Mr. Pinup

March 18, 2009 | It’s Spring Break in Daytona Beach, Fla., and hundreds of rowdy coeds are packed into Froggy’s Saloon, where a nubile blonde gyrates seductively on top of the bar, her belly button ring shimmering like a bass jig in the sun. Motley Crüe’s “Girls, Girls, Girls” plays to wild cheers as the blonde fishes bills out of the empty beer pitcher marked “Tips for Tits.”

When the blonde — who is maybe 18 — removes her tube top to reveal a pair of star-shaped nipple shields, a short, demure college sophomore named Brandon holds his beach towel over his eyes. On his wrist sits a white “LivePure” bracelet. Scott, our group leader, rubs Brandon’s back. “Satan is strong here,” he says. “But remember: Every person is a person for whom Christ died, whether they’re wearing a lot of clothes or no clothes at all.”

I guess I should explain myself. I’m here in Florida with a group of students from Liberty University, the Rev. Jerry Falwell‘s “Bible Boot Camp” for young evangelicals. But I’m not a young evangelical — not even close. Two months ago, I transferred to Liberty from Brown, a school whose overall social climate, according to Falwellian standards at least, is only a notch or two above Sodom and Gomorrah. I had a secular liberal upbringing and I’ve always considered myself pretty ambivalent about God, but I decided to enroll at Liberty for a semester to learn about my conservative Christian peers and find out whether any common ground existed between my world and theirs. Since then, I’ve been living undercover in an all-male dorm (Liberty’s 46-page code of conduct, called “The Liberty Way,” prohibits all but the most innocent gender mingling), taking courses like young-earth creationism and Evangelism 101, and getting a first-hand look at the other side of the much-hyped “God Divide.” And when March rolled around, I decided to do what many Christian college students do over spring break: take a mission trip.

via Excerpt “The Unlikely Disciple ” by Kevin Roose Salon Life.

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