23 January 2025
David Reed being ordained Deacon in 2024 – front row, fourth from left.
When curate David Reed says he’s been on a journey, he doesn’t mean it lightly.
An atheist not long before he began training to be a priest, Reed began studying at Sarum College in 2022 and is now completing his curacy for Anglican priesthood at St Nicholas and St Hubert’s Churches, a community hub in Corfe Mullen, Dorset.
Another major life change came just a few months before he embarked on the MA in Theology, Ministry and Mission here, when his daughter Nora was born.
Describing her as “the cleverest, cheekiest little girl” to journalist Sonia Sodha on the BBC podcast The Body Politic (20 January 2025), Reed says the 12-week pregnancy scan results showing their unborn child had a one in four chance of being born with Down syndrome seemed like a “disaster” at the time.
“I remember praying and saying ‘God can you please let her not have Down syndrome,” he recalls.
Asked how he feels about that now, Reed said: “It’s the best prayer He hasn’t granted.”
And if someone gave him a magic wand to take away Nora’s condition?
“Don’t you dare, no way!” comes the quick reply.
Before Nora was born, when he read or saw interviews with parents of children with Down Syndrome on charity websites he thought they were “making the best of a bad situation — of course they would say that”. Now he says, he understands that Nora having Down Syndrome is as important to who she is as any other physical feature or aspect of her personality.
In a world where increasing numbers of parents are choosing to have an abortion when their developing foetus is diagnosed with Down Syndrome, Reed says he feels a responsibility to show the world how much Nora’s life is worth living.
In the Radio 4 Programme, he talks about how his theological training gave him the tools to think these issues through. Studying for the MA at Sarum gave him “the space to explore theological methods and how to apply them, both to my own life, and real-world challenges such as the ones discussed in this programme,” he says. Especially helpful was a module which explored different techniques for theological reflection, such as life writing and autoethnography, to help examine his personal assumptions in making sense of the world.
In his discussions with the journalist Sonia Sodha for the radio programme and articles in the Spectator and the Observer, he describes how during his theological study at Sarum he increasingly began to see scripture and theology as a living pool of resources out of which he could make sense of his values and beliefs.
Sodha went on a journey of her own while she researched and wrote on these issues for the Body Politic series, citing Reed in a recent Observer article, (12 Jan 2025).
“The most challenging moments of the (Body Politic) series were when the people I was interviewing turned the tables to ask me not where I stood on the evidence but about my own beliefs. An old friend, David Reed, who is training to be a priest, wondered where, in light of my atheistic scepticism about assisted dying, my commitment to the value of life comes from? Cue me umming and ahhing in trying to explain why my objections aren’t related to anything as icky as the sanctity of life.”
She concludes by saying, “There’s shame on the liberal left associated with admitting to moral instincts that can’t fully be explained through rationale or reason; a sense that what you can’t evidence you should toss away. But we would all do well to remember that some things are above evidence, and, liberal or not, we all have our own ethical codes. I think it’s healthier to be open about them than to pretend they don’t exist and look down on those who refuse to do the same.”
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David Reed completed an MA in Theology, Mission and Ministry at Sarum College in 2024.
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