Episode 20: Jessica Martin

Interview Date: 26 November 2020. Interviewer: Dr Jason Clark. Research and questions by Dr Simon Machin.

The daughter of the sociologists David and Bernice Martin, Jessica Martin has combined a distinguished career as an academic working across the fields of English literature and theology with ordination in the Church of England

Her book Holiness and Desire was published in June 2020, and in 2021 she delivered the prestigious Bampton Lectures on the subject of Four Dimensional Eucharist.

Jessica is married to the novelist Francis Spufford, and like him has written about her own childhood - in Holiness and Desire. The Revd Dr Jessica Martin is a Canon Residentiary of Ely Cathedral and is a member of the influential Littlemore group of theologians.

Jessica Martin - Timed Interview Summary

0:00 - 21:42 Family background

Jessica Martin, the daughter of the distinguished sociologists, David and Bernice Martin, was born in Surrey, England in 1963, growing up in Woking. Her maternal grandmother grew up in the cotton mill town of Bury, Lancashire and although intelligent, lack of money prevents her from finishing school. Jessica’s mother was able to go to grammar school and university at Bedford College, London. Jessica’s paternal grandfather was a taxi driver and primitive Methodist who preached at Speaker’s Corner. His wife was very musical, clever and tough-minded. Their son, David, Jessica’s father, went to grammar school, but dreamed his way through it so had to recover academically, through teacher training college and a night correspondence course, which was how he got to the London School of Economics. The very different thinking styles of Bernice and David Martin.   Jessica’s academic approach holds a tension between them: her mother’s belief and practice that human relationships required the same level of attention as intellectual work and her father’s belief that intellectual inquiry needed to be written down, explored and clarified to stop it being lost.         

21:43 - 25:16 Paradisal childhood memory from Holiness and Desire

A Sunday morning. Playing with her younger brother in the front garden which was fully carpeted with pink blossoms, being perfectly happy. A memory of absolute joy.

25:17 - 42:06 Woking and a suburban childhood

A typically suburban town to grow up in which has now changed out of recognition, with all the old landmarks gone. Family attends a 1960s concrete-and-glass Methodist church with an optimistic view of where faith would belong in modernity.  Parents stop going to church, and of her own accord the teenage Jessica wanders into a charismatic healing service in an Anglican church in Woking, and goes back. She has had a sense of the presence of God from being a very young child.  But this church which is experiencing the 1970s charismatic revival does give a grounding to her Christianity.

42:07 - 53:31 Schooling

Jessica is blissfully happy at a Montessori school and she has a brilliant time. Primary school is a big shock. Good at words and music - maths less so. Is aware of her parents’ ability and the hope invested in her. Oboist in youth orchestra. 

53:32 - 1:05:05 Adolescent self

The informal contract between men and women is changing, and adolescence is a minefield to negotiate. It is assumed that Jessica will go on to some form of higher education but although music plays a large part in her life, she chooses words, and gains a place at Cambridge University.   

1:05:06 - 1:32:35 Cambridge University

A two-sided experience. Marvellous academically and the excitement of reading and writing. Makes life-long friends. Has a ten-month-old with her and is the only student parent. But has to cope with the sleeplessness of parenthood and keeping up. Francis Spufford is able to see past her being “the one with the baby” as is the future master potter, Edmund de Waal. Gets a First. Stewart Eames who takes her supervisions in Renaissance literature introduces Jessica to John Donne and Isaak Walton’s Life of Donne - and this leads to a PhD on early modern life writing. Also, supervisions with Eric Griffiths, an extraordinary and life-transforming teacher. There is a breadth and generosity in the student world, with equality in relationships between men and women.  

1:32:36 - 1:47:10 Post-graduate and professional life

Gains a British Academy award for a doctorate, but moves into employment as a speechwriter to the Archbishop of Canterbury for about a year. A breaking point comes in an abusive domestic relationship and Jessica realizes that she cannot continue in the job. Eventually she moves back to Cambridge and after getting her PhD she is offered a post at Lucy Cavendish College.  The PhD entails reading a lot of funeral sermons about the “great lives” of clergymen (the precursor of modern biography) which in turn generate a devout way of life. Reading a lot of seventeenth century prose asking the question, What Should A Priest Be For Those Who Know Them, is a slow conversion. These historical clergy believe what they believe against difficult odds.    

1:47:11 - 1:51:51 The ordination of women

Whilst ventriloquizing replies for the Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie, generally Jessica has to respond to correspondence about the ordination of women.  She feels at the time that it is an injustice but it is as the world is (just like in 1970s children’s literature if you are girl you have to imagine yourself into the mind and experience of the boy hero). 

1:51:52 - 2:15:36 Research fellowship and training for ordination

During her time at Lucy Cavendish College, her monograph is published. At the same she re-engages with teaching English literature at Trinity College, but these ten years overlap with the exploration of ordination. The vocational process is like the way that light falls on the water, when it seems as if water is giving out light. Part of the role of being a priest is making God glimpsable, and theology and priesthood are not so distinct as is sometimes thought. Additionally, English literature training has been fundamental to her approach to Scripture. The Cambridge approach of close reading. Jessica comes to think that the original point of such a training in English literature might be different from the industry which it has become.     

2:15:37 - 2:18:28 Poetry and a priest in Cambridgeshire

A surprising number of accomplished poets who appear on any undergraduate course in English Literature - John Donne, George Herbert, Thomas Traherne, Gerard Manley Hopkins and R.S. Thomas - were priests. In a sense an interest in poetry had come first, before thoughts of ordinations and the literal part of Jessica felt that becoming a priest in Cambridgeshire was a Herbertian thing to do, but finds of course that the experience of running three parishes is very different.  

2:18:29 - 2:23:57 Music

Continues to play the piano and was able to return to it more during lockdown, the oboe less so. Music works itself out in her head all the time. She hears music every day in Ely Cathedral where she is Residentiary Canon.      

2:23:58 - 2:30:55 The Littlemore Group

Just after Rowan Williams has become the Archbishop of Canterbury, Jessica, Sam Wells and Sarah Coakley explore at a conference whether the riches of Anglican academic theology can be used to nourish lay church people.  A book emerges, to which Jessica contributes, called Praying for England. A second book, For God’s Sake, examines whether there is any space for the scholar priest in contemporary Anglicanism.   

2:30:56 - 2:32:51 David and Bernice Martin

David and Bernice Martin’s response to Jessica’s writing and priesting. Jessica’s parents have always been good sounding boards.   

2: 32:52 - 2:41:15 Jessica’s book, Holiness and Desire

The book opens with a quote from the poet/priest Thomas Traherne: “Wants are the bands and ligatures between God and us.”  The book grew out of participating in Anglican discussions about human desire and Jessica’s personal feelings about the somewhat bureaucratic means of dealing with this aspect of life in the church.    

2:41:16 - 2:44:53 Holiness and Desire, and Creatureliness

The meaning of Thomas Traherne’s term creatureliness – humanness and littleness - and his sense that we are infinitely obliged to a web of relationships, so not mere commodities.

2:44:53 - 2:51:04 Jessica’s role as Residentiary Canon at Ely Cathedral

The tradition at Ely is influenced by monasticism. An increasing amount of work on social justice. 

2:51:05 - 2:54:56 Current preoccupations

A series of talks entitled Four-Dimensional Eucharist for the 2021 Bampton Lectures in Oxford, to become a book in 2022. Amongst other things, it examines the effects of online services during lockdown.