Make me a Christian – Review by Terry Sanderson

As expected, the new Channel 4 series which sets out to convert a group of citizens who have strayed from the path of Christian righteousness back to the fold, was hilarious. One might even wonder whether the producers of the show are in league with the legendary “militant atheists” in trying to portray religion as a stupid, vacuous and hopeless way to order your life.

The programme was also rather sad.

Sad, in the sense that, as is usual with reality TV programmes, the participants seem to have been set up for humiliation. I can’t imagine why people allow themselves to be exploited in this way – perhaps they were simply paid enough to make it worth their while.

The programme follows on from last year’s Make me a Muslim, in which a similar crew of misfits was handed over to a po-faced imam who was convinced he could bring them to Allah in the allotted three weeks. What next? As Paul Whitelaw said in the Scotsman’s review of the programme: “Coming soon, Make Me A Scientologist, in which Tom Cruise sits on ordinary members of the public and repeatedly bellows ‘Show me the money!’ at them until they convert.”

Leading light in this latest attempt at proselytising was Rev George Hargreaves, a man wearing such heavy blinkers that you wouldn’t be surprised to find him running in the 3.30 at Haydock.

Hargreaves tells people off for not listening. Nobody tells him off for not listening because he doesn’t stop talking long enough for them to get a word in edgeways.

When the atheist biker and tattooist (one of the unlikely subjects of the evangelisation) wanted to ask questions about the Bible, George didn’t want to hear them. He wanted to tell the biker what to think, and the biker took exception to this approach and stalked out.
A lap dancing lady with an addiction to expensive shoes and cosmetic surgery was obviously struggling with many psychological issues. She was emotionally fragile and mentally vulnerable. I’m surprised the Alpha course hasn’t tracked her down yet. Not to worry, here is the Reverend Hargreaves to take advantage. “The way she is right now, in her emotional state, she’s in a very good position to meet the Lord”, says one of the missionaries, accidentally exposing the technique frequently used to gain converts.

The lesbian school teacher was barracked for her collection of soft-core erotica, which was promptly confiscated by another self-righteous “evangelical Christian”. Like all the other “mentors”, he had a biblical answer for everything, except one that explained his lack of human empathy.

The next victim was a lad who boasted that he had enjoyed over 150 one night stands and was made to promise that he would not henceforth look at girls lustfully. You might as well ask Niagara Falls to reverse its course. It is because Christianity demands that people deny their perfectly natural instincts that it so often fails. Certainly this young man’s lifestyle was a risk to his health, and attempts to confront him with this fact failed dismally. But telling a young man at the height of his vigour to eschew ‘lustful thoughts’ was clearly going to fail, as indeed it did before the end of the programme.

The next in line was a former Christian who had converted to Islam. He didn’t need any persuading about belief, but he didn’t reckon much to Christianity when there was such a lovely, authoritarian alternative that removed all need to think.

After that was a family struggling to balance a home life with endless work commitments. They were told to spend fifteen minutes each day reading the Bible together. Watching the children’s faces, pictures of stunned boredom, as their father struggled to make sense of the biblical language, provided the laugh of the week.

The bombastic Reverend Hargreaves did not stop talking or issuing orders throughout the whole of his time on screen. And rather like the atheist biker, I had a distinct urge to switch him off. But I’ll persist until the end, to see how many of the participants he can draw in and how many he will simply repel.

15 August 2008