NG: I think what tends to happen is the course is representative of the area. So, for instance, most people who live in Islington are probably what you’ve just described as de-churched. But in China, most of the people who come on the course might be atheist. At a conference we did in Singapore, most of them described themselves as ‘free-thinkers’ beforehand. In different parts of the world there are different backgrounds. When we looked at the analysis of our own course here I think it was pretty representative of what the population at large is. I think 75% of the population of this country are probably still de-churched. It’s the younger end, the 25%, the merging generation, who have no church background at all.<\/p>\n
AR: So the ‘un-churched’?<\/p>\n
NG: Yes, if you turn that category de-churched in to the un-churched, I would say the make-up of Alpha here is probably like that: 75% are un-churched.<\/p>\n
AR: What do you think the aspect of un-churched people is, if we can use that term? What is missing, or what are the questions that they don’t have answers to, which Alpha attempts to address?<\/p>\n
NG: It’s very interesting because the un-churched are the new people coming in. The younger end tend to be the un-churched, the ones who’ve got no baggage at all. And in a sense they come at it with a great advantage, in some ways.<\/p>\n
AR: What sort of baggage are you talking about?<\/p>\n
NG: Well, experience of thinking of Christianity as boring, for example, because they’ve got no experience at all of Christianity. If you’ve had an experience where you’ve been at school or you’ve been involved in services and you’ve thought, ‘That’s so dull,’ yes, you’ve got some information but also it’s something that may have put you off, whereas if you haven’t got that experience at all you come to it with completely fresh eyes. So there’s a mixture of people, and there are advantages and disadvantages in both of those.<\/p>\n