The Revd Paul Hunt writes:
THE Revd Peter Jackson died unexpectedly in August, while serving as the Anglican Chaplain in Nice. Probably best-known within the wider Church for his confirmation textbook, Faith Confirmed (co-written with Chris Wright), of which more than 80,000 copies have been sold, Peter excelled as a school chaplain and as a parish priest.
Born in Wales in 1953, Peter was educated at Wycliffe College, where the school chaplain played an important part in his spiritual formation. He read theology at St Peter’s College, Oxford, before starting a law-conversion course. His priestly vocation came to the fore, however, and Peter was ordained deacon in Advent 1979, to serve as an honorary curate at St Michael at the Northgate, while still a student at St Stephen’s House, Oxford.
After a second curacy at Malvern Link, where he learned to minister to both the well-heeled and those suffering from social deprivation, Peter went, in 1982, to Aldenham School, Hertfordshire, where he flourished as a school chaplain. It was here that Peter honed his teaching skills and became the master of an incisive and never bland “thought for the day” during the daily chapel services. School chaplaincy is not an easy ministry, but Peter inspired colleagues and pupils to take Christian faith seriously as both an intellectually rational proposition and as something that moved the spirit.
It was no surprise that Peter was appointed Chaplain and Head of Religious Studies at Harrow School in January 1990. Here, he prepared up to 80 boys for confirmation each year. During this time, he co-founded an RE-curriculum association for independent schools and served on a government curriculum review. His many textbooks for preparatory and senior schools, as well as Faith Confirmed, were the practical applications of Peter’s involvement. Peter was anxious not to be regarded as an “academic” priest; his pastoral concerns found expression as the founding chair of the charity REACT, which helps children living with life-limiting illnesses.
Educational and pastoral work were brought together in Peter’s next post as Associate Rector and Director of Christian Education of St Patrick’s Episcopal Church, in Washington, DC. By this time, Peter had met his partner, Joe, a lawyer and an active Episcopalian, who shared many of Peter’s interests, not least in music. Their homes in Arlington, Aldeburgh, Southgate, and Nice became places of warm hospitality, with good food, fine wine, thoughtful conversation, and, given Peter’s mischievous sense of humour, much laughter.
In 2003, Peter and Joe moved to north London, where Peter became Vicar of Christ Church, Southgate. It was here that Peter’s no-nonsense approach was applied, balancing the parish budget and restoring the Grade II* listed building. His teaching skills were evident in his preaching, and his pastoral skills were much appreciated. “We should always be kind but never sentimental,” he once told me.
Peter was a Francophile, and his move to Nice, where he became Chaplain of Holy Trinity with St Hugh’s, Vence, in 2014, proved to be inspired. Having been in Washington, DC, on the day of the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon, Peter had experienced its mental effect on people, and this experience proved essential during the Nice terrorist attacks of 2016 and 2020, which were both close to Holy Trinity. Parishioners came to appreciate Peter’s ministry, with its seamless pattern of the spiritual, educational, pastoral, social, and practical. Active in the diocese, Peter served on the finance committee and was the Bishop’s appointee on the diocesan synod and LGBT adviser.
The recitation of someone’s life will always fail to do justice to the many ways in which that life touched the lives of others for the better. This is especially true for a priest such as Peter, whose ministry enhanced the well-being of so many pupils and parishioners — a fact to which the large attendances at the memorial services in Nice and Southgate bore witness. We can no longer thank Peter, but we thank God for him. Peter is survived by Joe and their children, Eliot and Anneli.
The Revd Peter Jackson died on 30 August, aged 69.