Getting to know..... Adrian Whalley

Adrian Whalley spends around five months of each year living in Nice with his husband Daniel and during his time here he is an active member of our community. You may have heard him speaking recently about his fundraising efforts in the 2025 Nice marathon or seen him singing in our ‘pop-up’ choir. Gerard Jordan got together with Adrian to hear more about his experience of Holy Trinity and about his life as a Christian.

Adrian’s life as a Christian

Adrian has been a regular churchgoer since he started singing in the local church choir when he was seven years old. His local church community where he grew up in St Helens in northwest England, and the friends that he made there, were a central part of his early life. He quickly joined their Sunday School or “Pathfinders”; he remembers fondly this weekly Sunday afternoon church group where he could talk about the bible, the lessons that we can learn from it and how we can seek to relate it to our daily lives. Shortly before his voice broke Adrian joined the choir at St Helens Parish Church as they had a renowned choir master who also ran the local choral society. "I can remember like yesterday how much I used to love going to those choral society concerts in the town hall with my late Mum. Sadly I lost my Father at the age of four but remember him well ...... I resemble him and I get my wavy hair from him" recalls Adrian.

On finishing at the local primary school, Adrian was sent to Liverpool College, an independent day senior school. In due course, Adrian became a member of its Christian Union, which he went on to chair. The school had a chapel and Adrian became responsible for organising and sometimes leading the Saturday morning services organised by the pupils. It was here that Adrian further developed his passion for music (singing and playing the ‘cello) and also for athletics and cross-country running which were his “escape” from the rugby and cricket!; he loved the sense of escape and freedom that this gave him, whatever the weather: “running for me is a time for thinking and freedom .... I've always loved getting absolutely filthy in the mud, which is not at all fitting of my lifestyle! "  Adrian then moved on to university to read Law. His years at University however, became a  time of increasing self-questioning, and particularly about whether it was possible to be Christian and to be gay; he explains “it  was difficult to know how to put being gay together with Christian learning, as, in the  Bible, there did not seem to be any gay people .... ”.

After Law College Adrian moved to London to complete his training as a solicitor and there he started to attend a well-known Anglican Evangelical church called ‘All Souls’ near Oxford Street. This church was very active; it offered a wide range of groups and was very popular with young professionals, so he was initially very impressed by the dynamism and energy of the community there. However, he recalls how one Sunday a very well-known minister called John Stott, who was a powerful preacher and author, delivered a derogatory sermon about homosexuality which upset Adrian very greatly. “I felt as if a door had been slammed in my face and that I didn’t want to go back to All Souls ever again!” Adrian recalls “so I spoke first with an All Souls curate and then separately, with a barrister lay reader whom I greatly respected; but both whilst sympathising, just told me that this is the way that it is, without seeming to me to have any understanding at all of my situation.”  I ask Adrian whether this had led him to doubt himself or his faith and he explains that, despite being very upset (his first time ever feeling like this) he still felt strong in his convictions about his faith and himself. “I knew God had made me like this and must have  a reason for doing so. Although I had wondered why, I knew it was for me to discover what this purpose is.” Even though in the ensuing years the church provided no clear answer for Adrian, he continued to be a regular churchgoer and his faith remained strong.

After working abroad for a while, Adrian eventually settled back in England in Leicestershire and it was here that he first felt called to become an Anglican ‘Lay Reader’. He found a church near Loughborough where the Vicar supported him to undertake the relevant training; however, a change in career then led Adrian to work some distance away as a fundraiser for Christian Aid in Hertfordshire, based at the Anglican diocesan offices at St Albans near London. This meant that Adrian had to complete his Lay Reader training there but was then ‘licensed’ by an Interim Bishop in Leicestershire in 2015. One’s licensing by an Anglican Bishop as a Lay Reader has to be reviewed every three years and involves reporting any change in your circumstances, so in 2018 as part of this review Adrian informed Leicester Diocese that he had recently married Daniel. A new Bishop had by then arrived in Leicester and asked Adrian to come to a meeting where, after some discussion, Adrian was told by the Bishop that he would have to look into the matter further.

Adrian recalls “I heard nothing more until four months later when I received an email from the Bishop, informing me that he couldn’t re-license me as a Lay Reader owing to his ‘understanding of scripture and tradition and the commonly understood purpose of marriage within our society’. I felt angry and disappointed about how I was informed, the reasons given for the decision, and that the Bishop had not had the courage to tell me this at our meeting; so I decided to speak with the then Dean of St Alban’s Cathedral, the Very Rev’d Dr Jeffrey John, who had been living openly in a same-sex relationship for many years. I had previously read a book called ‘Permanent, Faithful, Stable’ which the Dean had written thirty years previously and which made the case based on scripture for Christian same-sex marriage. I asked the Dean whether he was agreeable to me sending a copy of this book to the Bishop of Leicester as my response; the Dean laughed and agreed!" . Frustrated with what had happened, Adrian then started to attend a different church and fortunately the Vicar there told him that although the Bishop would not License Adrian, he as his local vicar could appoint him to be a Lay Assistant Minister in his church; since then Adrian has been leading services and preaching in this local church in Leicestershire.

Coming to Nice and Holy Trinity

Adrian after completing the Nice marathon last November

Adrian would never have ended up spending part of each year in Nice had he not met and married Daniel, a Frenchman who grew-up in Roquefort-La-Bédoule which is a couple of hours by car from Nice.  Because Daniel is a practising Buddhist, they had a Buddhist wedding ceremony in 2018 at Taplow Court in Berkshire, which is the UK headquarters of SGI, a lay-Buddhist organisation. “It was a very multi-cultural celebration as there were eighteen different nationalities present!  A priested university friend gave us a christian blessing at the reception on a boat on the Thames” Adrian recalls.

Adrian first visited Nice at the end of 2016 as Daniel had previously thought about having somewhere here for when he retired. Covid delayed things but in mid 2021 they took possession of their apartment in Liberation. Adrian then discovered Holy Trinity by chance, when walking along the Rue de la Buffa; so he came along the following Sunday and met Father Peter and other members of our congregation. As a regular churchgoer Adrian is delighted to have found a friendly Anglican community where he can continue to attend services when not in England. “It is particularly great to see how our churches in both Nice and Vence have flourished in the past few years” he says. “I feel very ‘at home’ here and find it to be a wonderful place for learning and friendship.  Jeremy is a gifted preacher and Jeremy’s wife Christine is an essential part of the team. The music is an important element for me too.” 

Because at the moment he is only in Nice part-time, Adrian knows there are limits to the extent that he can get involved, which he dearly wants to do. Nevertheless, when Holy Trinity and St Hughs had no resident priest he led an online Lent study group for us ; "we used Ruth Valerio’s ‘Saying Yes to Life’ book as the text helps us to consider ecological issues around the world with Bible passages providing scriptural insight" ; it was following this that our churches' ‘Green Group’ was founded. Adrian’s interest in environmental issues had already developed during his seven years working for Christian Aid for whom he did many talks, linking issues such as Climate Change with the scriptures, and where he also led a Green Group across a group of three churches. It was to raise money for Green Group projects such as providing eco-friendly internal lighting, that Adrian ran the Nice Marathon last November: it is not too late to donate to this, so if you wish to then click on the Make a Donation button on the Holy Trinity website and add a note to say it is for Adrian’s efforts.  Adrian has always loved running, has chaired a local running club, has run a significant number of marathons and ultra-distance races over the world and is determined to keep this going.

Wherever Adrian has been in life, Church has remained a central feature, despite the experiences related above. He reflects “ The Anglican position on LGBTQ issues is untenable. Put simply, the Church needs to practice what it preaches. There is a complete contradiction between the church’s central theme of  ‘Love’ and that you take the person as you find them, and the Bishops’ consistent apologies for the hurt and upset that is being caused to so many people while not doing anything effective to bring change.  And so I continue to work quietly behind the scenes to enable us to have an ‘Inclusive Church,’ which to me is what our christian faith calls upon us to do."