At last, an 'introduction to Christianity' course for adults! For some time now James Alison and the Raven Foundation have been working on The Forgiving Victim: the Adult Introduction to Christianity Course; it's now at the stage of consultation and the Raven Foundation has made available for previewing some fragments of the forthcoming DVD course. The Foundation is interested in hearing your take on them - if you have time, of course. The survey can be found here. Well worth a look. At four to six minutes each, these video fragments will be at the core of my daily devotions this coming week... maybe you'll help James out by taking a look and responding too. James' website is here.
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Thursday, 23 June 2011
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I'm afraid I found the first video rather patronising. He stated rather obvious facts in a very simplistic manner, in fact he seemed to think that the more he repeated himself the more believable his words would seem. This doesn't seem to be an improvement on the Alpha course so far.
The idea of induction (indoctrination??) he started out with suggests that there are teachers who know better than others. Surely if you are explaining Christianity to adults it is a good idea to do this via dialogue as adults are likely to have had a variety of valid spiritual experiences.
Posted by: Karin | Thursday, 23 June 2011 at 12:20 PM
I find the method of giving feedback on the videos unsatisfactory as I wouldn't rate any aspects of either of the first two particularly highly, so ranking the elements would be pointless.
I'm not sure what to make of video no. 2. Perhaps it was two brief, but I think if I was unfamiliar with Christianity, my response would be 'so?'. I could easily dismiss the story of Abraham and Isaac as pure fiction. James didn't explain what relevance the feast of Atonement has for me, or even what the feast of atonement really is.
It doesn't really seem aimed at adults at all.
Posted by: Karin | Thursday, 23 June 2011 at 12:32 PM
I can agree with the gist of what he says in video 3, which is that we all interpret what we read differently, depending on what we bring to it, whether that is emotional baggage or enlightened understanding or whatever. So the question remains, how do we know we, or he, are interpreting biblical texts correctly? Modern biblical scholarship raises so many questions and the answers are buried in the mists of time.
Posted by: Karin | Thursday, 23 June 2011 at 12:41 PM