Free Bred of Heaven by Jasper Rees Page B

Welsh. The minister addresses us in Welsh, tells jokes. People laugh. It’s all extremely benign. He has a lovely soft manner. There are hints of the avuncular entertainer. I notice all sorts of Welsh words, even understanding parts of the sentences. When we sing again, trays of tiny glass goblets with a glistening red liquid are brought out, also a bowl. This time I really shall stay put. Two deacons have picked up the trays by a handle. The glasses clink as they bring the body and blood of Christ to the people. We don’t even have to leave our pews. I select a slender glass and knock it back. The wine is superior to the Catholic stuff.
    A final benediction is said and the congregation rises. I am slightly wondering where to put myself when I see the minister bearing down on me.
    â€˜Croeso!’ he says, thrusting out a hand. ‘Towyn Jones.’
    â€˜Diolch yn fawr!’ (Thank you very much!) I reply. ‘Jasper Rees.’ In these situations I am ever grateful for the Welsh surname.
    â€˜Mae’n braf iawn gweld wyneb newydd,’ he says. (It’s very nice to see a new face.) I shuffle out into the aisle. People file past, some nodding at the newcomer. Towyn Jones ignores them. I explain, in English, that my Welsh is not quite up to proper conversation. But that my grandparents married in the chapel here in 1927.
    â€˜Really?!’ says Towyn Jones. ‘Would you like to have a look at the marriage register? I could show you the chapel.’
    â€˜You mean this isn’t it?’
    â€˜Oh goodness me, no. This is the vestry. The chapel is under restoration.’ I
thought
this room looked a bit small. I hang around as he bids farewell to his congregation. Then when the minister shows me through a door in the corner of the vestry I am greeted by a remarkable sight. The chapel is spectacularly vast. Much of it is under plastic sheets and tall windows have been darkened, but a huge four-square ground floor and gallery are both tightly packed with gated pews. I wander in. Around the sides are plaques raised in memory of departed ministers going back to the late eighteenth century. One refers to a man born in 1645 during the English Civil War. There is stained glass, including two very comely Italianate figurines in ogee-shaped rear windows.
    The chapel built on this site by the Independents in 1726 was the first in Carmarthen. William Owen of Haverfordwest, who must have been immensely rich, spent £2,582 rebuilding it a century later. It has seating for a thousand. This is more like it. I can see my grandparents marrying here and not remotely filling it. But then whose wedding would?
    â€˜I meant to ask,’ Towyn Jones asks. ‘Who were your grandparents?’ I tell him. ‘Bertram Rees the dentist?’ he says. I nod. ‘Well I never.’ He looks at me over his half-moons. ‘Well I never.’
    I in turn ask Towyn how long he’s been minister. He explains that he nearly went to art school until a charismatic man of the cloth in Newcastle Emlyn swayed him. ‘He gave the impression to any boy,’ says Towyn, ‘that there was no honour on earth like being a minister. It might be OK being a prime minister, but being a minister you’d be a prince of the church.’ He took over a rural ministry close to the Pembrokeshire border in 1964, and ten yearslater the call was extended by Lammas Street. He has been there ever since.
    I ask him what makes the Independents so independent. There’s not much to split them from the Baptists beyond timing, Towyn explains. The Baptists allow believers to choose the moment of their baptising. The Independents are so called because they answer to no central authority, which sounds like Towyn to a tee. He is the jauntiest man of God I’ve ever met, a far cry from the image of the finger-wagging teetotaller steeped in the Nonconformist ways of denial and doom.
    â€˜Religion isn’t a big deal for