Jack Chisnall knocked twice on the dark pew and the congregation stood. There was a short silence, the evening traffic beyond just audible. Then he started to sing. Alone at first, his voice mounting and clear, before the rest of us joined in. At this chapel, Pusey House in central Oxford, the psalms are recited antiphonally, those on the left singing the first verse, those on the right the next, the strange poetry of the Old Testament passing back and forth like information moving between the hemispheres of the brain.
Jack led us through the lineaments of the service – the Nunc dimittis (The Song of Simeon), the Apostles’ Creed, the Lord’s Prayer. Under his long black cassock, he wore a bright red short-sleeved shirt tucked into belted drainpipe jeans, a look that marked him out from the regulars in their blazers and ties of varying browns and greys. The way he sang, the way he held himself, everything about him suggested this was the place he was meant to be, as if had never lived another way. After the service, I leaned over to say something to this effect. He shook his head and sighed: “Thanks, but I fucked the Nunc.”
Six years earlier, Jack had not believed in God. Neither had his best friend from university, Josh Dolphin. Neither is sure who became a Christian first. How do you locate the moment of religious conversion? It’s like trying to work out the instant you started loving someone. It could have been the first time they entered a church of their own volition, the first time they felt moved during a service, the first time the empty tomb of Jesus Christ – the resurrection itself – became a plausible truth to their minds.
After they graduated in 2016, their greatest ambition had been to become comedians. They formed a double act, called themselves Moon, spent their weekends performing absurdist sketch shows in pub theatres, dressed in matching white boiler suits. It lasted several years, this dream of names in lights. But now neither of them wanted to be comedians. They wanted to be Church of England priests.
News about their religious reorientation passed in half-whispers among Josh and Jack’s university friends, myself included. The fact they were joining the priesthood was sometimes couched as an enigma, sometimes as a tragedy.
We could not understand why they were giving up their futures for a dying tradition. Why they were choosing a life marked by cloisters and considerable darkness over being anything they wanted, over everything. And so, in early 2021, in the midst of a third Covid-19 lockdown, I decided to ask them.
Josh and Jack are in their mid-20s, which is young for priesthood. In 2020, the average age at ordination to deacon was almost 46 in the Church of England. The numbers of young people becoming priests is low partly because the number of young Christians is low, and continuing to decline. The majority of young people in Britain define themselves as having no
