For those saying Alpha is not dangerous, let's look at the facts.
It is marketed as being a place for people to 'find out more' about Christianity. But it is not an unbiased or fact-based course. It is a course that is strongly rooted in developing an emotional response as the basis for faith through psychological manipulation. Participants are pressured by the final weeks of the course to engage with the concept of the Holy Spirit, to have hands laid on them in healing, to speak in tongues, to prophesy over one another, etc. Much like the psychics and faith healers Christians decry, this Holy Spirit nonsense relies on cold reading people and confirmation bias. If I had a pound for the amount of church services I've attended where someone has come up to the front and said 'I just feel God's telling me there's someone with a pain in their leg who needs to be healed', I'd be a very rich woman. Look, in a congregation of 250 people, many of them old, what are the chances that at least one of them will have a pain in their leg? Pretty high. And then that person goes away feeling that God has been talking directly to them, when they haven't. Not at all. This is how evangelical Christianity works. When people think God is speaking directly to them, it gives them a high that they then keep craving. It is like an addiction.
This branch of Christianity is entirely self centred. It's all about developing a personal relationship with 'Jesus Christ my Lord and Saviour' - the kind of personal relationship that makes people genuinely believe God gives a shit about whether you're going to find a parking space at Tescos on Thursday morning after the school run (honestly, the number of evangelical Christians who do this and use it as evidence for God being interested in every little aspect of our lives, guys, you've just got to have faith and invite Him in! - is disturbing). This kind of personal relationship with Jesus also gives you permission to criticise and judge others , and justify and excuse your behaviour because Jesus told you to do it - 'I just feel that Jesus has guided me to stop doing insert thing I don't want to do anymore here' etc.
Again, people who keep saying this isn't their form of Christianity or this isn't their Church need to wake the fuck up.
You know the majority of UK churches are like this. You know the manipulation that goes on. You know the absolutely fucking massive cult indoctrination events dressed up as youth conferences and camps that happen in the UK every summer, you know the presence of these churches on university campuses, hoovering up thousands of vulnerable young people looking for a community where they can feel they belong, you know that they preach that homosexuals need to be healed, you know they preach that a woman's role is to get married and submit to her husband, you know they preach that women can't lead, you know all this. And yet you do nothing about it. If this isn't 'true' Christianity, then what are you doing to stop it? What is your lovely cuddly cosy C of E church that's super welcoming doing about it?
Evangelical churches of the type I describe are where Alpha came from, they are where the majority of Christians in this country worship, they are on every high street in every British town, and they are a scourge on society. They might have food banks and mum and baby groups and be full of lots of smiley, happy people, but at their heart they are rotten, hate filled organisations full of prejudice and judgement of anyone who doesn't want to have a traditional heterosexual marriage with a man who earns the money while his wife stays at home with their several children. If you're homosexual, if you're single or in a cohabiting relationship with no desire to get married, if you're divorced, if you're a single parent, if you're in any way living a life that doesn't fit the mould and you don't want to change that, then you will not be welcome and you will be made to feel a second class citizen. Once they realise you don't want to change, that is. At first you'll be love bombed, because you'll be a project. But then gradually you'll get frozen out.
Trust me, I've been there, done that, got the t shirt. I came out on the other side, but many people remain trapped with their mental health destroyed.
I know this sounds dramatic but honestly, unless you've been involved in these churches, you have no idea.
New Wine, Vineyard, New Frontiers, Elim, Soul Survivor, Hillsong, etc - look these places up. They are huge movements with tens of thousands of churches across the UK and spreading across the world. Beware.