What is in Kelvin's Head?

Who is the happiest of the them all?

21/03/2014

Mirror, mirror, on the wall….
Who is the happiest of them all?

Turns out the answer is clergy.

According to the BBC, the government is beginning to include measures of happiness in what it attempts to do and part of that has been trying to quantify who the happiest people are in society. Turns out the answer at the top of the list is “vicars/priests”.

I’m not at all surprised. Oh, but there’s so much to say about it – not least the fact that I know plenty of clergy who are very far from happy. My hunch is that those who are unhappy in this job tend not to be unhappy about the essence of the job and are frustrated because they can’t vicar enough to fulfil the hopes that they once had. (My apologies for verbing the noun in that last sentence).

The list itself is fascinating as it lists job categories by average income too. Second most happy people are CEOs bringing in lots of dosh.

Here’e the top ten happy categories:

(Rank) Occupation	Mean income (£s)
(1) Clergy	20,568
(2) Chief executives and senior officials	117,700
(3) Managers and proprietors in agriculture and horticulture	31,721
(4) Company secretaries	18,176
(5) Quality assurance and regulatory professionals	42,898
(6) Health care practice managers	31,267
(7) Medical practitioners	70,648
(8) Farmers	24,520
(9) Hotel and accommodation managers and proprietors	32,470
(10) Skilled metal, electrical and electronic trades supervisors	35,316

I’ve been asking myself why it is that clergy come out at the top. Some combination of the following factors is probably at work:

Very high degree of autonomy – notwithstanding bishops, presbyteries and other forms of oversight, clergy have to be very self-motivated.
We are in the joy business.
There’s a relatively high level of vocational testing before you get in – the churches try to select those who are most likely to cope with a very odd life.
High satisfaction levels around being with people in trauma and emotional need – you know you are doing good very often
High level of variety in daily life.
It is a life not a job.
Inner calling is a greater motivator than money – you don’t go into it for more money.
Lots of opportunity to develop a life where internal reflection allows you to work through your own stuff.
The job involves telling people they are loved and learning how much you yourself are loved too.
You get to walk into places and situations where others are frightened and help them deal with their fears.
Worship.

I’ll write sometime about why clergy are not happy. But for today, I’d be interested in any further comments about why clergy are happy.

Anyone?

vocation, why clergy are happy

7 responses to “The Archbishop, the gays and their sins”

fakepete

25/02/2015

Nicely put, he seems to feel entitled to freedom from criticism. It’s a censorious attitude that I thought the CoE put behind it when most of us learned to laugh at the Life of Brian and it is contradicted by the church’s own call to participation in democracy.

Reply
Andrew

25/02/2015

The poor old Arch. He really is an old school establishment man who cant really understand where the deference has gone. The Green Report, the other Reports on the ‘future’ of the Church of England and the ‘Conversations’ all speak of a deeply controlling man who is deeply frustrated that there is no control to be had any more. When the split comes he will probably want to make what is left into a more confessional and defined group (the evangelicals have always wanted that) but I suspect the Church that will emerge will be more liberal than he likes even if it is outwardly more evangelical and enthusiast than the Church of England has been for a very long time

Reply
1. fakepete
  
  27/02/2015
  
  @Andrew I’d switch that around. Justin Welby is someone who does not show deference to what has in Western society become The New Orthodoxy (definitions on a postcard please), this is why he provokes such puzzlement, and thus consternation and anger.
  
  Reply
2. Daniel Berry, NYC
  
  03/03/2015
  
  Andrew, I don’t see how that can be, really: he hasn’t the pedigree to be “an old school establishment man.” He’s a late vocation who had been a high-power figure in the corporate world–meaning he’s undoubtedly accustomed to having the last word.
  
  As to his attitudes toward gay people, I’m disgusted with him and the many others who accept the natural sciences’ contradiction of bible, but just can’t bring themselves to the same place with the behavioral and social sciences, and even with medicine itself–ignoring along the way that homosexuality is found in upward of 450 animal species besides our own. Otherwise they seem perfectly comfortable with dispensing with the savagery found in much of “holy scripture.”
  
  Reply
Dharma Nicodemus Cuthbert

26/02/2015

I love the line “who am I to judge them for their sins, if they have sins” makes us seem angelic compared to those who have children. Only one problem we, according to the bible commit sin just by being together. Does this mean that he is disagreeing with orthodoxy, and we are not sinning by being together.
God bless all and may his words of love bring more, troubled, souls to him.

Reply
1. JCF
  
  28/02/2015
  
  “Only one problem we, according to the bible commit sin just by being together.”
  
  I *think* you meant “according to false translations/interpretations of the bible…” (or should have meant).
  
  “Being together”: can we call sex, “sex”? If not, why not? [And can we call marital sex (same- or opposite-sex) “marital sex”?]
  
  Reply
Daniel Berry, NYC

03/03/2015

best line for me:

You say that stuff and you are going to get people observing that there’s a lot more archbishops who claim that gay people are their friends than gay people who claim archbishops are their friends.

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