How others see us: Alpha

This article Alpha 10: the reckoning | Adam Rutherford | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk is the final of a series in which an atheist (Atheist?) attends Alpha. It's salutary reading and I think that all of the ordinands at our college ought to engage with it (you know you want to peops). This last article summarises the main lessons learnt and this paragraph is the nearest to a summary of the whole thing:

"It may be impossible for someone like me to comprehend faith. As displayed during Alpha, evangelical Christianity simply fails to stand up to even the most superficial scrutiny. It seems unfathomable that intelligent people could genuinely believe that Christ rose from the dead, or that the Bible is not frightening, or that disease can be cured by magic. But they do. This movement feeds off ignorance and the deep-rooted latent cultural Christianity that bestows familiarity with the language and promises, but doesn't offer up enough information to say 'hang on, this doesn't make any sense, and isn't even very fair'."

Oh, and the final sentence is actually pretty encouraging too: "The revelation and truth I witnessed is this: if you are an atheist, you could do a lot worse than spend some time around those with whom you most profoundly disagree. Amen." And so say all of us (substitute your own faith stance for 'atheist').