By Patrick Redmond
This is a rather belated follow up to my Alpha Skeptic post.
There I described how I started the Alpha Course ran by a local evangelical
church and I promised to follow up and report how I did. Well, basically, I
failed. How and why I failed is a little confusing and I’ve spent a lot of time
thinking about it. I was very open about my atheism in what I thought was a nonaggressive
way, but I think that the problem was in my initial hopeful and naive conception
of what the Alpha Course was for.
According to the advert it was for people to come and find
out about Christianity and to ask questions. It said that you could come to all
or dip in and out, which is what I was going to do. It also said that there was
no need to make a commitment.
If you read the account of my first session the experience
was positive, lots of debate and openness. My second session was not so. My
life is full of ‘stuff’ and so I had missed out some weeks and came back in on
