Davies began a professorial career in 1947 at Rhodes University, where he was hired to be part of South Africa's first program for training English-speaking Protestant clergy.

Across his career, Davies wrote more than thirty books, including the five-volume Worship and Theology in England.

[1] Raised in Wales,[2] Horton Davies went on to attend the University of Edinburgh, there earning a Master of Arts degree in English in 1937 and a Bachelor of Divinity for systematic theology in 1940.

[8] He concluded his time as director of education in April 1946, returning to his ministry at Wallington and Carshalton Congregational, where his last service was on 10 November 1946.

[10] The University of Oxford hired Davies to head its Mansfield College Department of Church History in 1953,[6] and he worked there until 1956.

[18][19]: 434  The New York Times remembered Worship and Theology as "his most important work",[3] and Religion and American Culture retrospectively called it "highly regarded".

[6] The Princeton Day School's Anne Reid Gallery displayed fifty of Davies's paintings in an exhibition open from 11 January 1992, to 13 February.