April, a month after Alpha had finished, I received an email from Nicky saying how much he’d enjoyed reading Philosophy for Life, and would I come to speak at HTB about my experience of Alpha? In my egotism, I envisaged the two of us sitting on stage as equals leisurely discussing Greek philosophy and Christianity. I envisaged a whole new audience for my books. I agreed and turned up one Sunday before the main service. There was Nicky. ‘Ah, Jules, amazing, thanks so much for coming. So, basically, there’ll be about five of you. You’ll each be on stage for maybe a minute. Think of it like an advert for detergent. Before, dirty shirt. Then Jesus. Now, clean shirt. Okay?’ I had a sudden sense of horror. I had misread the occasion. I watched from the wings as the other four converts told their incredible testimonies to the 500-strong congregation, each one received with whoops and cheers. ‘Next is Jules. Jules is a philosopher, he’s written a great book. So, Jules, what was your life like before you met Jesus?’
‘It was . . . er . . . okay, I guess.’
‘And how did you meet Jesus?’
‘Well, I had a sort of near-death experience when I was 21 . . . and that led me to Greek philosophy.’ There was an uneasy shifting in the seats. ‘But it seemed to me that Greek philosophy left some stuff out . . . so I did Alpha and . . . it was great!’ A smattering of half-hearted applause.
‘And how has Jesus changed your life?’
‘Oh, a lot.’ I limped off stage, to the least enthusiastic applause you’ll ever hear at HTB. And then I had to do it at two more services. I felt annoyed with Nicky for commodifying my story and turning it into an advert for Alpha (although, to be fair, that was obviously the point of the invitation). Perhaps he feels he is a general at war, fighting against the extinction of the Church, and everything and everyone is a weapon in that war. But I didn’t much like being weaponised.
For a few months I drifted in a sort of limbo, struggling to believe in Christianity but finding secular culture equally unsatisfying. I briefly played the drums in the Sunday Assembly, a humanist church somewhat modelled on charismatic Christianity, which offers a sort of ‘charismatic humanism’, with a rock band playing singalong covers of Bon Jovi and Queen, personal testimonies, gags and a high-energy ‘celebration of life’. It’s rapidly spreading all over the world. I loved the project and the people but missed the ‘surrender to God’ bit when I was feeling wretched. One evening, at a Christian folk charity fundraiser, I stood on the sidelines muttering to a friend, ‘How could I ever fit in with . . . this?’
‘Have you read a book called The Grace Outpouring?’ my friend asked. ‘It’s about a place in Pembrokeshire called Ffald y Brenin. It’s a “thin place”, close to God. Extraordinary things happen there. Why don’t you go?’
A man on fire
Ffald y Brenin is a small retreat in the hills near the Pembroke coast, run by Roy and Daphne Godwin. Since the mid-1990s, strange things have been happening there – miraculous healing, conversions, prophecies. I drove down for their summer conference, a three-day event in a nearby church. I arrived in time for dinner in the church hall. All the other attendees were over 55. I sat down at a table, feeling a little self-conscious, and asked one of the old ladies what I could expect from the conference. ‘You can expect to be invaded by God!’ she said testily.
After dinner we all drove to a nearby church. Roy Godwin took the mike. He’s a small man, with a tanned balding head, glasses, bad teeth and a quiet voice brimming with certainty. He spoke of the 1904 Welsh revival, of how the first drops of a new revival were starting to be felt. ‘But we want more. Come on, Lord. Bring it on. We want another revival.’ He told stories of all the miracles that took place at Ffald y Brenin – skin conditions vanished, cancer was ‘rebuked’, legs were extended (one of charismatic Christians’ favourite miracles is healing people who have one leg shorter than the other). ‘We now expect instant healings,’ he said. ‘This is real.’ He clearly had a very powerful expectation of the supernatural. Indeed, the air was thick with this expectation. The pensioners had come to call God down, like a dove from above. And sure enough God turned up. The pensioners laughed and twitched and groaned and even screamed as the Holy Spirit came upon them. My God, I thought. This is the worst holiday ever. I retreated to my hotel room in the nearby town of Newport to research the history of revivals and go for long walks along the coast.
But by the third day, the atmosphere of the place started to work on me. The other attendees were so friendly, their faith and hope so strong. I walked around Ffald y Brenin, this beautiful little hobbit house overlooking a valley, and felt the energy of the place. By Saturday evening, as the music engulfed me, a thought came into my head that I wanted to serve God rather than my own worldly ambitions. It was a commitment, I guess, an intention. Suddenly, I felt my chest fill with a powerful energy that pushed my head back, further, further, until it almost hurt my neck muscles. It took a real effort to push it forward, then another wave would sweep it back. It was as if painful pleasure was bursting from my chest, so powerful it literally took my breath away. A part of my brain was watching and thinking, This is weird, but I told that part of me that my ancestors had been Quakers – quaking was in my genes. This went on for three-quarters of an hour, as wave after wave of painful bliss hit me. At one point, Roy asked us to close our eyes, then raise our hands if we wanted to renew our commitment to Jesus. At the very back of the church, I raised my hand. The person next to me hugged me and wept. Then we sat down. I shakily went to the toilet to drink some water. I looked at my eyes in the mirror, my pupils were dilated and my stomach was churning slightly. Just like on E, I thought. Some sort of autonomic reaction. I offered some water to the guy next to me in the pew, like in a rave when you want to share your joy and your possessions with the people around you. Eunoia, the Greeks call it. Goodwill.
At the end of the final service, my legs still trembling – indeed, everyone was twitching, like there was a loose wire in the floorboards – I went to thank Roy and Daphne. I hadn’t spoken to them or introduced myself for the whole three days. Roy turned to me immediately and said: ‘God says that you can stand on the outside analysing, but He’s here, waiting for you.’
Then one of the volunteers came up, someone I hadn’t met, and said: ‘In that last session, I had a vision of you, with books flying off you.’
I drove all the way back to London, down the M4, my heart on fire.
Trying to fit into church
I announced my conversion to Christianity on my blog. Several of my newsletter subscribers unsubscribed immediately, assuming I’d lost the plot and become a homophobic fundamentalist. Academic colleagues also wondered if I had gone native. I told my publishers I intended to write a Christian book next. They were horrified. Didn’t they get it? Revival was coming! Meanwhile, in Christian Land, the story went round about the atheist philosopher who’d suddenly found God (in fact, I was never an atheist, but stories tend to get exaggerated on the Christian telegraph). A Christian friend assured me I had ‘a mission from God’. For a few months, I was high, convinced by my experience and jubilant about my part in the coming revival. But emotional highs die down, if they’re not backed up by good reasons and a strong community. The community bit was hard. The Alpha course wants to emphasise the normality of the Church. But, on the inside, you realise how different it is. As the sociologist Linda Woodhead has written, Anglican Christianity has become a subculture, a separate world from secular culture. As it’s shrunk, it’s become more ecstatic, and the moral barriers to membership have become higher.
The biggest barrier is sexuality. While secular culture embraces Tinder, YouPorn, bisexuality, polyamory, S&M and transgender dysphoria, charismatic Christianity insists on patriarchy, hetero-normativity, and no sex before marriage. Nicky Gumbel has said that, when he marries couples, he can always tell at the altar if they’d
