Christmas is a time of little rest for priests, and Jeremy Davies is no exception. He took midnight mass on Christmas Eve in his local church – the stunning Wren-designed All Saints’ in Farley, Wiltshire – followed by two morning services there and at another nearby church on Christmas Day.
Although he retired four years ago, Davies is delighted still to be leading congregations in worship and officiating at weddings, christenings and funerals in the Church of England, to which he has devoted his life. “You don’t stop being a parish priest when you retire,” he says. “I hope I’ll go on until I’m gaga.”
That, however, is far from guaranteed. A year ago, Davies married his partner of 28 years, Simon McEnery. It was the second time the couple had publicly affirmed their love and mutual commitment: they entered a civil partnership 10 years ago, on Davies’s 60th birthday.
But their wedding vows – to love and cherish one another, for better and for worse, until death does them part – have put them at odds with the church’s teaching that marriage can only be between a man and a woman. This has already resulted in Davies being banned from taking church services a few miles away in the neighbouring diocese of Winchester. Meanwhile, illustrating the C of E’s gay marriage postcode lottery, the bishop of Salisbury – Davies’s own diocese – merely rapped his knuckles with an obligatory letter of rebuke.
As messages of support from within and outside the church have poured into the couple’s home – a converted Methodist chapel eight miles from Salisbury cathedral, where Davies worked for 30 years – he and McEnery have found their own responses to the ecclesiastical fallout of their marriage diverging.
Over salmon pasta and a glass of wine in their bright kitchen, crammed with Christmas cards and the detritus of everyday life, McEnery describes bishop Tim Dakin’s refusal to grant Davies “permission to officiate” in the diocese of Winchester as “an affront and an insult. It says to Jeremy: your 40-plus years of ministry are worth nothing.” He defiantly posted news of the bishop’s confidential decision on Facebook. “I think the church needs a damn good jolt,” he adds.
Davies, meanwhile, has faced the ban – and his disagreement with his husband about exactly how to handle it – with equanimity. “I don’t need to be angry, because there are so many people feeling angry on our behalf. One of the good things [about the decision] is that it may encourage people to think again.”
Gay vicars, of course, are nothing new. But for centuries, the C of E generally took a “don’t ask, don’t tell” approach. That has unravelled as social attitudes towards homosexuality have liberalised, accompanied by changes to the law over the last half century: decriminalisation in 1967, the introduction of civil partnerships in 2005, and marriage equality in 2014.
As a result, the church has been plunged into tortured debate over the issue, which has threatened to split the wider Anglican communion amid theological wrangling and bitter accusations of homophobia and discrimination.
The C of E’s position is this: clergy are permitted to enter into same-sex civil partnerships, so long as they give assurances that the relationship is celibate. Same-sex marriage is banned for clergy, as the church defines marriage as a lifelong union between a man and a woman. But, in recognition of the “new reality” of legal and social change, the archbishops of Canterbury and York have committed the church to “a process offacilitated conversations” around human sexuality and interpretations of the scriptures. So, although many senior church figures want the “bedroom issue” to go away, allowing them to focus on what they see as Christian priorities of social action, pastoral care and spreading the word of God, it is likely to dominate for some time to come. Meanwhile, much of secular society regards the C of E’s agonised convolutions on a scale ranging from bemusement to derision.
As a result, the church has been plunged into tortured debate over the issue, which has threatened to split the wider Anglican communion amid theological wrangling and bitter accusations of homophobia and discrimination.
The C of E’s position is this: clergy are permitted to enter into same-sex civil partnerships, so long as they give assurances that the relationship is celibate. Same-sex marriage is banned for clergy, as the church defines marriage as a lifelong union between a man and a woman. But, in recognition of the “new reality” of legal and social change, the archbishops of Canterbury and York have committed the church to “a process offacilitated conversations” around human sexuality and interpretations of the scriptures. So, although many senior church figures want the “bedroom issue” to go away, allowing them to focus on what they see as Christian priorities of social action, pastoral care and spreading the word of God, it is likely to dominate for some time to come. Meanwhile, much of secular society regards the C of E’s agonised convolutions on a scale ranging from bemusement to derision.
Davies also had a musical background. He was brought up in Cardiff, as a Welsh-speaking Baptist until the age of seven, when he was baptised into the Anglican church. He became a chorister at Llandaff cathedral, followed by Hurstpierpoint College, a public school he readily acknowledges as elitist, but where he gained a first-class education and the opportunity to develop his passions for music, drama and rugby. From there, he read English literature as a choral scholar at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.
He had long been certain his future lay with the church. “I was taken with religion at an early age. I can’t really explain it, but I was caught by it, I loved it.” As a small child, he preached sermons to his sisters and dispatched himself to three different Sunday schools each week. “I knew I was going to be a priest.”
As he grew older and came to understand his sexual orientation, he also grappled with the “question of whether you could be a priest and be homosexual at the same time. But I’m a great optimist; I believe there’s always a way through; things can be reconciled. And things were beginning to change.”
Social attitudes were relaxing, and the 1967 Sexual Offences Act, which decriminalised homosexuality, was passed while Davies was at Cambridge. “There was a background noise which encouraged me to think theology couldn’t, and wasn’t, standing still. It was a very exciting time.”
The abstract questions became real when he fell in love for the first time, while studying theology after Cambridge in preparation for priesthood. “It made me realise that I needed to take my sexuality into my theology, otherwise I’d be a very emasculated priest. If you couldn’t take half of what you were into a ministry, what kind of ministry would it be? A very dishonest ministry.”
The relationship lasted a couple of years before the two incipient priests were parted by geography. Davies took jobs in London and Cardiff before moving to Salisbury and meeting McEnery, the son of a Church of England vicar, who had recently come out as gay after years of sexual confusion.
“I was still very wary; I didn’t know how to conduct such a relationship,” says Davies. “After all, I was the precentor of Salisbury cathedral; I wasn’t going to flaunt my sexuality, I didn’t want to become known as the gay priest.
“At first we’d go to concerts and sit separately, and Simon went along with this extraordinary collusion with the norms of the church. But, by degrees, it was he who helped me come to terms with this as a good and Godly thing to be relished and enjoyed, and we shouldn’t be ashamed of it.”
After McEnery completed his studies in singing and jazz at London’s Guildhall School of Music and Drama, the couple began living together. “People just got used to us being around,” says Davies; he had a run-in with a dean over their cohabitation “but I basically told him where to go”. According to McEnery, “nobody cared really, except within the church where people are much more worked up than in society at large”.
Gay couples were permitted to register their relationships as civil partnerships from 21 December 2005. Seventeen days later, Davies and McEnery signed the papers and threw a party to celebrate with friends and colleagues. Davies informed the then bishop of Salisbury about his new status, and volunteered an assurance that the relationship complied with church requirements on sexual activity.
Now he regrets having offered that assurance. Pointing out that what constitutes sexual activity is different for each individual and in each relationship, he adds: “The whole process seems untruthful. Why should I collude with a dishonest intrusion into a private relationship? I don’t see that a sexual relationship is incompatible with a loving relationship, whether it’s between people of the same gender or not. So in fact to give that assurance was, I think, colluding with the system. It shouldn’t have happened.”
When it became legally possible to marry, Davies was hesitant. “I resisted it. I thought a partnership is fine, but you can’t have a marriage between two men or two women. Simon was all in favour of same-sex marriage, and I was against it. I had to be persuaded. I began to look again at the marriage service. And I thought the theology of marriage is not about a man and a woman.”
The marriage vows, he says, are about mutual society, human relationships. “And why shouldn’t two men or two women, who love each other and want to commit their lives to each other for ever, say these things? When the bishops said that clergy who enter into same-sex marriages are not modelling the teaching of the church – yes we are. It is embodied in that vow.”
The mutual society between Davies and McEnery is evident in their daily lives. “We’re an awful middle-class cliche,” says McEnery, referring to their Waitrose shopping, holidays in Madeira, outings to the opera and theatre, and addiction to the afternoon TV quiz show Pointless. Davies sings in the Salisbury Chamber Chorus, which is conducted by McEnery. The house is filled with books, paintings and the smell of freshly brewed coffee. Just inside their front door hangs the figure of Jesus impaled on a crucifix; by their kitchen door hangs a raunchy gay calendar. Matching blue Peugeots are parked outside.
Both men appear supremely content with the life they have built together. But there are differences: Davies, who will be 70 in January, has quietly reconciled his faith and sexuality, whereas McEnery – who “gave up on God” 15 years ago – verges on contempt for an institution he feels has cruelly rebuffed the couple.
The bishop of Winchester took five months to respond to Davies’s request for his permission to officiate at services in the diocese, made after mounting requests for the priest to help out in stretched parishes over the county border. Dakin’s letter, and a media statement issued after the refusal became public, referred to the House of Bishops’ pastoral guidance on same-sex marriage.
It says: “The Church of England affirms, according to our Lord’s teaching, that marriage is in its nature a union … of one man with one woman.” Same-sex weddings in church “will not be possible”, it adds. And “it would not be appropriate conduct for someone in holy orders to enter into a same-sex marriage, given the need for clergy to model the Church’s teaching in their lives.”
“Perhaps I was naive. I thought it would be a formality,” concedes Davies, who at the time was unaware of Dakin’s views or “possible prejudices”. He hopes to meet the bishop early in 2016 to discuss the reasons behind the refusal. He will also need to renew his permission to officiate in the diocese of Salisbury when it expires, and may seek permission to officiate elsewhere. Whether or not he can continue to carry out his duties as a priest remains to be seen.
Through it all, the clergyman retains a remarkable magnanimity. I think [Dakin] is behind the curve,” he says, “but it’s a legitimate curve to be on. The church is on the move, but it takes a long time. This is very frustrating to many people, but the issue of sexuality in human relationships has been on the church’s agenda for 2,000 years.”
In the end, whatever the theological contortions the church is putting itself through, Davies comes back to a simple principle. Same-sex marriage, he says, “is not about putting two fingers up to the bishops or the Church of England. It’s what people who love each other and want to commit to a long-term relationship do.”
