Letter to an Alpha -- A Skeptical Priest Looks at the Alpha Course

This article sparked the largest number of Letters to the Editor in the history of  The Living Church -- a relatively conservative national magazine for Episcopalians.  The Living Church is read by many who treasure the traditions of the church and also by many who share the conservative theology of the Evangelical movement.  The Alpha Course is an "Introduction to Christianity" promulgated by the conservative wing of the Church.  Matthew's response to his critics is also found, below.


Dear K:

This morning the Holy Spirit visited me in the form of a lovely dream, and then woke me at precisely five a.m. so that I would write this letter to you.  I tell you this at the outset because I want to assure you that I, too, believe in the living presence of the Holy Spirit, as I also believe in the resurrected Christ.  After hearing what I have to say about the Alpha course, you may doubt this, so I state it upfront.

I also believe that the Holy Spirit brought us together, and inspired you to hand me the tape of Nicky Gumbel's sermons.  I found him to be a wonderfully engaging preacher who introduces the principles behind the Alpha course with clarity and humor.  I was interested in listening to this tape because people whom I respect speak highly of the Alpha course.  And indeed, I was impressed by Gumbel's affability, his charming manner and his light touch.  But I was also disappointed by his simplistic and discredited theology.  Anglicans are sometimes referred to as "Catholic lite" -- a term that makes me cringe -- but from what I could glean from the tapes, the Alpha approach is "Fundamentalist lite" -- in my opinion an even more unfortunate development.

Listening to the tape, I once again found myself wondering if the church I love has become so intellectually flaccid that it is incapable of defending itself from this invasion by protestant evangelicalism, just as many of our churches now feature praise choruses as their artless alternative to the hymnal.

My disappointment in Nicky Gumbel became acute as he presented his "evidence" that Jesus is the Son of God.  He uses the Bible as a proof text, implying Biblical literalism without actually invoking it.  He blithely assumes that statements attributed to Jesus in John's gospel are Jesus' own words.  He makes sweeping claims for the reliability of Scripture that ignores nearly two centuries of Biblical scholarship.  Nothing about the great debates on the authority of Scripture or the historical Jesus enters his seamless presentation.  The thousands of educated lay people who have been reading the likes of Crossan, Borg and Spong have no home in this world.  His rationalist use of terms like "evidence" and "truth" commit the classic errors of Evangelical theology by reducing the ecstatic exclamations of faith to the merely descriptive language of empiricism.

Even more troubling are his claims for the superiority of Christianity -- that not only are the teachings of Jesus unique, but it is only through Jesus that we can enter into a salvific relationship with God.  These claims are dangerously narrow in an era when the piety of all faiths must be honored.  I stand with most Episcopalians, and, indeed, the majority of Americans who now believe that Christianity is only one of many possible paths toward God.  It is important and necessary to criticize organized religions that make salvation their exclusive property.  As globalism spreads and our world shrinks, our appreciation of the world's religions must expand.  As the centuries attest and current events make plain, violence and warfare go hand-in-hand with religions of spiritual superiority.

Finally, Gumbel's evangelical theology of the atonement troubles me.  In this cosmology, the world is apparently a dangerous place ("enemy territory," to use Gumbel's phrase) from which God rescues us by effecting a cosmic shift in the balance of powers accomplished by Jesus' death on the cross.  This approach, while it has historic resonance with the Babylonian and Hellenistic cults that influenced early Christianity, is not the only tradition within Christianity, and lives in tension with historic Anglicanism's deep Incarnational trust in the world -- a world created through Christ and revealing God's love through its inherent beauty and goodness.  Anglicanism's spirituality draws us into a positive and loving engagement with the creation and one another, rather than a Puritan attitude of suspicion in which one is quick to define forbidden territories, such as sexuality, evolutionary science, mystical spirituality, and other religions.  While Gumbel's "lite" approach stops short of drawing these conclusions, they are implicit in his methodology.

Now, one may argue that I am missing the point; that the Alpha course's mission is to introduce unchurched people to an elementary understanding of the Christian faith, while the level of dialogue I propose is of a more "graduate school" approach.  According to this argument, we should start them off with the basics: don't confuse them with intellectual complexity before they've had a chance to experience the power of the gospel on its most basic level.  We justify a similar approach when we tell our children fables about Santa Claus: they teach an important lesson which, we believe, will survive the inevitable collapse of the story as a truth-claim.  But the problem is that while Gumbel's audience may be unchurched, they are not children.  The educated layperson of today has been introduced to the problems of Biblical authority and postmodern truth claims, and has grown so weary of Christianity's inability to integrate these issues with a lively faith that they adopt Spong's moniker as "believers in exile."

There is something deeply troubling about a religion that thinks it must indoctrinate its newest members by making simplistic arguments that lack intellectual integrity.  One cannot convert people to the truth by means of lies.

John Cobb has said that the death of the "mainline" denominations is being accelerated by its inability to think.  Certainly the times demand the very best thinking that our brains can muster and our souls can bear.  When, instead of fresh proclamations of the faith, we trot-out arguments of this sort, I fear for the future of this Church I love.

I am an evangelist, yes; I proclaim the Good News of Christ with passion and conviction.  I am committed to the growth of the church.  This does not require that I switch off my brain.  A strong faith encourages a rigorous learning and confirms a lively intelligence.

I therefore pray that you will understand, and perhaps forgive, my disinclination to offer the Alpha course in my ministry.  I give thanks for the love of God which your efforts clearly reveal.

Yours in Christ,

        ML+



The Rev. Matthew Lawrence
Chaplain, Canterbury House
Director, Institute for Public Theology