The Art of Losing Control. Jules Evans
than if one went to a yoga session or Vipassana retreat. As the sceptic psychologist Richard Wiseman put it: ‘Being a Christian used to be shorthand for being good. Now it’s shorthand for being odd.’ In 2013, the UK became a post-Christian nation, with the majority now subscribing to no religion. There’s been a cataclysmic decline in church attendance since the 1960s, particularly in the last decade – only 750,000 people go to church on Sundays, less than 2 per cent of the population. The Anglican Church appears to be heading for extinction in England (although it’s booming in Africa). But you wouldn’t guess that if you visited HTB.1
As I approached the church in South Kensington, I joined a long line of people queuing to sign up for the Alpha Course, mainly well-dressed people in their 20s and 30s. There was a mixture of nationalities and ethnicities. HTB is particularly popular with new arrivals to the UK, and with single people – it’s been nicknamed Hunt the Bride. We were registered by a team of young volunteers, radiating positivity and wholesomeness, and divided into 40 or so groups. The groups of ten to 15 people sat in circles around the church, eating the free lasagne and introducing themselves. I was in a group with Nicky Gumbel, who is vicar at HTB. Nicky is a 60-something Old Etonian ex-barrister, grey-haired, charming, not the most obvious vessel for ecstasy – although he’s full of enthusiasm and says ‘amazing’ a lot, like everyone else in the church. He and his wife Pippa are good-looking, in love, and have charming children and grandchildren – they’re like the ideal mother and father of the extended HTB family.
When he speaks to you, Nicky fixes you with a sort of Aslan focus, as if he sees your potential role in the Great War. It’s flattering, you feel eager to sign up. He often mentions HTB’s vision: ‘the re-evangelisation of the nations, the revitalisation of the Church, and the transformation of society’. It seems a doomed mission in a country where church congregations are flat-lining, yet the success of HTB has been cited by everyone from historian Simon Schama to former Economist editor John Micklethwait as evidence that ‘God is back’.2 To date, the Alpha course has been taken by more than 29 million people in 169 countries. Hundreds of thousands have watched the Alpha videos, which feature a shirtless Bear Grylls (a member of HTB’s extended congregation). Nicky’s Bible app, Bible In One Year, has been downloaded more than a million times. In London, HTB attracts a Sunday congregation of 4,000 people, across ten services and four sites, and it has played an important role in making London the one English diocese in which the Church is growing. HTB curates have ventured forth like missionaries and opened at least 30 ‘church plants’ from Birmingham to Brighton. ‘Whenever people see a church unused or turned into a block of luxury flats, it’s like the empty palace of a long-forgotten king,’ Nicky says. ‘But when you see a church that’s full, people know the King lives!’ HTB’s influence spreads far and wide – Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, came from the HTB congregation; Tony Blair spoke at HTB’s leadership conference; David Cameron praised Alpha in his special Easter message; various celebrities have done Alpha, from Will Young to Geri Halliwell. When you’re in the warm cocoon of HTB, you really start to believe revival is possible.
Upon this rock I will build my church
After we’ve introduced ourselves and eaten our lasagne, the band on the stage starts to play. We rise for a couple of hymns, singing the words as they appear on the video screens. It’s at this point that I realise something has changed in the Church of England. Gone are the Victorian hymns and the wheezy organs; they’ve been replaced by rock bands and Coldplay-esque anthems. On Sundays, the congregation sings, arms aloft, or sways with their eyes closed beneath the twinkling lights. Initially, I found this very cheesy, sacrilege even – how dare Christians steal rock and roll? Later I learned how much rock and roll had stolen from the Church, how it’s always been a two-way stealing process. Besides, why shouldn’t people wave their hands in the air while worshipping God? We think that’s normal if we’re at a Bruce Springsteen concert, but if people behave like that for God, we think they’re getting carried away. I actually grew to like it, the feeling of 500 people all singing the same song, the feeling of surrendering and being carried on a wave of music. I’d loved being in a choir at school, and I realised how much I missed collective singing. But, sometimes, the sugariness of the songs got a bit cloying. They’re all love songs for Jesus. ‘There’s nothing I want more/You’re all that I adore’; ‘Everything I’ve lost/I have found in you’; ‘Your love never fails, it never gives up, it never runs out on me’; ‘Come and have your way.’ And they’re all sung in an American accent, so you don’t actually worship God, you worship Gaaahd.
After the singing, Nicky bounded on stage to welcome us to Alpha and assure us HTB is not a cult and we won’t be harassed if we decide to leave. He clearly recognises how alienated most young British people are from the Church, and he was eager to show that it’s not weird. Alpha talks are filled with reassuring references to pop culture – Russell Brand and Freddie Mercury are quoted, and we’re told Elton John, Madonna and Jennifer Lopez all wear crosses. The theology is straightforward: Christ died for us and was resurrected, and His sacrifice liberated us from sin and death and gave us new life. We can have a personal relationship with Jesus by letting the Holy Spirit into our hearts. The great intellectual challenges Christianity faced over the last 250 years – evolution, Biblical criticism – are brushed aside. ‘Science tells us how, but it doesn’t tell us why,’ said Nicky. Besides, there is a difference between ‘head knowledge’ and ‘heart knowledge’. The most important thing is not conceptual logic, but relationships – our relationship with God, our relationship with each other. Personal feelings and personal testimonies are key. Even in the Alpha session on ‘how to read the Bible’, the speaker spent most of the talk telling his own story.3
The power of small groups
The Alpha course runs for 10 sessions. Each Wednesday evening, after the worship and the 20-minute Alpha talks, we’d go into our ‘small groups’ to discuss the ideas we’d heard. In our group, Nicky, Pippa and Jack sat back and let the rest of us discuss the topic among ourselves, even when we raged against God and Christians. Gradually, over the ten sessions, people expended all their rage and cynicism, and started to open up about their own lives, their setbacks, their longing for God and community. It was a profoundly cathartic and bonding experience to meet regularly with the same group of strangers – people of different ages, nationalities and races – and be honest and vulnerable about what matters to you. Every Wednesday evening we could take off our masks, be real, and feel accepted and cared for. I hadn’t done that sort of thing since my early 20s, when I’d been in an anxiety support group, and I’d missed it. Bit by bit, Nicky and Jack introduced us to various Christian practices, teaching us how to pray and encouraging us to pray for each other. ‘Does anyone have someone they’d like us to pray for?’ asked Jack.
One lady, Sarah, spoke first. ‘I was in Spain on holiday last week and I saw a really mangy-looking cat, with one eye. It looked so unhappy. We could . . . pray for that?’
‘Jules,’ said Jack, eyes twinkling, ‘would you like to go first?’
So the first time I ever prayed out loud was for this anonymous cat. ‘Lord . . . there’s a cat in Spain, with one eye. Help this cat, O Lord.’ Praying aloud felt ridiculous at first. I even resented being prayed for. ‘How would you feel if someone prayed for you, Jules?’ Pippa Gumbel asked me. ‘Patronised,’ I replied. But, again, I grew to like praying for each other, with a hand on each other’s shoulder. Belonging to a small group, meeting once a week to hear each other’s problems, wish each other well, and wish the world well – what could be more normal and therapeutic? The sociologist Robert Putnam thinks this community of care is the reason people in religious communities typically report higher life satisfaction than the non-religious.4
Alpha directly addresses a basic problem most of us have: we don’t always feel loved. We feel there is something about us that is unworthy of love and will make people reject us. We feel small and alone and we know we’re going to die and be forgotten. So we try various strategies to feel more loved and significant. We try to please our parents, but we don’t always understand each other. We try to win love through achievements and status, but success doesn’t make us loved, just admired, envied, even