Crash Course in Christianity Is Winning Over Churches and the Wayward

By Tom Verde
Via Web-site http://www.nytimes.com
New York Times: December 27th, 1998

Like many, George Saurwein rarely attended regular religious services, except at this time of year.

Alpha got me closer to people in the church and made me feel like a part of the community.

"You could say I was one of those Christmas-and-Easter Christians," said Mr. Saurwein, 36, helping himself to a cup of coffee in the parish hall of St.James Episcopal Church here. "I had a relationship with God that was outside the church."

That was until this fall, when Mr. Saurwein's brother-in-law talked him into going to an Alpha course, a novel approach to Christian education that has been catching on nationwide in a growing number of Episcopal congregations, as well as those of other mainstream Christian denominations.

"Alpha got me closer to people in the church and made me feel like a part of the community," said Mr. Saurwein, who now attends services at St. James every Sunday.

And while the rector, the Rev. Roger M. Robillard, is pleased to see Mr. Saurwein and other Alpha graduates fill the pews each week, he said he was not keeping score. "Alpha's not an instrument for growing my church only, but for growing the church as a whole," Father Robillard said.

Alpha's objectives are to introduce newcomers to the Christian faith and to re-establish ties with wayward parishioners through a 10-week videotaped crashcourse in the basics of Christianity.

Promising to provide a setting in which participants are not threatened or judged, the course features a series of lectures by the Rev. Nicky Gumbel, 43, an Oxford-educated lawyer turned minister who is on the staff of the Holy Trinity Anglican Church of Brompton in London. It was there that Alpha was conceived in the mid-70's as a Bible study course for new Christians.

A former atheist who once wrote a school essay to disprove the existence of God and eventually turned to Christianity after reading the New Testament, Mr. Gumbel took charge of the Alpha program in 1991 and revised it, making the course accessible to a wider audience.

"It's an attempt to keep the message a traditional one, but change the packaging, to present Christianity in a way that's culturally relevant to people today," said Alistair Hanna, 53, executive director of Alpha North America, which is based at St. Bartholomew's Episcopal Church on Park Avenue in Manhattan and is the base for the Alpha movement in the United States and Canada.

Through a combination of humorous anecdotes, personal reflections and passages from many theological sources-from the Scriptures to C. S. Lewis to Charlie Brown-Mr. Gumbel addresses questions like, "Why does God allow suffering?" "Why and how do I pray?" and "Is Christianity boring, untrue and irrelevant?"

"It really is for intelligent seekers who don't yet belong to a church," said the Rev. Jeffrey Q. Black, who used the course to attract all 250 members of his year-old congregation at St. Barnabas Episcopal Church in Austin, Tex.

Each Alpha session begins with a potluck supper, followed by a viewing of a videotape and then a discussion moderated by a local Alpha leader, typically a parish member or sometimes the church minister.

Alpha Facts:
 
Alpha is intended to be cross-denominational, not focusing on any one denomination. It works equally well for all Christian churchs.
 
Since Alpha was introduced in the United States in 1995, nearly 2,000 churches have offered the course.
 
Alpha officials estimate that more than 1.5 million people worldwide have taken the course, which is offered in 75 countries.

Although Alpha is most popular among Episcopalians, it is intended to be cross-denominational and has attracted Roman Catholics, Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists and others.

"There are many barriers being broken down between denominations these days, so Alpha fits in well," said the Rev. Larry P. Showalter, pastor of Boston's Ruggles Baptist Church, where the Alpha course has been offered for a little more than a year. Mr. Showalter said Alpha was directly responsible for a 5 percent to 10 percent increase in membership at his congregation.

"Alpha draws in people who are on the fringe as well as those who are 'unchurched' and are just looking to understand the Christian faith," Mr. Showalter said.

Since Alpha was introduced in the United States in 1995, nearly 2,000 churches have offered the course. Sales of Alpha course materials in the United States are brisk: 170,000 Alpha manuals and 4,000 sets of videos in the last two years, Alpha officials said.

Alpha officials estimate that more than 1.5 million people worldwide have taken the course, which is offered in 75 countries.

"We can't keep enough in the warehouse," said Carrie Salstrom, marketing manager for David C. Cook Church Ministries in Colorado Springs, the publisher of Alpha tapes and literature and the nation's largest nondenominational publisher of Sunday school materials. Ms. Salstrom said Alpha materials had become "one of the company's largest lines" over the last three years.

Alpha's ready explanations on issues of faith and its no-pressure approach account for much of its success, said James P. Wind, president of Alban Institute in Bethesda, Md., an independent organization that tracks trends in congregations nationwide.

"It's presented in a way that people who are constantly being marketed to can relate to," Mr. Wind said. Although he said he supported any "new and creative way to invite people into the faith," including Alpha, he wondered whether the course delved deeply enough. "Are the ambiguities and deeper puzzles and paradoxes of the Christian faith being represented here?" he said. "I'm not sure."

Other skeptics have picked up Alpha and put it down for the same reason. "It's packaged well and is attractive, but the study of Christianity is not as simple as Gumbel makes it out to be," said Chester L. Gillis, associate professor of theology at Georgetown University and author of "Roman Catholicism in America," which is to be issued in July by Columbia University Press. "He makes the claims of Christianity seem so historically certain that he leaves little need for faith."

Then there are those who bridle at Alpha's hard-line stance against divorce, abortion and homosexuality. Some ministers chose to ignore the program's position on the last issue, and edited it from their presentations.

Still others question whether Alpha, owing to its conservative roots, is as ecumenical in its appeal as its literature claims. "I'm not convinced that it's bringing in a whole lot of new people," said the Rev. Ian T. Douglas, a theologian at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Mass. "Unfortunately, I think that most of the people who have participated are like-minded conservatives looking for more fellowship and to have their theological positions affirmed."

Nevertheless, Alpha has won the support of many religious leaders both here and abroad, including the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev. George L. Carey; the televangelist Robert Schuller and William H. Cardinal Keeler of Baltimore.

Mr. Hanna, Alpha's top American official, says his goal is to offer the program in 50,000 churches in the United States and attract 8 million to 10 million new people to the program. His plan: get an invitation to an Alpha course into the mailboxes of every home in the United States by the end of 2000.

"If you walked through any 18th-century village here or in Europe, the biggest, noisiest building was always the church, with its bell and its clock," Mr. Hanna said. "Today, I think the church has shrunk in terms of its visibility. I think Alpha's a good way to raise the noise level again."