Revving up

AT A recent school careers fair, one stall stood apart. Its attendant touted a job that involves 60-hour weeks, including weekends, and pays £24,000 ($40,000) a year. Despite her unpromising pitch, the young vicar drew a crowd.

God’s work is growing more difficult. Attendance on Sundays is falling; church coffers are emptying. Yet more young Britons are choosing to be priests. In 2013 the Church of England started training 113 20-somethings—the most for two decades (although still too few to replace retirees). The number of new trainees for the Roman Catholic priesthood in England and Wales has almost doubled since 2003, with 63 starting in 2012, and their average age has fallen.

Church recruiters have fought hard for this. Plummeting numbers of budding Catholic priests in the 1990s underlined the need for a new approach, says Christopher Jamison, a senior monk. The Church of England used to favour applicants with a few years’ experience in other professions. Now it sees that “youth and vitality are huge assets”, says Liz Boughton, who works for the church.

Cynics suggest the recession may have aided these efforts, by making other graduate jobs more difficult to get. And the prospect of free accommodation is not to be sniffed at. Yet youngsters say the work has become more appealing. One reason is that a steady exodus of middle-class churchgoers has left smaller but more committed and vibrant flocks. “Nowhere else will you find local Nigerian matriarchs, gay students, bankers and mentally ill people forming friendships over fried chicken and rum punch,” says Mark Williams, a young vicar in London.

Urban ministry appeals particularly to the idealistic young. It may involve running projects for homeless people and giving advice to refugees. (“Rev”, a television comedy about a fictional vicar in east London, has helped raise the profile of such work.) Whereas past generations saw the priesthood as a shortcut into the establishment, many of today’s youngsters take pride in its shift to the margins of society. “The church is most attractive when it ceases to obsess about its status as a national institution,” says Sam Dennis, a 29-year-old curate in Catford. He sees the ministry as a “distinctive alternative” for people disillusioned with how much of modern Britain is run.

Not all today’s trainee priests will land in flourishing inner-city churches. Some are bound for country parishes, of which a greater proportion are moribund. And all but the most charitable priests tire of keeping open house for pushy parishioners and local vagrants (families can feel like public property, says a curate). Lots of young priests also resent their seniors’ foot-dragging on gay rights. But a government survey published in March found clergy happier than members of any other profession. Money can’t buy that.