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
As I’ve watched evangelicals decline in numbers over this past 10+ years, I’ve been witness to some of the most spectacular cope explosions on the planet. From the very beginning, they’ve been trying their best to spin loss after loss as the prelude to full recovery. Even now, they’re still Read more
In a recent opinion post, Thom Rainer frets about people age 65+, who are apparently leaving evangelical churches in great numbers. And lately, more evangelicals like him are noticing that older Americans, once the mainstays and so-called “anchors” of churches, are leaving their clubhouses in greater and greater numbers. Unfortunately, Read more
Last time we met up, we talked about the weird take on postmodernism that evangelicals have. They consider this philosophy one of their worst enemies, but they don’t understand even the most basic things about it. Despite that trivial little problem, their evangelism experts have been hard at work coming 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
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