You’ve got to make an effort! We used to
be persuasive – but now I feel like we hand
hungry people a menu, but it’s in a language
they don’t understand.”
As anyone who’s read Coles’ memoirs or
follows him on Facebook will know, he is not
only a fabulously gifted writer – warm, witty,
eloquent, able to converse in a way I would
term High Conversational – but also deeply
versed in not only the Bible, but the lives of
2,000 years of saints, martyrs, nuns, monks
and sundry other believers.
In the same way Stephen Fry has rewritten
the Greek myths for a modern audience, and
Neil Gaiman has rebooted the Norse myths,
I wonder if Coles could turn his hand to
something about Christianity and Christians
and faith, in a modern language people do
understand. I am as godless as a person can be- but I admit now, when I have gone through
bad times, as a fan of Coles, I have often
wished he preached in a church near me,
so I could go and take part in something
comforting. Coles’ life – the struggles, the
grief, but also the impulse towards joy and
love – makes me trust his take on faith,
charity and generosity in a way I feel
disinclined to with any other man of faith
who’s come to my attention. I can’t be the only
one who would actively prefer a bookish, dog-
loving, gay, bicycling, former pop star priest
over some shouty evangelical or dry, by-the-
book dude who appears to be into “God
middle management”. If it is the way that the
Church interprets and speaks that has driven
Coles away, I wonder if he might not, in the
end, also be the solution to all this. I can think
of no one else who talks about Christianity in
such a compelling, accessible way.
I intend, of course, to pitch this idea to
Coles – making it clear I want a 10 per cent
commission on any future book deal – but
there are now more than 100 people queued
up to give the man they almost certainly think
of as their best friend a hug goodbye. As Coles
weeps, spontaneously the room starts singing
For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.
I slip away. How mad to have wasted
someone so good at what they do. And simply
because of whom he loved. I thought love was
supposed to be the church’s thing? But what
do I know? This was my first, and also my last,
day in church. nMurder before Evensong by Richard Coles
will be published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson on
June 9 (£16.99)The Times Magazine 29They might be medieval!”) that, for half the
book, it seems like the brutal murders might
actually have occurred in order to prevent
exactly this.
The theme throughout the book seems to
be: in 2022, to be a progressive CofE priest is
almost to vanish. You must not be different,
you shouldn’t really say how you feel or
suggest any kind of change. It appears that
Coles is finally able to be frank about how
crushing his time in the Church has been for
him. He seems, this most gentle of men, to
be very angry.
“Yes,” Coles sighs, sipping on a cup of tea.
“Having to put up with the indignity for
having your relationship – and indeed your
identity – denigrated, and to be assigned, if at
all, a kind of grudging, second-degree place
in the household of the Church, is difficult.
I took it – David and I took it – because
it was necessary for the job, and now I don’t
have to do that any more. And so I feel more
angry about it all now than I ever allowed
myself to feel then.”
Coles adjusts the dachshund – Pongo – on
his lap, and continues. “I remember Desmond
Tutu coming to talk to us when we were at
college, and saying that, under apartheid, he
was an archbishop, he had a doctorate, he was
a Nobel prizewinner – but he didn’t have the
vote. And when I look at the relationship
I had with David – and the relationships friends
have who also are in same-sex partnerships
- they are full of grace and truth, and we
should be celebrating that. Upholding it and
sustaining it. A bishop – I won’t say which
one – once said to me, ‘You must remember,
Father, all institutions are demonic.’ Having
worked for both the BBC and the Church of
England, I think you can see there’s a certain
power in that description.”
He smiles. His phone rings. He ignores it.
“This is Finedon,” he continues. “Our MP
is Peter Bone – it’s very Ukip-py, very Brexit,
very Daily Mail – and yet, in church today,
you would see kids with two dads, two mums,
and it’s fine, and I think everybody knows
that. And so I wonder, for those who can’t
support this – for theological, scriptural
reasons – do you look at that and just don’t
see it? Or have you just stopped looking?
Have you narrowed your world so you don’t
have these inconvenient truths in it? That love
is just, well, love?”
So am I right in thinking, I ask him, that,
when you joined the Church, you thought
things would change? That maybe you would
change them?
“I was more hopeful then,” Coles says,
looking deflated. “The trends then were
towards inclusion. But since then, the
liberal powers within the Church are rather
diminished, and the conservative powers have
rather strengthened. And those who feel
strongly about these things tend to mobilise,
and get themselves into positions of key
decision-making, whereas the kind of
[progressive] people I feel most affinity with
are the people who might mobilise over their
choice of biscuit, but don’t want to mobilise
politically. They just want to live their lives.
And I get it. I mean – I’m knackered. I’ve been
on this battle line of LGBT rights since I was
16, you know? Forty-four years of fighting
the good fight. And it’s largely been a story of
success. We’ve come a long way; we’ve done
great things. But I’m 60 – I don’t want to be a
warrior any more. Because who wants to wear
armour all the time?”
And so Coles is walking away, four years
before he planned to.
“I’ve been told off by a friend of mine for
giving up – he’s very battle-hardened and
he thinks I should be more fighty. But whenDavid died, I lost some spirit and heart and
stomach, I think. The grief tears chunks out
of you. I need to regroup and rethink. You
know...” He sighs, looking at his watch. He is
now late for his own goodbye party and so
summarises very briskly, “Sometimes you just
think, f*** all this for a game of soldiers.”
Ten minutes later, Coles is standing in
St Mary’s for the very last time, where the
parishioners and church choir sing So Long,
Farewell from The Sound of Music, half the
room in tears, including Coles himself.
As today is my first day in a church, I have
been quietly absorbing all there is here: the
posters for outreach groups; the carefully
cleaned boxes of children’s toys; the bell
ringers, off for a pint after their mammoth
three-and-a-half hour session. This is Middle
England, where community is made of jugs
of squash and cups of tea; colouring pencils
and stackable chairs; clanking radiators and
the same Christmas and Easter decorations
brought out every year, from the same
cardboard box. The smell of altar flowers,
wood polish and hot dust.
If the problem isn’t here – if no one here
cared that their vicar truly loved a man
instead of a woman – but in interpretation
of scripture and doctrine, I wonder if a job
Coles would be eminently suited to might be
interpreting the story of Jesus himself?
“One of the reasons why I’ve ponced
around in the mainstream so much is because
I’m really conscious of the people whom
we don’t address any more,” Coles had
said earlier. “Jesus said you’ve got to go
out there and make disciples of all nations.‘I don’t want to be a warrior any more. Because
who wants to wear armour all the time?’