A review (not mine) of the Alpha Course

For those of you who aren’t aware, the Alpha Course is a 12-week course purportedly aimed at non-christians to introduce them to the wonders of christianity and a (completely non-sexual, gay or otherwise) loving relationship with their main god, Jesus, and his Doppelgänger/schizophrenic façades (”God” and the Holy Ghost/Spirit thingy) too.

Officially, its slogans centre around the idea that they offer to help you “explore the meaning of life” which, of course, only they have the answer to — and yup, you’ve guessed it, it’s their old pal Hank Jesus — and they’re very well exposed, by which I mean they take out a lot of advertising have a comprehensive marketing strategy1.

I probably wouldn’t ever have mentioned the Alpha Course again (the last time I did was here, and I wasn’t too kind about it) but for the fact that a chap by the name of Steve has thrown himself to the wolves and risked his sanity for our edification by both attending the Alpha Course, recording the conversations held there and presenting us with a review with verbatim conversation.

As some of you may (or may not) know, I was never a god believer. That fact, however, doesn’t stop me having a morbid fascination with beliefs in gods. And I found Steve’s experiences to be a real eye opener, especially after just finishing Guy Harrison’s excellent 50 reasons people give for believing in a god. Not that I expect the people who I think should read it will read it, but hope springs and all that zarrjazz…

What I get from reading Steve’s review is that the Alpha Course is pretty much nothing more than a way of getting the rank and file theologically-inept christianeqsue wishy-washy pseudo-believers or, as I prefer to think of them, common-or-garden-variety CofE form-fillers, into accepting a view of christianity that boils down to nothing more than the most inane of adrenalised biblical literalism, something I expect would horrify those kooky traditional British christians that I’ve come to know and ignore. Or ‘anglicans’, as I believe they like their sect to be known.

Anyway, for anyone with an interest in finding out what an example of modern British christian propaganda looks like, you could do a lot worse than read Steve’s (very polite and humorous) review. Personally, I wouldn’t have had the stomach to stand 12 evenings of this, but props to him for sticking with it.

Also, on a related topic, King Aardvark (a blog that I’ve sadly neglected on the blogroll for far too long — slapped wrists for me!) is also blogging about his experience doing this course. I’ll be interested in following his progress too.

  1. if you read the review, you’ll begin to understand why I make this “distinction” []

There's probably no god.  Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.