I am sure that many of us can remember important conversations we have had which made possible significant changes of direction in our lives.  I can remember one such conversation which took place in the early 80s. Those who have read this blog over a period will know that, long ago, I completed a university thesis connected with my interest in the Greek Orthodox liturgy.  The detail of this research is unimportant here.   However, there was a dilemma I faced that comes with getting involved with any information of a very specialised kind.  This will be familiar to any of my readers who have undertaken post-graduate research.  The problem in essence is this.  Unless you are able to pursue a career of academic research and teaching, the information gathered over two or three years of academic research becomes rapidly out of date, especially if one has no access to university libraries.  What does one do with research which may be of interest to only a handful of people who happen to be interested in your chosen topic?  Was it all a massive waste of time to get so involved in a single specialised area of knowledge? 

The conversation I had was with a distinguished academic who understood both the substance of my research and the dilemma of my being unable to take it further.  What she said to me at the end of our conversation was a moment of liberation.  I had described to her my then fairly recent interest in healing and the way that this dimension of activity seemed to embrace almost every Christian culture that was around at the time.  I was meeting it in a New Age context right across to the charismatic.  My academic mentor was interested in this exploration and made a fascinating observation.  She pointed out that I, in the process of absorbing the highly visual culture of the Byzantine Orthodox faith, had also developed a facility to penetrate other value systems and cultures.  Struggling to understand the assumptions of the Byzantine writers for two years had been, effectually, an initiation into thinking within an alien culture.  This ability to live inside another culture in this way had demanded skills of imagination and intellectual flexibility which would always be useful.  My new interest in Christian healing would draw on these same skills of understanding, imagination and flexibility of thought.  In summary, my academic research had prepared me for an immersion into Christian cultures that were not my own.  The word I use to describe this process is rather an old-fashioned one, the word ‘indwell’.   One tries to live inside the thinking of another in order to understand better what the other is experiencing and talking about, while not necessarily agreeing with them.  Indwelling the culture and thinking of other Christians has become a core activity of mine over the past 40 years.

The attempts, on my part, to indwell other people’s thinking have been partly successful in my professional work as a clergyman.  For a time in the 80s I acted as an ecumenical officer for a diocese when the possibility of achieving Christianity unity seemed an achievable goal.  My later work as a part-time adviser on the healing ministry was also undertaken with a background of a substantial generosity of spirit between Christians from quite different backgrounds.  The emergence of a spirit of division and intolerance among Christians which seems to be a feature of this present century, is reflected in the current bitter disputes among Christian bodies who cannot agree on same-sex relationships.  The deeper issue is that Christians fail to understand one another or agree how to read and understand the Bible.   And it is on this point that my own skills and ability to indwell the thinking of others seems to fail.

 ‘Bible-believing Christians’ present us with a model of truth which allows no compromise.  The problem I have with this group is not the tenets of their belief system which are in continuity with certain beliefs from the past.  My problem is the way that the word ‘true’ in the context of the Bible is defined.  When the word ‘infallible’ is also introduced into the discussion, I desperately feel a sense of shutters coming down, precluding anything resembling true dialogue.  It is only since the eighteenth century that ideas of truth and falsehood in the scientific sense have been circulating.   The definitions of truth that existed before had to accord with the dictates of those in spiritual or political power, not in the language of scientific reasoning.  The contortions that some biblical ‘scholars’ get into to accommodate the ‘plain meaning’ of God’s Word when reading the text of Genesis are tortuous and insulting to anyone of basic intelligence.  Answers to simple questions are needed – how did the creation of sun and moon take place after the creation of light in the Genesis narrative?  What were the numbers of animals entering the Ark? These questions cannot be answered with the pseudo-scientific formulae of many Biblical conservatives.  The answers that exist in reasonable discourse belong to the world of symbol and metaphor not scientific measurement. I recognise that few Christian teachers in the UK spend much time on these questions.  In the scheme of things, they are trivial.  More important is the possibility that ordinary Christians, reared to accept ideas of scriptural infallibility, secretly spend a great deal of time worrying about such issues.  Only allowed to have a single version of the meaning of truth, these Christians are deprived of any insight as to how things can be true in a whole number of ways that are more glorious, more life enhancing than a narrow concentration on scientific fact.  One quotation from Scripture draws us back to the richness of beauty in our understanding of God ‘O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness’.  The truth encountered in beauty takes precedence over the truth contained formulaic barely understood doctrinal formulae.  The latter matter but they never engage the human spirit without the former.

To return to my important conversation with my academic mentor, which had the effect of releasing my imagination and my aesthetic sensitivity into my spiritual and intellectual journey, I am grateful for one special gift.  I am deeply grateful for the fact that in my reading, learning and discussions over the years I have never been encouraged to think I have arrived, in respect of truth.  The discovery of aspects of truth on this journey only urges me on further to explore new things.  Paradoxically the more of truth one learns, the more truth yet to be discovered emerges.

by Martyn Percy

Part 2 of Martyn’s assessment of Alpha

Alpha courses appear to be a phenomenal success.  My copy of Church Times seems to take on the proportions of the Sunday Times whenever there is an Alpha News insert.  Their own publicity suggests that hundreds of thousands of people have taken part in a course in this country, the Commonwealth and beyond.  Alpha News is full of good reports and self-publicity, smattered with quotes from ‘academics’, Bishops, and the like.  The Alpha Course itself has now become a business operation, with its own staff, teaching materials, sweat shirts, videos and books.  Of its type, it is one of the slickest commodifications of the gospel.

I ought to state now that I have not attended an Alpha Course; but I have seen much of the Alpha material.  To my mind, it has a number of features that are commendable.  First, it is a course, not a ‘hit and run’ exercise in evangelism.  A number of evenings, a weekend away and a final supper can facilitate the building up of community relationships.  Second, because it is designed to be locally-based, and from the church, it avoids the pitfalls of some itinerant evangelists who might not relate easily to local contexts and churches.  Third, there is a wealth of supportive literature to aid enquirers.  It is well-marketed, and written and presented in a ‘light’ apologetic style, formed from an evangelical-charismatic basis.  A sort of David Watson Jesus Then and Now for the 90’s, but with much more emphasis on the individual, the therapeutic, and a very personable Holy Spirit.

People who attend an Alpha Course seem to enjoy the fellowship and find their faith refreshed.  Amongst most, if not all charismatic-evangelical churches, the Alpha Course has now become obligatory; a logo that makes a statement about being in the vanguard of fashionable evangelistic techniques.  Yet I do have quite serious reservations about the style, content, approach and results of Alpha.  How though, can something apparently so successful be flawed?  Three reasons immediately come to mind.

First, there is very little attempt to present the Church as the body of Christ which is the initial repository for the Gospel.  The assumption Alpha appears to make – common to a good deal of evangelical apologetics – is that people become Christians first, then think about joining a church.  The disassociation is highly problematic.  Whilst individual evangelists and various agencies target the millions beyond church structures, the majority of conversions often fail to be properly inculcated in to the church.  This is, in part, because these same people are embarrassed by the church, and offer a Gospel that barely mentions it, if at all.  Evangelicals tend to have little theology of place, or an appreciation of directional plurality, regarding the church as a collection of people who are in agreement with one another.  A focus on the church and sacraments would deepen the course, and ensure the material was more firmly rooted as an arm from within the church, rather than an external agent being used as a go-between.  Some Roman Catholic and liberal Anglican churches have ‘tailored’ the course in this way, although the authors forbid this.

Second, the genius of Christianity lies in its contestability.  In the relentless appeal to ‘basics’, the course obviates the implicit and explicit paradoxes in the Gospel, as well as its breadth.  It offers Christianity as a simple, uncontextual, boundless project that is ‘learned’ through a course offering certain types of knowledge and experience.  Any group that offers a course on ‘Basic Christianity’ needs to address who chose the basics, and why certain ‘basics’ were selected and not others.  In Alpha, the basics turn out to be an appeal to a largely innerrant Bible, attenuation of a homely and powerful Holy Spirit, and expression of an Evangelical atonement theory.  They are not, interestingly, the Trinity, baptism, communion or community, which might be more appropriate for other groups.  Moreover, the authors apparently do not like the course being adapted or enculturated.  This suggests that a ‘package’ of truth is being sold.  Yet Christianity is arguably not something we ‘possess’; like God, it possesses us, but is beyond us too.

Third, the focus on the Holy Spirit is one of over- emphasis.  The Spirit on offer obviously arises from a personable, therapeutic, home-counties context that is concerned with the individual.  The dynamics of the Spirit’s work in creation, justice, peace, reconciliation and the wider church receive scant attention.  This is because the authors of the course reflect an elite, upper-middle class outlook (Eton, Cambridge, Brompton), which, quite naturally, has also enculturated the Gospel.  In introducing the Gospel from here, there is inevitably no real social mandate, no prophetic witness and no serious appreciation of theology or ecclesiological breadth and depth. 

It is true that the Gospel is free to all.  But it does not follow that it should be sold and marketed as a cheap package deal – a bargain-break weekend for two in eternity.  Alpha offers a highly successful ‘trial pack’ (a ‘nice’ version of Christianity), yet one that does not actually relate to what is ultimately on offer, namely the complexity of salvation from within the church.  As a locally-based evangelism programme, it is seriously flawed.  True, it does recognise that ‘lasting conversions’ are made through local church connections and friendships, with less coming from hyped-up rallies or events that are outside the church.  But the weaknesses lie in its theological foundations.  It sets its own ‘questions’, and then offers the ‘answers’ to them: a classic technique in apologetics – caricaturing ‘objections’ to faith, then demolishing them.  There is little space for people to actually reflect on and vent their own serious social, personal, moral or theological concerns.  The appeal to ‘basics’ seems to assume that all Christians are more or less the same underneath, and that their ecclesial expressions are merely cosmetic.  They are not: for many they are matters of theological and aesthetic substance. 

As a course, it is therefore somewhat prescriptive, a package rather than a pilgrimage.  Participants are locked into a hermetically-sealed hermeneutical circle, that keeps more issues out than it actually addresses.  It is a confident but narrow expression of Christianity.  It stresses the personal experience of the Spirit over the Spirit in the whole church, in all its plurality and depth.  It attempts to transform course members in to converts, and then again into church members.  Ironically, the skeleton of the course does provide a good template that parishes could adapt and deepen according to need and context.  A number of parishes I know have adapted the middle-class presuppositions of the course for their own situations where ‘supper parties’ are not easy formats in which to discuss life and faith.  It is odd then, that the authors of the course are against this.  Presumably, this is because there is a real bias in the material that is not to be ignored, and is to be protected from dilution.  So here we have a technique with fundaments, Patent Pending.

My hunch is that Alpha ultimately does to churches what any revival does.  Mostly, it excites and galvanises existing believers, and encourages them to ponder (briefly) the world outside the church.  Then to engage with it more openly than they might otherwise, albeit temporarily.  However, although this form of apologetics is to be preferred to some itinerant evangelism or mass rallies, insofar as it is locally-based, it has still done little to address the theological vacuity of its parent missiological models.  It is still more monologue than dialogue.  People are still mostly ‘sold’ a Gospel that is independent of the church – and then the course organisers wonder why the attendees don’t translate into members.  It also offers a version of the Gospel that is weak on sin, suffering, atonement, sacraments and sacrifice.  True, people have to start somewhere with the claims of the Gospel: milk precedes meat, and you learn to walk before you run.  But does the presentation have to be so sugar-coated, crude and narrow?  People’s previous experience of the church is deemed to be peripheral, and the selected ‘basics’ presented as central.  For example, one cannot imagine receiving any reasonable answer to a question like this: ‘What did God do for me when I was baptised as child?’  Such issues are omitted from the agenda.  They are just too complex to form the basis for a discussion about divine action and the graciousness of God.

The danger of a therapeutically-tuned version of the Gospel that is intentionally socially relevant is that it will itself become a fashion-victim.  The course comes from the same church – Holy Trinity, Brompton – that introduced John Wimber’s ‘Signs and Wonders’ (miracles are the best form of evangelism: 1984-86), the ‘Kansas City Six’ (1988-90: a group of strange American ‘prophets’, now widely discredited) and the ‘Toronto Blessing’ (RIP, 1994-1996).  In their own way, all these phenomena were rather ordinary within the econtext of revivalism and enthusiastic religion, yet they were marketed and sold well, particularly by Holy Trinity, Brompton.  They have a shelf-life of between 18-24 months, and in spite of some of the same Bishops and ‘academics’ who promote Alpha (one is placed in this category by virtue of being a Principal of an Anglican Theological College) giving each of these movements their full impramatur, they fizzled out.  So what they actually point to, ironically, is the lack of a deeply-formed ecclesial identity and enduring spirituality in these faith-expressions.  Without something new to sing about, punters in the pew eventually become bored.  ‘Success’ is therefore about being at the forefront of spiritual fashion, riding along on the crest of the latest wave or craze. 

A key to this is the singling out of the spiritual as an ‘event’ which can be transformed into a commodity.  This means that Miracles and Blessings suddenly acquire an identity that makes them stand out from the crowd, like a designer label on a handbag or a pair of trainers.  An ordinary blessing won’t do anymore: it must be the ‘Toronto Blessing’.  Prayer for healing is old hat: ‘Signs and Wonders’ is where the action is, and God is deemed to be.  Prophecy is interesting, but have you heard the Kansas City Six perform?  So it is with Alpha.  An ordinary catechetical course will no longer suffice – evangelical-charismatic consumers are buying a name and an identity.  And the Alpha authors will not tolerate imitations or adaptations of their Gospel: it is salvation by copyright.

It will be interesting to see how many attending the courses, then ‘making a decision’, or having a numinous experience, are actually members of their local church in two years time.  My guess is that for all the hype, triumphalism and talk, this course is mainly about ‘refreshing’ charismatic-evangelical identity.  It does not address the world in all its pain, ambiguity and profusion – so it won’t actually change it, in spite of the claims.

Revd Dr Martyn Percy,