Answering Alpha is a series of reviews of Alpha Course , which is an evangelism-focused series of lectures and Bible studies. The “course” aims to introduce outsiders to Christianity to basic concepts like sin, the afterlife, who and what Jesus is, and why everyone needs to convert.
First developed in the UK, it now runs all over the world in many different languages.
And as you might suspect, it sucks.
Alpha Course has been around for decades. So have criticisms of it from every single corner of Christianity. Today, let me show you some of those criticisms—and what they mean for Christianity itself. (This post first went live on Patreon on 1/2/2026. No voicecast today, sorry! My voice is doing Read more
At this point in our Alpha Course mega-review, we must stop to discuss speaking in tongues. The Christians who do it really like it! But not everyone knows what it is or how it’s done. So today, let me offer you a crash course in one of the weirdest worship Read more
When a group of us watched Alpha Course #10, we weren’t expecting this level of duplicity and evasiveness. The video promised to reveal an answer: ‘How can I be filled with the Holy Spirit.’ But in reality, it spent almost a half hour to give three short instructions. Once I Read more
In Alpha Course #9, we began quite a strange pivot into Charismatic-specific flavors of Christianity. That’s no accident, either. As we’ll see today, the masters of Alpha Course might say it’s ecumenical, but this course really aims for one specific destination in converting viewers. We’ll trace the origins of this Read more
In Alpha Course #9, our presenters change a bit to reflect a serious new direction in the series. Here, we’ll get sales patter and testimonies meant to make us think the Holy Spirit does a bunch of different things. Today, we’ll check out this video, examine its claims, and find Read more
In Alpha Course video #8, the title promises to tell us exactly who the ‘Holy Spirit’ is. But as we saw in previous videos, it’s pure folly to trust this series’ titles to live up to their promises. In this review, we’ll explore what the video says, what it studiously Read more
As I watched Alpha Course’s video about divine guidance, one fact sprang out at me above all others. Well, two facts. The first one was simple: Christians have no idea in the world how to tell what their god wants them to do. The second is that their god apparently Read more
In Alpha Course’s seventh video, we find some of its creators’ most fanciful guesses yet about exactly how their god and religion operate. This one covers divine guidance, which almost all Christians believe their god offers believers as a perk. Despite its nearly-universal status, however, they can’t actually tell us Read more
In Alpha Course #6, Christians try very very hard to make the Bible sound utterly relevant and important to everyone’s lives. They fail, of course, just like every other video so far has failed to accomplish its own stated goals. But as usual, it’s how specifically they fail that should Read more
We now arrive at Alpha Course #5, which concerns prayer in Christianity. Here, we see Christian dishonesty at its fullest flowering. The Christians responsible for this mess desperately want to promise potential recruits that prayer results in miracles. Oh, yes, they do desperately want to promise that. But they know Read more