I have recently begun training for holy orders in the Church of England. I know, they’re getting desperate. My motivation for wanting to be a priest is selfish. I want more joy in my life. You might feel that joy is to be found in extreme sports, or pop concerts, or snorting coke from the midriffs of hookers. But I think you mean pleasure. Joy is deeper, linked to a sense of the goodness of existence.

It seems to me that joy is to be found in doing cultural things. I don’t mean going to plays or art galleries; I mean cultural things that are very participatory and democratic. Things like this: getting to know people who are different from me, through putting on a little play, making stuff for a festival and seeing some local children enjoying it, singing a rousing song. This stuff feels, sometimes, like authentic culture. In fact, as I see it, the secret to human fulfilment is participation in festivity – communal meaning-making fun.

Within the dirgey and naff music you notice that there is a spirit that holds this disparate bunch together

You may say you get this from Glastonbury or the Eton-Harrow match (or both), but to my mind these things are not sufficiently open to the wellsprings of meaning and purpose. There is a unique wideness and depth to religion, and those who have tasted it can be satisfied by nothing smaller. Other subcultures are likely to attract a certain sort of person – religion doesn’t settle for that, it seeks to be cross-class, cross-cultural. And it earnestly addresses the meaning of life.

This all sounds good, you may be thinking, but in practice my local church is an........

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