The Alpha Course

It's a Wednesday evening in early summer, and you'd think some fancy soiree was taking place in Knightsbridge, west London, on beautiful lawns set back from Brompton Road. Porsches and Aston Martins are parked up, and attractive young people, even some famous names, in casual wear and summer dresses are wandering up a tree-lined drive.But this is no soiree. We are agnostics. We are entering a church - the Holy Trinity Brompton (HTB) - to sign up for the Alpha course, led by Nicky Gumbel. He is over there, welcoming agnostics; he's good-looking, tall and slim. It sounds impossible but Gumbel's course, consisting of 10 Wednesday evenings, routinely transforms hardened unbelievers, the entrenched faithless, into confirmed Christians. There will be after-dinner talks from Gumbel, a minister at Holy Trinity as well as head of Alpha, and then we will split into small groups to discuss the meaning of life, etc. There will be a weekend away in Kidderminster. And that's it. Salvation will occur within these parameters. I cannot imagine how it can work.However, at a cautious estimate, in Britain alone and in less than a decade, a quarter of a million agnostics have found God through Gumbel. To name one: Jonathan Aitken. "I am a man of unclean lips," he told the Catholic newspaper, the Tablet, " ... but I went on an Alpha course at Holy Trinity Brompton, and found great inspiration from its fellowship and the teachings on the Holy Spirit." The Tablet added, "He has done Alpha not once but three times, graduating from a humble student to a helper who pours coffee.Gumbel's supporters say that, within C of E circles, he is now more influential than the Archbishop of Canterbury; they claim that Alpha is saving the Church. Other people say some quite horrifying things about Nicky Gumbel. I am told it is almost impossible to get an interview with him. His diary is full until 2003. His people were apologetic. They said that the only way to really get to know Nicky, to understand how he does it, was to enrol in Alpha."Hi!" says a woman wearing a name-tag at HTB. "You're ... ?""Jon Ronson.""Jon. Let's see. Great!" She ticks off my name and laughs. "I know it feels strange on the first night, but don't be nervous - in a couple of weeks' time, this'll feel like home."I drift into the church. There are agnostics everywhere, eating shepherd's pie from paper plates on their laps. Michael Allison, one-time permanent private secretary to Mrs Thatcher, is here. So is an ex-England cricket captain. I spot the manager of a big British pop group. Samantha Fox found God through Nicky. I wonder whether Jonathan Aitken will pour the coffee, but he is nowhere to be seen tonight. And now Nicky is on stage, leaning against the podium, smiling hesitantly. He reminds me of Tony Blair. "A very warm welcome to you all. Now some of you may be thinking, 'Help! What have I got myself into?'" A laugh. "Don't worry," he says. "We're not going to pressurise you into doing anything. Perhaps some of you are sitting there sneering. If you are, please don't think that I'm looking down at you. I spent half my life as an atheist. I used to go to talks like this and I would sneer."Nicky is being disingenuous - we know that there are no talks like this - Alpha is uniquely successful, and branching out abroad, so far to 112 countries, where they play Nicky's videos and the pastor acts the part of Nicky. "This just may be the wrong time for you," says Nicky to the sneerers. "If you don't want to come along next week, that's fine. Nobody will phone you up! I'd like you to meet Pippa, my wife." We applaud. "Hi!" says Pippa. "We've got three children. Henry is 20, there's Jonathan, and Rebecca is 15."Nicky assures us that we are not abnormal for being here. The Bible is the world's most popular book, he says. This is normal. "Forget the modern British novelists and the TV tie-ins," he says, "44 million Bibles are sold each year." He says that the New Testament was written when they say it was. "We know this very accurately," he explains, "through a science called textual criticism." He says that Jesus existed. This is historically accurate. He quotes the Jewish historian Josephus, born AD37: "Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works ... the tribe of Christians so named after him are not extinct to this day." I am with Nicky thus far. My knowledge of Josephus is sketchy, but he strikes me as a reliable source. But the agnostics here - it soon becomes clear that Nicky can read our minds - are thinking, "But none of this proves that Jesus was anything more than a human teacher."Nicky tells an anecdote: he says that he once failed to recognise that his squash partner was Paul Ackford, the England rugby international. Similarly, Jesus's disciples, in the region of Caesarea Philippi, failed to recognise their master was the Son of God. I could live without the squash anecdote, though it presumably works for some people. Nicky says that Jesus could not have been just a great human teacher. When he was asked at his trial whether he was "The Christ, the Son of the Living God, he replied: 'I am.'" Nicky's point is this: a great human teacher would not claim to be the Son of God. "You must make your choice - either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else he's a lunatic or, worse, the Devil of Hell. But don't let us come up with any patronising nonsense about his being a great moral teacher. He hasn't left that open to us. He didn't intend to." This final logic (a quote from one of Nicky's heroes, CS Lewis) is impressive to me. It remains in my mind.Then it's on to the small group. I am in Nicky's group: typically, it consists of around 10 agnostics, some from the City, some from the dot.com world, some professional sportspeople, strangers gathered together in a small room in the basement. We sit in a circle. I wonder what will happen to us in the weeks ahead. For now, we verbalise our doubts. We gang up on Nicky and his helpers: his wife, Pippa, an investment banker called James and his doctor wife, Julia, all ex-agnostics who found Christ on Alpha. We ask them antagonistic questions. "If there's a God, why is there so much suffering?" And: "What about those people who have never heard of Jesus? Are you saying that all other religions are damned?"Nicky just smiles and says, "What do the other people here think?"At the end of the night, Nicky hands out some pamphlets he's written called (such is the predictability of agnostics) Why Does God Allow Suffering? (answer: nobody really knows) and What About Other Religions? (answer: they will, unfortunately, go to Hell. That includes me - I am a Jew). I am enjoying myself. I drive away thinking about the things Nicky said. I play them over in my mind. But by the time I arrive home and then watch ER, my mini epiphany has all drained away and I go back to normal. I cannot imagine how any of my fellow agnostics will possibly be converted by the end of the course.As the weeks progress, the timetable becomes routine. Dinner, a talk from Nicky, coffee and digestives, the small groups. But the hostile questions have now become slightly less combative. One agnostic, Alice, who is the financial manager of an internet company and rides her horse every weekend in Somerset, admits to taking Nicky's pamphlets away with her on business trips. She says she reads them on the plane and finds them comforting. We talk about the excuses we give our friends for our weekly Wednesday night absences. Some say they're learning French. Others say they're on a business course. There is laughter and blushing. I miss Week Three because I am reporting on wife swapping parties in Paris. On Week Four, Nicky suggests I tell the group all about wife swapping. The group asks me lots of questions. When I fill in the details, Nicky shakes his head mournfully. "What about the children," he sighs. "So many people getting hurt." He's right. Nicky ends the night by saying to me: "I think it's important that you saw something awful like that midway through Alpha.On Week Five, Nicky talks about answered prayers and how coincidences can sometimes be messages from God. He says he keeps a prayer diary and ticks them off when they are answered. As Nicky says these things, I think about my own life, about how my wife and I were told we couldn't have a baby - about how awful those years of infertility were, how every month was like a funeral without a corpse - and then we did have a baby, and thought that our son, Joel, was a gift from God.The moment I think about this, I hear Nicky say the word "Joel". I look up. Nicky is quoting from the Book of Joel: "I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten." Later, I tell the group what happened. "Ahhh," they say, when I get to the part about us having a baby. "Ahhh," they say again, when I get to the part about Nicky saying Joel, and reading out an uncannily appropriate quote."Well?" I say."I don't know," Nicky smiles. "I think you should let it sit in your heart and make your own decision.""But what do you think?" I say."If I had to put a bet on it," he says, "coincidence or message, I'd say definitely, yes, that was a message from God."The subject is changed. "So?" says Nicky. "How was everyone's week?"Tony sits next to Alice. He is the most vociferous agnostic in the group. He always turns up in his business suit, straight from work, and has a hangdog expression, as if something is always troubling him."Tony?" says Nicky. "How was your week?""I was talking to a homosexual friend," says Tony, "and he said that ever since he was a child he found himself attracted to other boys. So why does the church think he's committing a sin? Are you going to Hell if you commit a sexual act that is completely normal to you? That seems a bit unfair, doesn't it?" There is a murmur of agreement from the group."First of all," says Nicky, "I have many wonderful homosexual friends. There's even an Alpha for gays running in Beverly Hills! Really! I think it's marvellous! But if a paedophile said, 'Ever since I was a child I found myself attracted to children', we wouldn't say that that was normal, would we?" A small gasp. "Now, I am not for a moment comparing homosexuals with paedophiles, but the Bible makes it very clear that sex outside marriage, including homosexual sex, is, unfortunately, a sin." He says he wishes it wasn't so, but the Bible makes it clear that gay people need to be healed."Although I strongly advise you not to say the word 'healed' to them," he quickly adds. "They hate that word."The meeting is wound up. Nicky, Pippa and I stay around for a chat. We talk about who we feel might be on the cusp of converting. My money is on Alice."Really?" says Nicky. "You think Alice?""Of course," I say. "Who do you think?""Tony," says Nicky."Tony?" I say."We'll see," says Nicky.I drive home. In the middle of the night it becomes clear to me that I almost certainly had a message from God, that God had spoken to me through Nicky Gumbel.