Summary: Pastor Donald Grey Barnhouse Jr., the beloved leader of Bridgeport Presbyterian Church near Philadelphia, PA is something of a modern day Renaissance man. He graduated from Harvard University a month before his 18th birthday, studied nuclear physics at the University of Pennsylvania, speaks several languages, has done serious study in film making and music, and taught college courses in journalism, creative writing, government, political philosophy, and international relations. In his continuing pursuit of education, he is even working toward his Master’s degree in Education at this point in life. His academic credentials are among the most elite of our nation, but it was a calling to follow his father—the pastor, author, and radio Bible teacher, Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse, Sr.—into the ministry that would open the door to his life’s work as a community stakeholder leader. We discuss more about Donald’s life and work, his home education, and his thoughts about how pastors can do more for parents in the radio interview. But, leading up to our conversation with this inspirational man, I want to share a story with you about a young man who found his own religious calling in the last few years without first committing to any particular religion at all. Young Kevin Roose didn’t go to church growing up and certainly didn’t know any pastors. In fact, his parents were rather indifferent to the idea of religion all together. So, as a sophomore at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, his decision to spend his “semester abroad” at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia was startling, to say the least. Kevin decided that when his time came to take his semester break from spending his days drinking fair-trade coffee, singing in an a cappella group, and fitting in with Brown's free-spirited, ultra-liberal student body, he would do something radically different. He got permission for a semester’s exchange between his school and Liberty University, the late Reverend Jerry Falwell's "Bible Boot Camp" for young evangelicals. His reasoning was that if he was to go into any kind of political field, as he planned to, he really should know more about them. Off he went, with stereotypes galore of the next generation of America’s religious right dancing in his head. When I watched Kevin in an interview on Book TV not long ago, I didn’t get the impression from the way he spoke about his experience that he had any idea how deeply he would be moved by the students and the faculty at Liberty. It was evident that he hadn’t dispensed with his preference for the liberal ways of the world, but he had gained immense respect for the religious practices of the students he met, come to better understand their beliefs, and admired many of the ways in which they chose to live. One example he thought relevant to talk about was dating. He said it was really fun to just be able to talk with a girl on a date and not have to think about whether or not they would sleep together. He chronicled his semester at Liberty University in his book, The Unlikely Disciple. “When I was faced with the option to pick a place to go for my junior year abroad, where I might encounter complete strangers with foreign ways of thinking and acting, compared to way I lived, I thought about a place not very far away from Brown, Liberty University. It might as well have been over seas. I knew next to nothing about the kind of students who would attend a school where obedience was not optional. While there, I found myself directly immersed in America’s culture war and was determined to experience it from every angle possible.” And so he did. At Liberty, 10,000 undergraduates take courses like Evangelism 101, hear from guest speakers like Sean Hannity and Karl Rove, and follow a 46 page code of conduct that regulates every aspect of their social lives. Roose’s decision to enroll at Liberty catapulted him across the God Divid
