This past weekend, we had a watch party for the first two videos of Alpha Course. Alpha Course is a venerated onboarding class that newbie Christians take to learn about the basics of evangelicalism. And oh boy is it awful. I knew going into it that it wouldn’t present any real reasons to believe in anything evangelicals claim, but this plummeted far past even my low expectations. It was horrifyingly bad.
Today, we’ll check out a brief history of Alpha Course, then see why evangelicals think so highly of it, and then review its first video to see why their faith in it is so dramatically misplaced.
(This post first went live on Patreon on 6/10/2025.)
SITUATION REPORT: Wow this was all just so bad
This past weekend, we watched the first two videos of Alpha Course. The first asked viewers, “Is there more to life than this?”
Then, the second asked, “Who is Jesus?”
Neither video actually gave any compelling answers to their own questions. In particular, its presenter’s testimony in that first video completely falls apart under the slightest scrutiny, and most of the quotes backfire hard.
To say Alpha Course is juvenile would be far underselling its manipulative chops. Of course it’s juvenile. It’s apologetics. But it’s far more than that. Alpha Course is the kind of con that only succeeds if marks turn off their critical thinking skills for its entire runtime and accept anything they’re told without questions—even if it contradicts something said moments earlier.
Today, we’ll review that first video.
A brief history of Alpha Course and Nicky Gumbel
Nicky Gumbel didn’t create Alpha Course. It began in 1977 as a Bible study at a London church to teach evangelicals the basics of their faith. Soon enough, it became a Bible study aimed at those interested in joining evangelicalism. Gumbel came in around 1990. He was a curate at this same church. At this point, it was still based in just that one church. Seeing its success, though, the vicar there suggested Gumbel revise and expand the course—and lean it more toward evangelism.
(In Anglicanism, a “vicar” is the official priest of a church. A “curate” is sort of an ordained apprentice priest.)
So Alpha Course became a British phenomenon. By 1995, 2500 Alpha Courses were offered around the country. By 1998, over ten thousand were. Oh, it declined soon enough. But for a time, it guaranteed Gumbel’s success and fame.
As for Gumbel himself, he peddles a boilerplate totally-was-a-committed-atheist testimony in the videos, but—as most of these people turn out to be—he wasn’t.
Born in 1955, Gumbel converted in 1974. His father was a secular Jew, while his mother was Christian. La Wiki suggests early exposure to her religion through Christian holiday camps as a kid. His period of being absolutely-atheist-to-the-eyebrows lasted at most a few years in his teens.
Gumbel became an ordained deacon in the Church of England in 1986, then a curate in 1987.
He’s been on my radar since we checked out the Toronto Blessing, an evangelical movement that exploded in the mid-1990s. He turns up in its timeline in May 1994. Our space-cadet curate had forgotten about a staff meeting at his church because everyone was Jesusing soooo harrrrd at an impromptu prayer meeting elsewhere—where, apparently, attendees experienced Toronto-Blessing-style manifestations. He became an early—and extremely enthusiastic—proponent of the movement.
That obsession with huge emotional experiences comes through loud and clear in these videos.
Alpha Course Video #1: Is there more to life than this?
Amid quick shots of young adults walking around, skateboarding, and chatting together, Nicky Gumbel explains “life’s big questions.” Meanwhile, anonymous young adults talk about how they figure out answers to their big questions. They sound confused.
Gumbel claims Alpha Course functions as “an opportunity to explore life’s big questions.” He claims:
This is a great place to come together and talk about them openly and honestly.
I had my first laugh there. No, it isn’t! Evangelical groups are the last place I’d ever talk openly and honestly about anything, if I were evangelical.
Evangelicals learn very quickly what topics to avoid in these settings. Similarly, Alpha Course is an indoctrination tool. Its information flow is completely one-sided.
Now, Gumbel offers his totally-a-committed-atheist fake testimony. He claims that nothing satisfied him. Interestingly, he’d have been the equivalent of a high-schooler at this point, but he doesn’t mention his age. He stresses that his family’s full of lawyers, which makes him super-duper-good at critical thinking (lolno). In school, he considered himself an “argumentative atheist” and “logical determinist” who was known for getting into fights about religion all the time. (No, he does not explain what either term means. I’d lay odds on him not knowing what the second is.)
Gumbel says as he achieved each (childhood) milestone in life, he always felt dissatisfied. He’d look ahead to the next one as the solution that would finally make him happy. Of course, once he converted (again, at 19 years old), Jesus completely and totally satisfied him at last forever. And because that’s the effect he experienced, it will be the effect everyone experiences. Except when they don’t. Then they just need to Jesus more like he does.
A faith that doesn’t do anything its hucksters say it does
At 8 minutes in, Gumbel gets very tetchy when people tell him they’re glad his flavor of Jesusing works for him—because, as we’ve seen before, if it’s the universal truth for all humankind then it’s got to be far more than that.
And yet it obviously isn’t.
Out of all religious groups dominating the landscape today, Christians tend to be the worst at not living in the now. They officially only care about their future in Heaven.
A not-a-couple, Gemma and Toby (I thought he was “Phil,” her husband, until five minutes ago), then show up to tell us that everyone wants deep answers for the big questions of life. They’ll be a big part of the second video.
Gumbel thinks Jesusing makes someone feel less guilty, but one of his anecdotes (at 15:30) has him being briefly suspected of shoplifting—and he panics! He leaps straight from that to Jesus taking Christians’ guilt upon himself, but his very own anecdote has already undercut that claim.
Toward the end (around 19:00 in), Bear Grylls says he uses his faith as a crutch and a backbone of courage. He says he’s scared to handle life on his own. But he also says right afterward that he falls down and is often afraid. So if he is using faith that way, it’s failing him. Dude needs to heal the psychic injury requiring the mental crutch and grow a metaphorical backbone using real-world methods. He’s using a fake crutch and an imaginary backbone. That’s why he keeps falling down and fearing things.
(I don’t know much about Bear Grylls. But I do know he’s been credibly accused of dishonesty. He is a weird go-to for demonstrating a need for evangelicalism in one’s life.)
Quotes in the first video that backfire hard
We get a few quotes from people that Gumbel thinks buttress his opinion in the first video. None of them do.
At about 5 minutes in, we get a Jim Carrey quote about material things and popularity not being “the answer.” Weird, then, to see how many evangelicals clearly chase after material things and popularity, huh? Maybe they need to Jesus more like Gumbel does.
Another quote comes from Russell Brand (at 5:30 in the video), who apparently said he used drugs and alcohol to escape reality and fill the hole in his heart. Toby immediately quotes a Bible verse that is PROOF YES PROOF that Brand just needs to convert to not need substances anymore. I suppose we’ll just forget about all of the evangelicals caught abusing substances. Or that Jesus doesn’t cure people’s addictions. (Examples: J.D. Hall, Todd Bentley, Paul Cain, Carl Lentz.) Maybe Christian addicts are just not Jesusing correctly, right?
One last heathen, Freddie Mercury, appears in a quote (around 5:40) about feeling lonely despite vast success as a musician. Yeah, that loneliness couldn’t have had anything to do with him being bisexual in a very homophobic society, could it? No, it had to be his lack of proper Jesusing!
We also get a moment with Francis Collins, one of the discoverers of DNA, at 10 minutes in. He appears to tell us that he converted through a powerful emotional experience with a dying patient. Her faith was apparently the evidence that impressed Collins so much that he had to have some of that. He further uses the completely debunked “fine-tuning” argument to PROVE YES PROVE that Christianity is for realsies.
Of course, it wouldn’t be modern evangelicalism without name-checking and quoting C.S. Lewis. Collins mentions that the Lewis book Mere Christianity super-impressed him. As well, when Gumbel complains about his flavor of Jesusing being what works for him, he says Lewis totally assessed Christianity as being super-important for everyone. Lewis’ worst apologetic idea, the false trilemma of “Liar, Lunatic, or Lord,” gets a little love in that section. (It’ll get way more love in the next video, so we’ll talk more about it then.)
The point of this first video in Alpha Course
Viewers might end this video wondering WTAF it’s meant to accomplish.
Like any apologetics work, its first chapter creates the need for the product itself. In this case, the product is conversion to Christianity through the rest of the Alpha Course series. If Alpha Course induces someone to feel empty or emotionally-dissatisfied with life, then Alpha Course stands ready to fulfill that need with conversion.
But it creates that need through emotional manipulation. It can’t induce it through Jesus being real, Christianity’s claims being based in reality, or even evangelicalism being a great route to self-improvement. None of those things are true. All they’ve got is emotional manipulation. So they lean on that tactic as hard as they can.
Part of the manipulation involves them making untrue claims with breathless certainty. Gumbel claims his background as a lawyer uniquely positions him to judge Christianity’s claims as true. But lawyers don’t care about facts. They care about persuasion. Gumbel presents Alpha Course as a persuasive tool, not as a statement of facts. That’s why this first video contains literally none of them.
Scientists care about facts, of course. They developed the scientific method as a powerful tool of sifting facts from fiction. Notably, that method doesn’t support any Christian claims about the supernatural. But as Collins shows us, even the world’s best scientists forget about that fact in the face of powerful emotional experiences.
My answer to Alpha Course’s big question
Alpha Course thinks this life, in and of itself, just isn’t “enough” for people. But they’re so, so wrong.
Why does there need to be more to life than this? Why is this life itself not enough?
I don’t understand how someone can walk outside at night, look up at the stars, and think: Yeah, it’s pretty and all—but it doesn’t make me feel important enough.
The likelihood of you and I existing just like we do now is so astronomically tiny that it’s all but impossible. And yet here we are. When we’re born, we get a precious few decades of life: 7-8ish at the outside, 9-10 if we’re extremely lucky. At the end of that time, the octillions of atoms in our bodies stop agreeing to cooperate, and they fall apart and back into the dirt again.
We don’t worry about where the flame was before we light a candle, and so I refuse to worry about what’ll happen to it after the candle burns out. Now is when the candle burns. Now is what matters. That brief time aflame is also all we’ll ever get—but what a rich gift it is. It blows my mind that Christians behold it and sniff: No, it’s just not good enough for King Me.
Alpha Course ignores the truth of human life. Between birth and death, we get some few years to explore our life and do what we can with it. Some of us do stuff that’s so incredible that we’re talked about centuries and eons after our deaths: Homer, Enheduanna, Leonidas. Most of us won’t get that, though!
Rather, we likely survive for a few generations through being remembered for what we created: children, art, ideas. The vast majority of our names will be forgotten in a century, though our onetime presence, influence, and actions weave through the overall tapestry forever. Every one of us leaves fingerprints on that tapestry in some way.
We won’t get more than that by following someone else’s answers. We must find them for ourselves. That’s the only way answers even can matter.
NEXT UP: Speaking of self-important salespeople, the SBC 2025 Annual Meeting! See you soon! <3
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