The Very Revd Lister Tonge writes:
ON A funeral visit, early in his first curacy, at Leigh, in Lancashire, the Revd Donald Gray found himself by the face of the deceased in the open coffin. He told his vicar that he was not cut out for the ministry and was quitting. His incumbent was Len Tyler, who simply put on the kettle.
Brought up in Manchester and in Oldham, Donald Clifford Gray was one of that generation of “self-made” clergy whose rise through the ranks marked the approaching end of the Oxbridge hegemony in the Established Church. Having left school at 14 to work at the Electricity Board, Gray doggedly put himself through night school to acquire a decent education. He was one of a generation of bright, young Christians at St Paul’s, Ashton Road, Oldham, and was conscious of being pursued by the Hound of Heaven, whom he knew he could not long outrun. He then went up to King’s College, London.
The centrality of holy communion was axiomatic for Gray, who had been raised on the Tractarian principles of the Parish Communion Movement, and for the large numbers of post-war ordinands. As the Great War had made liturgical revision inevitable, so the experience of Hitler’s war had led many priests to recognise that the grace of the eucharist far outstripped anything matins had to offer on the battlefield or when fighting for a just post-war settlement and beyond. Gray’s grounded and acute Christian Socialism owed as much to his being the proud son of a Father of the Chapel at the Manchester Guardian as it did to F. D. Maurice, Gore, or Conrad Noel. Gray’s incarnational theology expressed what he believed about the nature of human society and its relationships. Liturgical theology and practice were always, therefore, central to his ministry, and opened the way for his increasingly scholarly involvement.
He was a gifted preacher and pastor, and, as Rector of Liverpool, increasingly left the running of the parish to a succession of carefully selected curates as he became involved with the structures and politics of the Church. In the Church Assembly, he was a prominent opponent of the Anglican-Methodist Unity Scheme, which failed in 1968 and again in 1972. Some of the more overtly Anglo-Catholic wing of the Church were not slow to describe Gray as ambitious and hungry for preferment. They overlooked the fact that his forthright championing of Catholic principles in the Anglican-Methodist debate almost certainly cost him episcopal preferment. He had no regrets about it.
Central to Gray’s time in Liverpool was his ecumenical work, especially his deep and close involvement with his Roman Catholic neighbours. The Liverpool City-Centre Ecumenical Team changed the way in which mainstream Christianity presented its message there. Joint house masses and Holy Week liturgies in one another’s churches were happening 45 years ago in a way largely unheard of since. After Easter each year, Archbishop Worlock would meet the team to see if there was anything else that he could do in support or if there were any permissions from Rome which might be needed for any proposed experimentation. When a curate left Liverpool Parish Church, he could expect a note of thanks and good wishes not only from his own bishop but also from the Archbishop.
After 13 years in Liverpool, Gray was asked to become Canon of Westminster, Rector of St Margaret’s, Westminster, and Chaplain to the Speaker of the House of Commons. The job fitted like a glove. Building on the work of his predecessor, Trevor Beeson, he viewed the Palace of Westminster as his parish. He needed no change in ministerial style. Soon, people there hailed him as he walked the corridors of power just as people had as he walked the streets of Liverpool.
Gray’s wife, Joyce, fitted that category of clergy wives mistakenly thought by some to be in the shadow of their patriarchal husbands. Donald knew full well that his ministry was possible only because of hers as deacon and priest to him. Each found their vocation in and through the other. Their family grew up in a home full of friendship, hospitality, and always gales of laughter.
Gray was unfailingly generous and gracious towards his colleagues. In one parish, he won over a highly critical former curate by his devoted pastoral care and personal kindness when the man later hit a very tough patch.
His legacy to the Church is most obviously seen in its revised forms of worship, in the production of which he played a long and distinguished part. As a long-serving member of the Liturgical Commission, he was one of the architects of the Alternative Service Book. He also founded the Society for Liturgical Study. His numerous writings included a biography of Percy Dearmer and a book on the Coronation Service, as well as scores of articles and chapters in learned collections. His doctoral thesis, published as Earth and Altar, details the connection between the social conscience of the Church of England and the renewal of its liturgical forms.
A more important legacy will be found in the ministry of Donald Gray’s more than 20 curates, as well as in the lives of those who came to him for regular or occasional counsel or confession, and in those whose lives were touched by the smiling parson who really looked as though he believed in the Good News that he proclaimed.
The Revd Dr Donald Gray died on 4 July, aged 94.
