I am enjoying myself enormously. I drive away thinking about the things Nicky said. I play them over in my mind. But by the time I arrive home and then watch ER, my mini-epiphany has all drained away, and I go back to normal. I cannot imagine how any of my fellow agnostics will possibly be converted by the end of the course.

As the weeks progress, the timetable becomes routine. Dinner, a talk from Nicky, coffee and digestives, the small groups. But the hostile questions have now become slightly less combative. One agnostic, Alice, who is the financial manager of an Internet company and rides her horse every weekend in Somerset, admits to taking Nicky’s pamphlets away with her on business trips. She says she reads them on the plane and finds them comforting. We talk about the excuses we give our friends for our weekly Wednesday night absences. Some say they’re learning French. Others say they’re on a business course. There is laughter and blushing. I miss Week Three because I am reporting on wife-swapping parties in Paris. On Week Four, Nicky suggests I tell the group all about wife-swapping. The group asks me lots of questions. When I fill in the details, Nicky shakes his head mournfully. “What about the children?” he sighs. “So many people getting hurt.” He’s right. Nicky ends the night by saying to me: “I think it’s important that you saw something awful like that midway through Alpha.”

Week Five, and Nicky is onstage talking about answered prayers and how coincidences can sometimes be messages from God. He says he keeps a prayer diary and ticks them off when they are answered. As Nicky says these things, I think about how my wife and I were told we couldn’t have a baby. We went through fertility treatment for four years. Every month was like a funeral without a corpse. And then we did have a baby, and when Joel was born I thought of him as a gift from God.

The moment I think about this, I hear Nicky say the word “Joel.” I look up. Nicky is quoting from the book of Joel: “I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten.”

Later, I tell the group what happened. “Ah,” they say, when I get to the part about us having a baby. “Ah,” they say again, when I get to the part about Nicky saying “Joel,” and then reading out an uncannily appropriate quote.

“Well?” I say.

“I don’t know.” Nicky smiles. “I think you should let it sit in your heart and make your own decision.”

“But what do you think?” I say.

“If I had to put a bet on it,” he says, “coincidence or message, I’d say definitely, yes, that was a message from God.”

The subject is changed.

“So?” says Nicky. “How was everyone’s week?”

Tony sits next to Alice. He is the most vociferous agnostic in the group. He always turns up in his business suit, straight from work, and has a hangdog expression, as if something is always troubling him.

“Tony?” says Nicky. “How was your week?”

“I was talking to a homosexual friend,” says Tony, “and he said that ever since he was a child he found himself attracted to other boys. So why does the Church think he’s committing a sin? Are you damned if you commit a sexual act that is completely normal to you? That seems a bit unfair, doesn’t it?”

There is a murmur of agreement from the group.

“First of all,” says Nicky, “I have many wonderful homosexual friends. There’s even an Alpha for gays running in Beverly Hills! Really! I think it’s marvelous! But if a pedophile said, ‘Ever since I was a child I found myself attracted to children,’ we wouldn’t say that that was normal, would we?”

A small gasp.

“Now, I am not for a moment comparing homosexuals with pedophiles,” Nicky continues, “but the Bible makes it very clear that sex outside marriage, including homosexual sex, is, unfortunately, a sin.” He says he wishes it wasn’t so, but the Bible makes it clear that gay people need to be healed.

“Although I strongly advise you not to say the word ‘healed’ to them,” he quickly adds. “They hate that word.”

The meeting is wound up. Nicky, Pippa, and I stay around for a chat. We talk about who we feel might be on the cusp of converting. My money is on Alice.

“Really?” says Nicky. “You think Alice?”

“Of course,” I say. “Who do you think?”

“Tony,” says Nicky.

“Tony?” I say.

“We’ll see,” says Nicky.

I drive home. In the middle of the night it becomes clear to me that I almost certainly had a message from God—that God had spoken to me through Nicky Gumbel.

WOMAN LEADS CHURCH BOYCOTT IN ROW OVER EVANGELICAL PIG-SNORTING

A woman has walked out of her church and is holding services in her living room because she says she cannot bring herself to “snort like a pig and bark like a dog” on a Church of England course. Angie Golding, 50, claims she was denied confirmation unless she signed up for the Alpha Course, which she says is a “brainwashing” exercise where participants speak in tongues, make animal noises and then fall over. Mark Elsdon-Dew of HTB, Holy Trinity Brompton, said the Alpha Course included lectures on the Holy Spirit. “It affects different people in different ways,” he said.

—The Times, May 11, 1996

Of course, stumbling upon this press cutting comes as a shock. I had no idea that the shepherd’s pie, the nice chats, that these things seem to be leading up to something so peculiar—something that will, I guess, occur during our weekend away in Kidderminster.

I visit Mark Elsdon-Dew, Nicky’s press man. I have grown fond of Mark. “Do anything you want,” he frequently tells me. “Go home if you like. Really. Any time you want. Don’t worry, I won’t phone you up! Ha-ha!” Mark was once the Daily Express’s news editor, but then he did Alpha and now he works for Nicky, in a Portakabin on HTB’s two and a half acres. Nicky has so many staff—more, even, than the Archbishop of Canterbury, says Mark—that there aren’t enough offices in this giant church to accommodate them all. I want to test Mark, to see how honest he’ll be about the negative press. I ask him if any journalist has written disapprovingly about Nicky. “Oh, yes,” he says excitedly. “Hang on, let me find them for you.” Mark rifles through his filing cabinets and retrieves a sheaf of articles. “Look at this!” he says. “And how about this?” One article, from the Spectator, suggests that Nicky’s organization is akin to Invasion of the Body Snatchers, something that looks like the Anglican Church, acts like the Anglican Church, but is something else, something malignant, growing, poised to consume its host: “For now they need the Church of England for its buildings—but they are very aware that through the wealth of their parishioners they wield an influence over the established Church that far outweighs their numbers.”

“If you think that’s bad,” says Mark, “you should see this one.”

“Oh, good,” I think.

It reads: “HTB’s divorce from the real world, together with a simplistic and communal response to all problems, a strong leader, and a money-conscious hierarchy, are trademarks of a cult.”

“And here’s a real stinker,” says Mark.

“The Alpha Course: Is It Bible-Based or Hell-Inspired?”

This last one is from the Reverend Ian Paisley. His conclusion, after fifteen pages of deliberation, is that it is Hell-inspired.

Usually, when a discovery such as this presents itself midway through researching a story, I feel nothing but glee. On this occasion, however, the gaiety is tinged with indignation and relief—indignation that these people, this apparent cult, have managed to get under my skin, to instill in me feelings of some kind of awakening, and relief because I no longer feel the need to deal with those feelings.

•   •   •

IT IS SATURDAY MORNING in the countryside near Kidderminster, and Nicky is offering us the strangest invitation. He is going to beckon us into the supernatural, where he hopes we will physically feel the Holy Spirit enter our bodies. Nicky says that he very much hopes people will speak in tongues. “I’m so glad you could make it,” he tells me.