Nicky nods and smiles.

“I agree,” says Jeremy, who works with asylum seekers. “I really don’t want to be seen as some kind of freak.”

“You won’t suddenly become weirdos,” explains James, one of the group leaders. “You won’t lose your sense of humor, or your mates, or whether you drink beer or not.”

“We shouldn’t get too hung up on tongues,” adds Julia, James’s wife, and a fellow group leader. “Tongues is just one of the many gifts. Tony? What do you think?”

Tony lights a cigarette. “Do you have to believe in God before you receive the gift?” he says. “Because it seems strange to ask someone you don’t believe in to prove that he exists.”

I wonder what makes Nicky think that Tony is our group’s best candidate for conversion.

“The Church likes to put God in a box,” says James. “The Church wants to make God safe. We think the Church has lost the plot. We just want God to be God. As the Apostle Paul said, ‘I would that you all speak in tongues.’”

We ask if they can speak in tongues, and they all say they can. James has been speaking in tongues for several years. Julia was fearful at first, but now does it a lot. Nicky and Pippa are extremely well versed in tongues, which, they say, literally means “languages never learned.”

They say that on countless occasions they have heard people who can’t speak Chinese, for instance, speaking in Chinese tongues. Such miracles appear to be commonplace once one enters the arena of tongues—as we will do at around 6:30 p.m. tonight.

•   •   •

AT 6:00 P.M. WE ARE BACK in the chapel. Nicky is onstage, telling us nothing bad will happen to us.

“You don’t need to speak in tongues. It is not the most important gift. But tongues is a beginner’s gift, and Alpha is a beginner’s course in Christianity, so it would be wonderful if you tried.” We steel ourselves. The door opens. It is Alice. She has missed Nicky’s comforting preamble and has arrived just in time for the main event.

“If you ask for the Holy Spirit, you’re not going to get something terrible,” says Nicky. “Shall we give it a try? Shall we ask Him?”

“Mmm,” say the crowd contentedly.

Nicky softly begins: “Please stand up and close your eyes. If there’s anyone who would like to experience the Holy Spirit, maybe you’re not sure, I’d like you to say a very simple prayer in your heart . . . a very simple prayer . . . It’s OK. . . . I now turn from everything that is wrong . . . now hold out your hands . . . hold them out in front of you . . . if you’d like to . . . some of you might be experiencing a weight on your hands . . . you might be thinking nothing’s happening . . . but you might be feeling a peace . . . a deep peace . . . that, too, is a manifestation of the Holy Spirit. . . . Jesus is telling you He loves you . . . He died for you.”

This is when the first sob comes: At the front, someone begins to cry. “I sense that some of you would like to receive the gift of tongues now.”

I wobble on my feet. Later, James tells me that wobbling is a possible sign of the Holy Spirit. I open my eyes for a moment and look at the group. Tony is grinning, his eyes bulging, like a schoolboy in a pompous assembly. Alice, who is entirely unprepared, is looking perplexed and uncomfortable. I close my eyes. I imagine those who have been in this spell before me—Jonathan Aitken, for instance, and the business executives and celebrities.

“Start to praise God in any language but the language you speak. . . . Don’t worry about your neighbor. Your neighbor will be worried enough about himself. . . .”

And then the tongues begin. I thought it would be cacophonous, but it turns out to be haunting, tuneful, like some experimental opera.

I think some people are cheating—I hear French: “C’est oui. C’est oui”—but mostly it is quite beautiful. I open my eyes again and look around. Mark, Nicky’s press officer, is speaking in tongues. So are James and Julia. All these people I have known all these weeks are speaking in tongues. Tony has refrained from tongues, but he is no longer grinning, either. He is crying. Alice looks ready to explode with anger. She barges out of the chapel. “Be a little bolder now. . . .” Nicky carries on. “Just continue to receive this wonderful opportunity. . . .”

James walks over to me: “Is it working for you?” he asks.

“Well, it might have,” I reply, “but the truth is, I’m a journalist, so I couldn’t keep my eyes closed.”

“Would you like me to pray for you?” he asks.

“OK,” I say.

James rests his hand on my shoulder. “O Jesus, I pray that Jon will receive Your wonderful spirit. God. Please come and fill Jon with . . .”

It is not working. The spell has broken. I tell James again that I’m sorry, but I’m a journalist. (This is no excuse: The picture editor of a Sunday newspaper is speaking in tongues to my left, as is a producer of Channel 4 documentaries in front of me, for the first time in his life.) So James changes tack. “Oh, thank You, Jesus, for Jon’s wonderfully inquiring journalistic mind. . . . Please help Jon’s career . . . no, not his career . . . his wonderful journalism . . . and may his journalism become even more wonderful now he is working in Your name, Jesus Christ. . . .”

I tell James I’m sorry and follow Alice outside, where half a dozen furious agnostics have gathered on the grass. “Why didn’t anyone tell me I’d signed up for a brainwashing cult?” says one. “I felt like I was in a pack of hyenas. I wanted someone to come up and ask me if I was OK, and instead someone came up and said, ‘Would you like me to pray for you?’”

Alice is devastated: “I used to think Nicky was fantastic. He really gave me room to investigate my feelings about the Lord. But now I’m thinking, ‘Just get me away from these weirdos.’ I’ve been dragged all the way out here under false pretenses, and there’s no escape. I am actually very, very upset.”

We turn out to be in the minority, and watch as the new converts file out of the chapel, red-eyed from crying or smiling beatifically. Tony is one such convert, but he is not smiling. In fact, he seems miserable. “Something overwhelmed me,” he says. “I didn’t want it to. I tried to resist it, but I couldn’t.”

“What was it?” I ask.

“The Holy Spirit,” says Tony.

“What did it feel like?”

“Like when you’re trying not to cry but you can’t help yourself. I was thinking of all the reasons why I didn’t want it to happen—you know, the Christian lifestyle—and then Nicky came over to me and started whispering in my ear.”

“What did he say?”

“He said, ‘I sense that you have had a Christian experience in the past.’ And that rocked my world, because I have, and I didn’t tell anyone. That’s why I came on Alpha. I wanted to decide, once and for all, yes or no. And . . .” Tony sighs discontentedly. “God spoke to me just now. He said, ‘You can come back.’”

•   •   •

BACK IN LONDON the next Wednesday, Nicky’s topic is “Spiritual Warfare: How Can I Resist the Devil?” He says that the Devil’s tricks include planting doubts; I wonder if he is referring to those people, such as Alice and me, who doubted the power of tongues. Then I think, “Maybe the Devil really is planting doubts in my mind. I am becoming increasingly anti-Nicky. Is Satan working within me?” I conclude that I have been on this story for a long time and perhaps need a few weeks off. Nicky turns up the heat. He says we must not take an unhealthy interest in horror movies, Ouija boards, palmists, healers, and so on. These are the Devil’s tools.

Later, in the small group, a woman called Suzanne asks a question. She didn’t speak in tongues in Kidderminster but she did burst into tears. “I went to a clairvoyant a few weeks ago,” says Suzanne. “That surely can’t be a sin.”

“I’m afraid it is,” says Nicky.

“Really?”

“I would actually ask God for forgiveness for that,” says Nicky.