Watch Make Me a Christian online: Episode 2 Week Two

It’s time, now, for practical action. According to the Bible, says George, sex outside marriage is fornication, and that’s a sin. Enter Hester, a 27-year-old virgin, to persuade the participants of the joys of celibacy. She gives the lap-dancing manager and her boyfriend a game of pick-up-sticks to take their mind off sex, and takes the man who cheats on his girlfriend to a boxing gym to channel his energy in a new direction. Neither of these new activities has quite the appeal of sex, and the boxing training makes the hard drinking young man throw up violently after 10 minutes. Some of the mentors say that the lesbian must ‘unlearn’ her sexual orientation but she argues that God would love her as she is and not expect her to stop loving women. She is sent to Glasgow to meet a vicar who ‘used to be’ gay but found God, married and has a child. Things aren’t going too well, so the group is taken on a retreat, which starts with foraging for edible leaves to make soup over a fire – in the rain. The sceptical biker is unimpressed. ‘What does being a hippy have to do with God?’ he asks. The lesbian thinks her girlfriend would enjoy this activity, and wishes she could be there to share it. George works hard to persuade the young man and his pregnant girlfriend not to sleep in the same bed that night. Unimpressed with being talked to ‘like a two-year-old’, he says he wants to leave. Before that, though, he and the womaniser find a wheelchair in the church where they are staying, and have some fun larking about, Little Britain-style, in the graveyard. The atheist biker is finally persuaded to pray – but not to Jesus. The Muslim convert teaches him how to pray to Allah. George is very annoyed, and the Muslim apologises for having introduced Islam into the programme. A priest comes to ‘cleanse’ the lap-dancing manager of her involvement with witchcraft, saying that he will pray ‘to free her from any unhealthy attachment to spiritual matters beyond her control’. More convincing for the group are activities designed to challenge their selfishness. The first is taken straight from the New Testament – they are to emulate Jesus and the disciples humbling themselves by washing each other’s feet. Shoppers in Leeds are amazed to see this in action, and the womaniser tends to focus his persuasive powers on young, attractive, female passers-by, but the participants do seem to get the point. More fulfilling for them, though are their experiences as volunteers in a soup kitchen, where they start to realise the rewards of helping other people.

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