We’re excited to have author, journalist, and Brown University senior (he’s still a senior!) Kevin Roose blogging with us this week. His new book, The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner’s Semester at America’s Holiest University is about the semester he spent at Liberty University. We’ll let Kevin take it from here:
BY KEVIN ROOSE
Liberty, as you probably know by now, isn’t a middle-of-the-road Christian college. As one of my professors, Dr. Dekker said, only a dozen schools still teach young-earth creationism, and the number of schools with Evangelism 101 classes can’t be a whole lot higher. As my finals approached, my classes started o get unbearably hard. In Theology, we had to memorize the details of tiny historical movements like the Montanists and the Novationists. It wasn’t easy, even for the seasoned Christian kids in the class. In Old Testament, we learned the structure of the Bible’s poetry, categorizing Psalms and Proverbs into a half-dozen rhetorical modes and analyting them for synonymous paralelism and synthetic paralelism. Often, I struggled to tread water in my classes.
In any case, since I’ve been writing about my semester at Liberty all week, I thought I’d turn the tables today and give you, mental_floss readers, a quiz. I put together a short test based on the easier questions I had to answer in my Liberty classes, which included Old Testament, New Testament, Theology, Evangelism 101, and History of Life (young-earth creationism). I hope you have fun testing your Bible knowledge. And remember, these are questions like the ones on actual Liberty exams, so try to answer as a Liberty student would. Good luck!
1. True or False: Absolute truth depends on each person’s interpretation.
2. Which of the following is NOT true about a Christian worldview?
a) It evolves with a changing society.
b) It is based on God’s unchanging nature.
c) It allows us to discern what is true and right and good and discard the rest.
d) It includes “gray areas,” issues on which Christians may reasonably disagree.
3. True or False: Evolution can be tested in a laboratory.
4. True or False: Microevolution, or small-scale change within a “kind,” is observable in nature.
5. According to Acts 20:21, which two things are necessary for salvation?
a. Repentance and faith
b. Sorrow and guilt
c. Joy and release
d. Bible study and baptism
6. True or False: Romans 10:9-10 teaches that we have to believe in the Resurrection of Christ to be saved.
7. Which of the following are results of salvation?
A. Peace with God.
B. The beginning of true spiritual development.
C. The withholding of God’s just wrath upon us.
D. All of the above.
8. True or False: The “Romans Road” technique is the only acceptable method of personal evangelism.
9. Who betrayed Samson to the Philistines?
A. Gideon
B. Samuel
C. Delilah
D. Othniel
10. Nebuchadnezzar was the king of which city?
A. Canaan
B. Jericho
C. Jerusalem
D. Babylon
ANSWERS:
1) False, 2) A. It evolves with a changing society, 3) False, 4) True, 5) A. Repentance and faith, 6) True, 7) D. All of the above., 8) False, 9) C. Delilah, 10) D. Babylon.
Kevin Roose’s excellent book The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner’s Semester at America’s Holiest University goes on sale nationally next week, but that shouldn’t stop you from pre-ordering it today! If you missed Kevin’s post from yesterday (on 5 Things I Learned By Being the World’s Worst Evangelist), be sure to check that out as well.
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8 out of 10…do I get a scholarship for that? ;-)
posted by beth on 3-20-2009 at 11:34 am
WooHoo! I got them all right, even though I disagreed with a couple of them, I put myself in a “Liberty mindset” to answer them.
I definitely don’t regret my decision to not go there for college. :o)
posted by Shelly on 3-20-2009 at 11:36 am
Hooray for East Texas Baptist University, I only missed #8, and that is because I did not pay attention to the wording of the question.
posted by Witty Nickname on 3-20-2009 at 11:38 am
I got them all, thanks to my good, southern penecostal upbringing. My husband will be ammused.
posted by mgterry on 3-20-2009 at 11:52 am
I only missed #10, and that’s because I did put my agnostic self into a LU student mindset.
reCaptcha: Indian society
posted by Amy D on 3-20-2009 at 11:57 am
The RC girl got them all right, even #8 (for which I used the “only” rule).
posted by Cathy J on 3-20-2009 at 12:03 pm
haha, I got them all right and I’m 14.
posted by Candace on 3-20-2009 at 12:28 pm
I don’t get how they can accept that there are “gray areas” in the Christian worldview that various groups disagree about, but not that a Christian worldview evolves with a changing society.
posted by Wilson on 3-20-2009 at 12:35 pm
wow! 9/10! I knew that Delilah cut of Sampson’s hair, I just thought someone else put her up to it. Oh well.
posted by Karen on 3-20-2009 at 12:55 pm
I got 9/10
#2… I thought a little too closed-minded even for Liberty it seems…
It depresses me a little bit how much religion I know and how much I despise it. What a waste of useless knowledge.
posted by Sammael on 3-20-2009 at 1:27 pm
Got them all right, alas (the “Southern” in my screen name happens to place me about an hour north of Falwellville, aka Lynchburg, VA). But while an obedient brainwashee will answer 3 “false,” the correct answer is true. It is easily possible for a grad student, in a year or two, to start with one group of fruit flies, separate them, and breed them separately until by the end of the experiment, the two groups are so distinct they can no longer mate with each other.
posted by Southern Buddhist on 3-20-2009 at 1:42 pm
This reminded me of how much I DON’T remember about the Bible. I knew all the ones about evolution and “the Christian life” just by putting myself into the mindset of a fundamentalist Christian, but it’s been years since I’ve really read the Bible. I was through Sunday School classes and used to know more then, but wow, the things you forget over the years!
I have to admire these kids…agree or disagree with the central message, but really absorbing, understanding, and interpreting Biblical verses is tough stuff!
posted by Kristin Lapos on 3-20-2009 at 3:03 pm
Not to shabby. 8 out of 10. My Christian private school would be so proud.
posted by Dana on 3-20-2009 at 3:32 pm
Sorry Southern Buddhist but the answer is still false. They remain fruit flys!! What you refer to is Microevolution.
posted by Kev in GA on 3-20-2009 at 4:08 pm
this jew got 9/10. I don’t know about personal evangilism. I do however know both my bible and theirs.
posted by moonablaze on 3-20-2009 at 4:56 pm
@Sammael – You can only rightfully despise something if you know a lot about it :)
posted by Cait on 3-20-2009 at 5:39 pm
I am a Liberty student and I missed a couple of them. Haha.
posted by LUstudent09 on 3-20-2009 at 7:34 pm
oooh my word. i couldn’t even try to answer most of these questions, especially after being traumatized by my own semester at liberty university. ha!
posted by maria on 3-20-2009 at 8:06 pm
I got 10/10 quite easily… my teachers would be happy. :)
posted by Kessie on 3-20-2009 at 8:41 pm
It drives me NUTS that people graduating from this school as considered “College Graduates.” I bust my butt for four years learning actual things, and these people only have to learn half-truths and crap out of the bible? Who gives these fools jobs? Who accredits this craptacular institution?
posted by Ainsley on 3-20-2009 at 9:25 pm
I got 9/10 and I have attended church 12 days out of my 23 year old life.
sweet!
posted by Spanish Teacher on 3-20-2009 at 9:31 pm
Ten years of Lutheran school did not fail me! I got them all right.
The two years I spent at a nondenominational “Christian” school certainly allowed me to get into a Liberty mindset though. The overzealous, self-righteous and Pharisaical worldview I experienced at that so-called Christian school was the antithesis of what I had always been taught Christianity was about; there’s nothing quite like having your classmates’ parents tell their children not to speak to you due simply to the fact that “she went to a public school for two years, so she must be some sort of harlot.” Thank you for your judgement, “Christians,” you were truly instrumental in making me the non-religious (but with Lutheran leanings) person that I am today at the age of 21.
Now I’m not knocking Liberty since I know nothing about it, but it seems like it uses the same tactics as my high school by placing so many rules and restrictions on students that there’s no room left for them to choose to make right choices on their own, which is truly a much better indicator of spiritual development than the “catch them in every sin” method. But hey, if it’s doing good for the world, more power to it.
posted by Annie on 3-20-2009 at 11:56 pm
@Ainsley – I think you’ve misunderstood. Kevin took all of LU’s “unique” courses in his semester there. Those courses are required but they are far from the only thing LU students study. A nursing student still has to go through the course of study for their major, an engineering student for theirs, etc. The only exception to that may be the biblical studies majors.
posted by nick on 3-21-2009 at 6:46 am
Wilson,
The statement about worldviews addresses the general attitudes of a Christian with respect to how the universe was put together and how it operates. Since the Bible plainly describes the Creator, His methods, and His intensions with respect to the universe, then the Christian can’t very well alter the overall picture of events.
However, some of the particulars have been left out of the accounts. These individual points can be disagreed upon among Christians to the extent that they do not contradict the overall worldview.
In the love of Christ,
-Mel
posted by Melvin_H_Fox on 3-21-2009 at 2:13 pm
Wahoo!! 100%…my Bible College education paid off! (Even though I happen to disagree with several of the questions)
posted by KerriD on 4-22-2009 at 12:24 pm