When EPPC Fellow Christine Rosen started kindergarten, her ABCs included the Apocalypse, the Bible, and Christ. At Keswick Christian School "the Bible was our textbook," God the guide, and after entering the school gates, nothing was ever quite the same again. In her new book My Fundamentalist Education, Ms. Rosen describes how she learned creation science, dreamed of becoming a missionary to exotic countries, worried about the souls of Jews and Mormons, and sat through sex education classes where bricks served as props.

In this evening discussion, Ms. Rosen talked about her new book and how her "fundamentalist education" shaped her life -- not stunting the development of critical-thinking skills, but rather sharpening them and even contributing to the skepticism that eventually moved her away from fundamentalism. Hanna Rosin, a Washington Post staff writer who has extensively reported on religious conservatives and is currently writing a book about young evangelicals, offered her own commentary.