Michael James Jackson

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Michael James Jackson was a priest and Canon in the Church of England. He was born in 1925 and died in 1995.

Michael was baptised on Michaelmas Day, 1925, in St. Michael's Church, Somerton, where his father was vicar.

National Service took him to India from 1945 to 1947, and a commission in the Indian Army. It was at this time he decided to seek ordination. At Trinity Hall, Cambridge, from 1947 to 1950, he read Philosophy (then called Moral Sciences) and Medieval History.

A stay in France introduced him to new ideas on mission in industry, and the priest-worker movement. Before beginning theological training at Wells, he worked for a year as a labourer in a Sheffield steel works, in close contact with the Sheffield Industrial Mission. Upon completing training, he returned to Sheffield for a further three and a half years as a labourer, working out what Christianity meant in that context. His later deafness was probably attributable in part to these eight hour shifts, around the clock, in a great steel melting shop. In 1955 his shop steward persuaded the Bishop of Sheffield to to ordain Michael deacon, to continue as a labourer but as a member of the Sheffield Industrial Mission.

In 1957 he was ordained priest, became a full-time chaplain with the Mission, and from 1959 to 1969 was Senior Chaplain. He returned to parochial ministry in 1969, serving for four years as Vicar of St. George's, Doncaster before moving to St. Mary's Church, Nottingham.

In Nottingham, he chaired the Council of Christians and Jews, the City Centre Council of Churches, and for some years, was Chairman of the Governors of the Bluecoat School. He spent 6 weeks visiting churches in the Caribbean, the better to understand and befriend the local 'black-led' churches. Further afield, he was a chairman of the Advisory Council for the Church's Ministry selection conferences. He was one of eight members of a Joint Committee of the Churches who prepared a report on Hospital Chaplaincy. He served on the national Youth Employment Council.

He was awarded an M. Phil. from the University of Nottingham for a paper on Marcel Proust, and wrote articles on Jane Austen, Rastafarianism, English Theologians, sociology, and more. ^[1]