The group was co-founded by Peter Hammond and included architects Peter Gilbey, Robert Maguire, Keith Murray (an ecclesiastical designer), John Newton (Burles, Newton & Partners), George Pace, Patrick Nuttgens, Patrick Reyntiens (stained glass artist), Austin Winkley and Lance Wright.
The decision was widely publicised and caused the Observer to describe his actions as leaving a "crisis of authority" in the Church.
[5] In an article circulated by Davis at the time of his public exit, he states that the Church had become too powerful and too dehumanising – "a vast, impersonal, unfree, and inhuman system," that it had been compromised by its connection with the Nazi regime.
The article also argued that orthodoxy had limited Davis' intellectual horizons: "I have had to remove a mountain of ecclesiastical rubble in order to produce a few tiny plants of creative thought.
[2] The philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe wrote to Davis letting him know that she was glad that he had left the Church, as she regarded his beliefs about the Eucharist as being contrary to Catholic teaching.
[3] In 1978, Davis gave the Hulsean Lectures at Cambridge University, which were published in 1980 as Theology and Political Society, which reflected his interest in the relation between religion and sociology.