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Depending on which side of the argument it is viewed, the liturgy used for the “marriage” service of two gay priests, David Lord and Peter Cowell, in the Church of England was either profoundly spiritual or deeply provocative.

Liberals are overjoyed that a rector as prominent as the Rev Martin Dudley, who took the service, has broken ranks. Father Dudley created controversy in the 1980s when he was the first clergyman to marry a couple after divorce. Marriage after divorce has been approved in certain circumstances, and Father Dudley believes that the gay issue is comparable. But evangelicals say the “floodgates of indiscipline” have been opened. The Bishop of London, the Right Rev Richard Chartres, has begun an investigation into the service.

Had it not been two men standing at the altar, any observer would have taken the service for a traditional wedding. The service – at the Church of St Bartholomew the Great in the City of London – began: “Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here in the sight of God . . . to join together these men in a holy covenant of love and fidelity.” After a confession of sin “through our own deliberate fault”, the congregation heard a lesson from 1 Samuel 18, a Bible passage about the love between David and Jonathan.

Dr Lord was asked: “David, wilt thou take this man as thy partner, in the sight of God? Wilt thou love him, comfort him, honour, and keep him in sickness and in health, and, forsaking all others, keep thee only unto him, so long as ye both shall live?’” to which he responded: “I will.”

They also pledged to love each other physically, as in the traditional Anglican marriage service, stating: “With this ring I thee bind, with my body I thee worship, and with all my worldly goods I thee endow.”

The service has angered conservativces. The Reform grouping said: “The Church faces the same sort of division as the Episcopal Church of the US. Our only hope of preventing this is for bishops to exercise swift and clear discipline. There is no room for carefully constructed statements designed to hold everyone together in an uneasy truce.”