Insights from The Unlikely Disciple

I've recently finished reading The Unlikely Disciple by Kevin Roose. I needed to use the remaining balance on a Borders gift card, and I ended up walking out of the store with a copy of The Unlikely Disciple. I'm glad I chose it. It's an easy read with a good amount of humor, yet I was still able to glean some insights from it. Here's a quote that was source of one of those insights:

The trick to being a rebel at Liberty, I've learned, is knowing which parts of the Liberty social code are non-negotiable. For example Joey and his friends listen to vulgarity filled secular hip-hop, but you'll never catch them defending homosexuality. (On the contrary, Joey's insults of choice are "queer" and "gaywad").... In other words, Liberty's true social code, the one they don't put in a forty-six page manual, has everything to do with being a social and religious conservative and not a whole lot to do with acting in any traditionally virtuous way.

Now, you might be thinking "yeah, duh. that's obvious." However, I found this section insightful, because it articulated something that I'd already perceived/experienced, yet never really considered in depth. In fact, after some reflection, I realized that the sentiment expressed in the aforementioned quote is one of the reasons I want nothing to do with conservative Evangelicalism or Fundamentalism. As long as you remain a theological and political conservative, you can completely disregard things like empathy and kindness and still remain in good standing within conservative Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism. I've seen this played out one too many times.