CHILDHOOD years are the most formative of our lives. Now in my early twenties, preparing to leave university and enter the “real world”, I have found myself reflecting on that period of my life.
Much of my childhood was spent in vicarages, apart from a small stint at a theological college. Emerging into adulthood, I’ve realised that many of the habits that I picked up from years spent immersed in clergy life and the Church of England remain with me. Most fundamentally, it has formed my lasting view of the Church, of politics, and of the world around me.
I am now a member of a congregation in my own right, no longer lurking in the shadows of my parents. Perhaps, for some, I am an ideal parishioner: I will gladly sign up for rotas and pull my weight; for others, perhaps, I am an inconvenient know-it-all, who will gladly correct them when they misquote the Thirty-Nine Articles. But what I am sure of is this: having grown up in a vicarage, my view of the Church has been distinctly coloured.
The biggest challenge facing clergy children, if they remain churchgoers in adulthood, is readjusting to being in the pews. I am aware of what goes on behind the scenes of a church, but now I am no longer privy to those decisions.
Engrained in clergy children is a sense of responsibility for an institution. This is no light thing to carry, especially when this responsibility is often mixed with different emotions of pain and joy, hope and anger, at different things witnessed or experienced. When you grow up in a vicarage, the church becomes an additional family member whom you will inevitably squabble with from time to time, but whom you love despite their flaws.
THOSE flaws are felt keenly. Having come of age during the debates over Living in Love and Faith and the frantic workload of Covid church, besides facing an increasingly secularised society, my generation of vicars’ children have had front-row seats for the slow-motion implosion of the Church of England.
This has fuelled frustration. Having been involved in a Christian Union in which Christians from varied backgrounds managed to work together, I often feel that the younger generation understand church unity better than the “grown-ups” in church.
This has been my own experience, but I do not presume to speak for all clergy children, who will have all had their own experiences. Ultimately, the impact of vicarage life on faith is mixed, and there is little research into it. Research published in the United States by the Barna Group suggests that one third of pastors’ children have left the Church. One friend told me that she would not wish her upbringing on anyone else; and yet another friend, a vicar’s son, is currently assisting with student work at a church and jokes that clergy children help to prop up the ministry team. There seems to be no rhyme nor reason among my own friends whether clergy sons or daughters are more likely to stay in the Church.
I am not the first to encounter the challenges and opportunities of vicarage life, and perhaps previous generations had it worse, since the parish clergy were more prominent public figures in the past than they are in today’s secularised society.
I am also not the first to reflect on the impact of a clergy childhood (Comment, 5 August 2016). Theresa May ruminated on this in her book Abuse of Power (Comment, 22 September 2023), the introduction depicting the impact that being a vicar’s daughter had on her.
The sense of public duty that she emerged with is something that I, and my fellow clergy-daughter friends, have also embraced. This is not a coincidence: vicarage life blurs the line between work and the rest of life. It can be hard to find a balance in that chaos, but it also makes you find purpose.
This sense of social responsibility greatly influenced my own choice to study politics at university, although, after overhearing snippets of meetings and watching from the wings as church dramas unfolded, studying the twists and turns of international relations was a disappointment. In hindsight, few are trained so well for diplomacy as vicars’ children.
CHANNELLING my sense of duty and responsibility into politics is a signifier that vicarage life never really leaves you, nor you it: many friends have studied theology, or become youth workers or PCC members (one has become a church treasurer in his twenties; he assures me that he made the decision freely, but, still, the mind still boggles).
It would be wrong to write off the experience of being a clergy child as purely bad or good. I have always considered myself privileged to have seen so many different walks of life, met so many interesting people, and learnt how to feed flocks of people at a moment’s notice. It has instilled in me a sense of duty, and a knack for small talk. But, much like pork pies, church is often easier to enjoy when you don’t see the messier side of how it’s made.
Abigail King is a student and freelance journalist based in Edinburgh.
