Speaking of Alpha...
You know that the Church is on to something big when the anti-Christian Guardian newspaper starts tearing into it.In today's Observer (the Guardian on Sunday...why they rename the paper for one day a week is beyond me), Stephanie Merritt rips Alpha for spending £1,000,000 on an advertising campaign to kick off the autumn Alpha courses.
She adds virtually nothing new to the discussion, but the fact that the Guardian felt the need to trash Alpha's newest initiative is excellent news for the Kingdom. It shows that Alpha is beginning to become a cultural phenomenon and is on the cultural radar. The 5 daily papers here in Britain still control a lot of the cultural coverage/direction of the country. That the Guardian has to poo-poo Alpha is a sign that it is an up and coming force to be reckoned with and may eventually challenge the inherently weak secular-humanism philosophy of the Guardian newspaper and its readers.
Ms. Merritt is very clear where she stands..."And as a secular humanist, I can't help thinking that £1m would have fed quite a lot of people in Niger, and that this might be a more immediate need than a high-production value advert to encourage predominantly middle-class people to sit around talking about whether or not they feel fulfilled."
She ends with "But if you don't believe that there is a world beyond this one, it begins to look like an awful lot of money given by well-meaning people, all gambled on something intangible, instead of concentrating on the present."
Yes, Ms. Merritt, that is true. But if you know there is a world beyond this one, £1,000,000 is tiny amount given by relatively few people for the good of many.
Full Disclosure: I regularly read the Guardian. It is usually my paper of choice. It runs very good articles highlighting social injustices in the UK and abroad. It has a healthy skepticism of the free market. Yet, it is blatantly anti-Christian and pro-Islam(ist). Some more info on the pro-Islam(ist) slant can be found here and here. Some of their anti-Christian bias is obvious in the tone of this article about Alpha's movie advertising campaign.
posted by Expat Teacher @ 7:48 PM
