A Tale of Two Clerics Q & As with Roy Clements Part Two "Golden Years" 1979-92

1979-92 was a period of technological, social and moral change. “Homosexuality” was becoming gradually more accepted, or at least tolerated, in wider society. However, most of society and the church (especially evangelicals) still remained opposed to “homosexuality”. The AIDS epidemic also provoked a “moral” backlash against gay people. Margaret Thatcher’s “moral majority” Conservative government actively opposed “promotion” of homosexuality through their infamous section 28. To my shame, as a small c conservative evangelical this was one of the very few pieces of Thatcherite legislation I ever supported!

These were also the "golden years" of Roy Clements' ministry and my own "formative years" (of which Roy certainly played a part). I remember, in 1987, Roy speaking to our Nottingham University Christian Union as our returning President from 20 years earlier. We were all very impressed by his teaching and very proud of his connection with us, as one of the then leading lights of the British evangelical movement - spoken of in the same breath as his friend, the late great John Stott. Roy went on to publish 14 books and had an especially fruitful ministry amongst students as pastor of Eden Baptist Church Cambridge for 20 years from 1979 to 1999. Amongst many other students, he baptised my oldest friend, Jeremy, in 1987 and my girlfriend, now wife, Hannah, in 1988.

But during this very productive period, this apparently very happily married heterosexual father of three was astonished to find himself falling in love with another man. This experience shook and turned his world and his thinking upside down - about himself and about traditionalist church teaching.

1. Looking back, what are you most pleased about what God achieved through you during that time?

My congregation in Cambridge comprised not only intellectually-gifted students, but also very ordinary non-academic people with little or no university education. What pleased me most was that I found expounding the Bible systematically for 45 minutes very Sunday morning could meet the spiritual needs of both companies and forge a heartfelt Christian fellowship between them.

2. During this period how would you describe your relationship with Jane and your children?

My relationship with Jane was very happy. The demands of study and ministry led me to neglect my children too much, but generally speaking I feel we had a very contented family life.

3. Were there any issues or gaps in your relationship with Jane that, looking back, might be explained by your being gay?

As I've said earlier, with the benefit of hindsight, I can now recognise that sexually ours was not a fully satisfactory relationship. But at the time, I was quite unaware of this. 

4. When were you first actively conscious of being sexually or romantically attracted to another man? How did your feelings for him compare to the feelings you had for Jane at the start of your relationship with her? How would you describe the nature of your relationship with him?

Ever since my student days I had been aware that I occasionally noticed some men and felt attracted physically to them. I think, as a result, I rather kept my distance emotionally from other men, never developing really deep friendships or getting physically closer than a warm handshake. But I did not recognise this as having anything to do with being gay.

This all changed during a period of perhaps 8 months in the mid-1980s. A post-grad student asked to see me. His mother had been diagnosed with a very serious medical condition and was not expected to live. The student had a very close relationship with her and was emotionally devastated by this tragic news. It was very hard for him to acknowledge the hand of a loving God in what was happening. He came from a conservative Christian home, but found he could not discuss his feelings with his father, who was struggling with his own response to the situation. So he turned to me. I did little more than listen. But as I did, I realised that intense feelings for this young man were developing within me.

On many occasions his distress at his mother’s failing health brought him to tears and, unusually for me, I felt constrained to comfort him by weeping with him and putting my arms around him.

The conjunction of emotional tenderness and physical proximity to a good-looking young man was wholly novel and mind-blowing. To my shock, I discovered I was becoming sexually aroused; just the thought of meeting him again could do this. Then, one afternoon, my world turned upside down when he confessed that he was having the same experience. He did not identify as ‘homosexual’ any more than I did. But the level of intimacy that we shared, and desired to share, could be described by no other word. The physical longing that we felt for each other was, of course, mixed with a great deal of shame and guilt. Neither of us had much idea of how gay men made love. But I knew yielding to physical desire in any way was a breach of my marriage covenant with Jane. The result was very clumsy and probably rather hilarious. We did not go to bed together or take off our clothes – but we admitted to one another that was exactly what we wanted to do and were as tactile as our stretched consciences would allow.

5. What, if any, effect did this romantic friendship have on your relationship with Jane at the time?

My relationship with the student was kept entirely secret by mutual agreement. I tried very hard not to allow the emotional turbulence I was experiencing to affect my relationship with Jane. I think I succeeded – certainly she never questioned me about it.

6. Why did your relationship with him end?

I guess it was about 4 months into our friendship that we confessed the erotic nature of our feelings for one another. The student was in his final year at Cambridge and had plans to go abroad for additional post-graduate study, so a decision about the future of our friendship had to be made. He embraced a gay identity very quickly and wanted very much to find a long-term partner. I made it clear that that partner could not be me. I remained committed to my marriage and pastoral calling.

7. What thoughts and emotions went through you at the time you broke up?

Clearly the discovery of gay feelings in myself and the joyous nature of the intimacy I was experiencing with him seriously challenged my view of homosexuality. But I was not ready to abandon the unanimous position of all the evangelical leaders I respected. I saw myself as in a moral struggle with temptation and summoned to make a personal sacrifice in order to be obedient to God. I remember reflecting much on Jesus’ Gethsemane prayer: ‘not my will but thine be done’. So after a few months the relationship ended. In my whole life I have never experienced such excruciating grief as descended on me in the days immediately after our parting. I swore that I would never subject myself to such unendurable emotional pain again.

8. How did your experience of that relationship and the agony of its ending change your view about your own sexuality? How did this challenge your attitude towards “homosexuality” more generally? And how, if at all, did it challenge your views about other issues where the church took a socially conservative position?

For some time I remained in strenuous denial about being gay. I believed it was my responsibility as a pastor to support the views of the church eldership in my public teaching, even if I had some inner doubts about it. But I also felt a great need to think the subject of homosexuality through in depth. I was very conscious of my own ignorance both as regards the interpretation of the relevant parts of the Bible and the origin of homosexuality as a feature of human behaviour. So a period of several years began in which I explored these things privately.

One consequence of this was that for the first time in my life I began to read novels in addition to my accustomed diet of academic non-fiction. I devoured books like E.M. Forster’s ‘Maurice’ and James Baldwin’s ‘Giovanni’s Room’. I remember being particularly enthralled by Mary Renault’s depiction of gay relationships in the ancient world of Alexander the Great. This discovery of English literature had a profound effect on me. I realised how emotionally constipated I was, and this in turn had a transforming influence on my preaching and pastoral counselling. The most effective years of my ministry can be dated to this period.

At the same time I began a very serious investigation of biblical hermeneutics. There were a number of questions that were proving divisive among evangelicals at the time: charismatic gifts; the role of women in the church; and, of course, homosexuality. All of these hinged on how a few key texts in the Bible were interpreted. I remember a very important private conversation I had with John Stott in his London flat sometime around 1990. He had publicly espoused the teaching ministry of women and was very influential in the appointment of Elaine Storkey as his successor at the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity. I put to him that many of my colleagues in reformed ministry felt that, in yielding to feminist pressure, the church was in danger of setting aside the Bible and letting the secular world determine its teaching. John’s response shocked me. He said he thought the church had misunderstood the Bible regarding the role of women and needed to let the world teach it a better way. I remember I so much wanted to ask whether he thought the same could be true about homosexuality! But of course he remained a very conservative voice on that subject, and I was too much of a coward to challenge him on the point.

The other thing I did during this period was to listen to gay men and women as they recounted their life experiences. More and more people were ‘coming out’ as gay at this time; some of them were Christians. To my horror, I began to uncover just how much suffering had been caused and psychological damage done as a result of repressive anti-gay policies on the part of churches.

9. How and when did your traditionalist views change about “homosexuality” and any other issues? How did you square that with your understanding of the Bible as an evangelical Christian?

Over the course of perhaps four or five years, I became more and more convinced that John Stott had been right; evangelicals had misunderstood the Bible, but not only in regard to the role of women, but also about homosexuality. The kind of literalism that insisted the universe had been created in seven days ‘because the Bible said so’ had been applied to social ethics too. A failure to sufficiently understand the culture of the ancient world and a blindness to cultural prejudice in the modern world had meant that both women and gays had been subjected to cruel and unnecessary social prohibitions.

10. How and when did you finally recognise that you yourself were gay? How did this affect how you saw your marriage to Jane and your plans for the future?

As far as I was concerned personally, I gradually accepted that I was indeed gay. I had deliberately refrained from any further same-sex romantic relationship while I sorted out my thinking on the issue. But I knew deep down in my heart that was what I longed for. I knew if I fell in love with a man again I would not be able to walk from the relationship. Neither my fondness for Jane nor my theology had changed, but I realised my sexual orientation meant I had made a mistake in getting married and in accepting the leadership of an evangelical church. But my children were still too young for me to consider divorce, even on the ethical grounds of being a lesser evil. And l was loath to abandon my church leaderless or forsake the extraordinary opportunity for ministry it presented. So I prayed for patience and encouraged the eldership to appoint an associate pastor that I (privately) felt would be capable of leading the church after my departure.