, nowhere is marriage a more frequent topic of conversation than at Christian college. Since arriving here, I've heard hundreds of jokes about the Liberty wedding frenzy--the "ring by spring" race, going to school for your MRS degree, and on and on. Three weeks into the semester, it's already crystal clear: this school wants marriages like Ohio State wants football championships.

Girls are typically considered the driving force behind Liberty's marriage hysteria, but guys get swept up in it as well. Last week, a junior named Lucas came back to our hall from a successful first date screaming, "I'm goin' to the chapel, boys!!! Who wants to be the best man?!?! Who wants it?!?! Who wants it?!?!" Even Dr. Falwell got in on the cheerleading in convocation the other day. "Listen up, students," he said. "Now, I made sure there were five thousand girls here on campus, and five thousand boys. I don't know how much more I can do. Folks, we need more Liberty babies for Christ. Let's get going!"

I've never felt particularly rushed about getting married (probably because I've never taken an abstinence pledge), but when you're surrounded by nuptial-crazed Christians, it forces the issue. Every few days, I hear about another Liberty guy who popped the question, and I spend a few minutes feeling panicked. I'm almost twenty! Shouldn't I at least have someone in mind?

My new friends think so. For a few days now, my hallmates have been badgering me to ask out Anna, the brunette from Bible study. Earlier this week, Paul sat me down, speaking solemnly and deliberately, like an oncologist telling me I had six weeks left to live.

"Listen, man," he said. "You have to make your move."

I flinched. I'm not ready to start dating at Liberty. For one, I'm still breaking in my Christian lifestyle. I've been hanging out mostly in groups, where I can be a wallflower, and one-on-one conversation is still a little past my comfort zone. Also, I'm not sure where to draw the ethical line. Given my circ.u.mstances, is going on a date at Liberty wrong?

I used to think so, but the reality of Liberty's dating scene is making me reconsider. Liberty's strict rules about physical contact mean that most dating here takes place well within platonic bounds. (As one guy on my hall put it, "At Liberty, hand-holding is third base.") So if I can keep it casual, I think going on a date will help me understand young Christian romance. Plus, it might be fun.

There's only one problem: I don't know how to go on a date. Until this semester, I lived in a post-dating world where chivalry and traditionalism had long gone the way of the porkpie hat. My mom, a proud second-wave feminist, never stressed the importance of holding doors or pulling out chairs. Liberty, on the other hand, is the kind of place where guys show up with corsages on the first date, where they really lay their jackets in puddles.

I told Paul I wasn't feeling up to the task of old-time courtship. He a.s.sumed it was because I'm from the North, so he spent some time tonight priming me on the basics.

"Okay, first step," he said, "You have to ask her on a date in person. None of this Facebook, Mys.p.a.ce, text message junk. I want you to go up to her and say, 'Anna, will you go on a date with me?' And when you go on that date, all you have to do is follow one rule: pay, pray, and say."

According to Paul, this is a man's role on a date: pay for the whole thing, pray before the meal, and lead the conversation (or, since "lead" doesn't rhyme, "say" the conversation).

"And never, ever try to make a move on the first date," he said.

I get my chance tonight, after a Liberty basketball game. Anna is standing with a group of her girlfriends at the front of the arena, and Paul and I go over to join them. After a few minutes of small talk, I catch Paul staring at me intently, looking a little annoyed. So I step into action.

"Man, I'm hungry!" I sigh. "Whew. Maybe I'll go out for a burger."

No one hears me. So I try again, this time with a little more oomph.

"I'm going to get a burger. Anybody want to come?"

Anna looks at me. "I'm hungry, too, actually."

"Well, uh, should we go get some food?" I say.

"Sure."

No way. Did that actually just work?

Anna says goodnight to her friends, Paul gives me a behind-the-back fist pound, and just like that, I am on my first Christian date.

As we walk to my car, I bolt around to the pa.s.senger side to open her door. It feels a little strange and anachronistic, like I'm stuck in an Archie comic, but I carry it off without incident. We make our way to a drive-in restaurant just past Liberty's back entrance, the kind of place where the waitresses wear roller skates and the milk shakes come with maraschino cherries. When our food arrives, I take out my wallet to pay. She pretends to protest, but I know better. Next, I pray over the meal, keeping it short and sweet: "Dear Lord, bless this food, and bless our time together. In Jesus' name, Amen."

So far, so good.

For the next hour, Anna and I sit in my car, eating our burgers and talking. And about twenty minutes in, I confirm my suspicion: there is something very different about this girl. She's virginal and pure like you'd expect from a girl who was raised in a conservative evangelical home and schooled in a Christian academy, but there's an edge behind the sugar. When we get on the subject of Liberty's rules, she complains about her least favorite restrictions: the curfew system and the single-s.e.x dorms.

"I guess I understand why Liberty would have those rules," she says. "They should at least give us some orange jumpsuits, though. Round out the inmate vibe."

Even her extracurricular interests are puzzling. Her favorite author, she says, is Chuck Palahniuk, the proudly vulgar Fight Club Fight Club scribe. She's read the whole Harry Potter series, and her band of choice is the Beatles, who have been personae non gratae in evangelical circles ever since John Lennon made his infamous bigger-than-Jesus comment. scribe. She's read the whole Harry Potter series, and her band of choice is the Beatles, who have been personae non gratae in evangelical circles ever since John Lennon made his infamous bigger-than-Jesus comment.

I don't quite get how a girl like Anna ended up at Liberty, but I'm not complaining. She laughs at my jokes, even the lame ones, and she seems impressed by my fumbling attempts at chivalry. (When I hold the door for her, she says "Wow, a real man.") By the time we finish our food, drive back to campus, and pull up in front of her dorm, I'm drunk with optimism.

"Could I . . . call you again?" I ask.

She giggles, writes down her number on the burger receipt, steps out of my car, and waves goodbye. Success! This date might not have been perfect, but it clearly could have gone much worse. As I drive away, I can't stop grinning.

Back in Dorm 22, Paul, his friend Wayne, and Wayne's roommate Jeremy pull me into Wayne's room for a breathless recap.

"You took her to burgers?"

"Yep."

"You paid, right?"

"Mhm."