The Alpha Course is bringing the middle classes to Christianity in their droves. Tom Morton looks at the new Holy Trinity Champagne, and Christ. Bold advertising promotes the 16,000 Alpha Courses in 115 countries worldwideALPHA - LEAP OF FAITH
Tom Morton Welcome to Chardonnay-and-croissant Christianity, where beautiful people are born again over pasta and chilled, unoaked white wine. Watch perfectly groomed young preachers in rimless hexagonal spectacles flash their Tony Blair grins; listen as their radio microphones relay slick soundbite sermons. Forget your Harrods bag full of upwardly mobile shopping, and laugh at the jokes: Hey, heard the one about the atheist who fell off a cliff? He was hanging from a little tuft of grass, crying: "God, if you're really up there, help me." A divine voice came from the sky: "Let go." The atheist replied: "Is anyone else up there?" Laugh? I thought I'd inhaled my pesto sauce.
Holy Trinity Brompton is the Anglican church just around the corner from Knightsbridge's most famous shop, where barrister-turned-curate Nicky Gumbel first revived that ancient chestnut of a pulpit joke. Over the last decade though, the "dangling atheist" story has been told throughout the world, as the Alpha Course, one of the most effective forms of Christian instruction since the Inquisition, has brought tens of thousands of power-suited bourgeoisie to Christ. And each other.
Today there are 16,000 Alpha Courses running in 115 countries, with more starting each month in universities and, representing an attempt to take the whole process somewhat downmarket, 120 prisons. Six per cent of the UK population have either been on an Alpha Course or know someone who has. And if a 31 million poster campaign just launched by Holy Trinity is effective, that percentage is set to rise. But what is the spiritual phenomenon which has claimed the souls of, among others, disgraced Tory grandee Jonathan Aitken and former Page Three girl Samantha Fox? Why on earth has ITV agreed to broadcast ten hours of the course next year, with no less a figure than Sir David Frost signed up to present it? And what are the connections with the infamous Toronto Blessing, which has led to claims that Alpha is a cultish, extremist form of mass hypnotism encouraging bizarre, hysterical behaviour?
In essence, the Alpha Course is a systematic introduction to Christianity, used at Holy Trinity Brompton since 1980, taken over in 1990 by the dynamic Gumbel, and since provided to churches throughout the world as a method of introducing unbelievers to God. It is based on a book, Questions of Life, and there are normally 15 weekly sessions, culminating in a controversial "weekend away" at which seekers are expected to ask for the Holy Spirit to enter their lives, sometimes to spectacular effect.
The use of food and drink to cultivate a welcome atmosphere is absolutely crucial. Mark Elsdon-Dew, of Holy Trinity, laughs as he admits that yes, the church does publish a book of recipes suitable for participating churches ("but only because some needed help in working out what recipes would work for 90 people") and that Alpha is a mnemonic for Anyone who wants to come, Learning and Laughter, Pasta, Helping one another and Asking Anything. Yes, pasta.
"There are many ways of teaching the Christian faith," says Elsdon-Dew. "All we're doing is saying to church groups, if you haven't got a way, why not try this?" At each of the weekly Alpha meetings, which might be attended by anything from a dozen to several hundred people, a meal is served and a single topic, such as "what about suffering?"; "why and how should I pray?"; "can I believe in God?" is introduced either by a short sermon or by viewing a video talk by Nicky Gumbel.
There might be some Christian rock music potentially a very mixed blessing indeed. As is common in any corporate awayday, small discussion groups are formed. The weeks progress towards a commitment, but there is no hard sell. It's soft faith, ideal for busy, successful, sometimes deeply unhappy people. Or bored inmates at Her Majesty's Pleasure. Until the crunch at that final weekend, gathered with only the most committed of all, living and breathing Alpha thoughts 24 hours a day.
In jail, they don't encourage seaside breaks, but the hothouse atmosphere is easy to cultivate. In his book, Pride and Perjury, Jonathan Aitken describes what happened to him. He had overcome initial reservation to take the course at Holy Trinity itself. "Apparently it was being suggested that we should set off in groups for two nights at a seaside hotel," he writes, "where someone would call down the Holy Spirit into our hearts. Never had I heard such codswallop."
Nevertheless, Aitken found himself drawn into the friendly, upper-middle-class atmosphere, along with "a senior partner in a successful firm of London solicitors, a photographer from Windsor, a successful young tax barrister, a merchant banker" until he was asked "to stand with hands outstretched at waist height, palms upwards, praying that the Holy Spirit would come". He did, and the tax barrister, Tom Adam, began praying with him. "My palms suddenly began to tingle with a strange physical sensation, which strengthened until my hands and wrists became hot and uncomfortable & then I began to cry." Aitken got off lightly.
Other manifestations experienced by Alpha Course participants have been much more extreme, including physical collapse, speaking in tongues, hysterical laughter and uncontrollable movement. This has resulted in some unwelcome publicity, notably the infamous 1996 Times headline: "Woman leads church boycott in row over evangelical pig snorting." Fifty-year-old Angie Golding claimed she had been expected to "snort like a pig and bark like a dog" on an Alpha Course weekend. This was not to her taste, and so she left St Mark's in Broadwater Down, Kent, to set up services in her own living room. "I'll be a fool for the Lord any day," she proclaims, "but I won't be a fool for man." Elsdon-Dew denies that animal noises are de rigeur, or even that the course's final weekend encourages speaking in tongues. "Speaking in tongues is a beginner's gift," he says. "It is not essential and many don't have it.
The course is thoroughly Trinitarian, and teaches about the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is an element in the course, but takes up perhaps three talks out of the 15." This is certainly not everyone's understanding, and even ministers who have used the course feel that Holy Trinity, which retains strict copyright control over the course materials, places a greater emphasis on the Holy Spirit. Rev David Richards of St Paul's and St George's in Edinburgh says his church moved into other forms of evangelism after "six or seven" years using the Alpha Course, attempting to start "further back" in dealing with the unchurched. "It is certainly part of the teaching that people should be seeking that pentecostal experience," he says. There was a feeling in his own congregation that some elements of the course were "not appropriate". On the whole, however, Richards felt the course not only provided an effective introduction to Christianity for middle-class people with some prior knowledge of Christian teaching; it "worked with less middle-class people too & I think a pint of Caley would work as effectively as a glass of Chardonnay."
Holy Trinity claims that 35 churches of all denominations in Edinburgh are running Alpha Courses; several, though, have stopped. Rev Ian Maxwell of Kirk O'Field Church of Scotland says his church had moved on to "more congregationally-centred activities", and though he is concerned not to contribute to what he feels has been unnecessarily negative coverage, he admits that he found the course "appropriate in some situations, not quite so appropriate in others". In particular, the concentration on food presented problems. "I think the acceptance of food can indicate a kind of commitment in itself," he says. "And the course is explicit about the importance of 'pasta and pudding'. This had proved culturally difficult for Edinburgh folk, reared on the notion that 'you'll have had your tea'," Maxwell jokes. He and his church had ended up picking and choosing elements from the Alpha package to suit their needs. "We offered a cup of tea or coffee and a biscuit," he says, "and didn't go away on a weekend. Who goes away for two or three days nowadays, even on business conferences?" And the concentration on the Holy Spirit was out of proportion.
"Out of the 15 weeks it seemed a third of it was on one particular subject, and that was the Holy Spirit." On balance, says Maxwell, the Alpha course was a "superbly adapted response to the spiritual hunger of yuppies". Criticism is more forthright, not to say ferocious, from the likes of Rev Ian Paisley and other extreme Calvinist groups. They attack Alpha's ecumenism (115 different denominations worldwide use it, and all the main churches' leaders have lent it their blessing) and are fiercely critical of its pentecostal elements. Mark Elsdon-Dew denies any close association between Alpha and the Toronto Blessing, the extreme form of "Spirit-baptism" which, in the mid-1990s, led to outbreaks of mass hysteria at church services across the world and, more recently, to claims that believers' dental fillings had divinely been turned to gold. But there is no doubt that Nicky Gumbel's own spiritual experience was hugely affected by the events at Toronto Airport Vineyard Church.
In one of the videos, he talks about how a woman who had been to Toronto prayed for them. "She said: 'Now we'll invite the Holy Spirit to come,' and the moment she said that one of the people there was thrown, literally, across the room, and was lying on the floor, howling and laughing & I experienced the power of the Spirit in a way I hadn't experienced for years." Alpha teaches an essentially experiential Christianity, short on intellectual rigour, long on emotional uplift. It is perfectly tuned into new-age yearnings of a moneyed middle class bereft of spirituality, hence the interest from commercial TV. Mark Elsdon-Dew says that Sir David Frost is not a convert, but Frostie himself, son of a Methodist minister, says: "It reflects my interests and concerns, and I am fascinated by it in terms of the statistics and the extraordinary figures."
- Alpha also functions as a safe form of dating agency for those with similar interests, age (most participants are between 20 and 35) and status. Greta Greenwood, a Holy Trinity worker who lives near the church, is the smiling face of Alpha's new billboard. She is happily married, but John Millington, who designed the campaign, says: "Maybe it ever, 's not so irrational for a young man to hope he might meet someone like Greta at Alpha." [Source: http://www.thescotsman.co.uk/index.cfm?id=3DFaith2700 ] (This article was a newspaper article posted 28 Sep 2000)
BACK
Tell your friends about us and thank you for visiting Cephas Ministry Inc. (www.cephasministry.com)