A Tale of Two Clerics - Roy & Jason - An Introduction

This is the first of a four-part blog exploring through interviews the very different journeys of two ordained gay Christian ministers, Roy and Jason.

Introducing Roy and Jason

Roy Clements, now nearly 80, was one of the country’s leading evangelical teachers of the 1980s and 90s, spoken of in the same breath as his friend John Stott. He was an exceptionally gifted expository preacher who I was privileged to hear many times as a student. He went on to publish 14 books. He has been with his partner Chris for over 25 years now. They became civil partners in 2015 but “out of respect for those who want to keep that word exclusively for a male-female union” they haven’t converted this to a legal marriage.

At 32, Jason McMahon-Riley is almost two generations younger than Roy, born when Roy was at his ministerial peak. Jason is just starting out on his clerical path as a Methodist minister and also a hymn-writer. In 2022, he and his teenage sweetheart Ben were one of the first gay couples to be married in a Methodist church. They’ve recently adopted a little boy, Luke. And from the family pictures Jason has shared you can see just how much precious love is poured into that little lad’s life.

One little connection the three of us share is Nottingham. Roy and I are both Nottingham University graduates, Roy in the ‘60s, me in the ‘80s. Two years ago Jason moved to Nottingham to take up his first full presbyter’s appointment.

We’ll start in age order with Roy. As he’s lived two and a half times as long his interview is in two parts (1946-90 and 1991 onwards) and Jason’s is in one.

Background to Roy’s Story

I believe Roy’s story is a powerful illustration of the great harm false church teaching about sexuality has done and the wonderful gifts it has wasted (And Jason's story illustrates the opposite). Vicky Beeching was certainly not the first gay Christian “celebrity” to be a victim of conservative evangelical cancel culture. Her ministry was snatched from her when she came out as gay 15 years after Roy in 2014 (see my blog about her story here)

Like Vicky, several years before he came out, Roy had recognised that his sexuality would ultimately make it impossible for him to continue his current ministry, given the evangelical church’s then strong opposition to “homosexuality”.

Vicky had known she was gay since her adolescence. By contrast, Roy only recognised his own homosexuality in his early forties. As a faithfully married father of three he was shocked to find himself falling in love with another man in his congregation. Their relationship was brief and celibate but revealed to him a romantic love he’d never known for his wife or any other woman. This surprising experience of gay love prompted Roy to spend the next five years privately investigating homosexuality from a biblical and psychological perspective.

By the early ‘90s he had concluded that homosexuality was not a sinful choice, as he’d always believed. It was in fact an orientation that was an essential part of the God-created identity of a minority of people, among whom he now numbered himself. The result was that he carefully planned his exit from Eden Baptist Church once they’d found a suitable replacement pastor. This finally happened in 1999.  Roy was about to embark on a new career path whilst keeping secret his real reasons for leaving the pastorate to avoid any hurt or scandal for anyone. He would leave to study a Master’s degree in Public Understanding of Science and then hoped to become a Christian counter-voice to atheists like Richards Dawkins.

However, a serious complication interrupted this careful plan – Chris. In the early 1990s this young man had sought pastoral counselling from Roy about his own gay feelings. They fell in love and formed a deep, romantic friendship over a few years. Their romantic relationship ended because Roy would not leave his wife for him. But Roy’s wife, Jane, had grown suspicious about Roy’s attachment to Chris. She directly asked Roy about his feelings and he candidly admitted he had fallen in love with Chris. Jane, understandably, found this extremely hard to take.

She discussed the situation with a few trusted advisers, including John Stott and Sir Fred Catherwood, then President of the Evangelical Alliance. This led to her giving Roy an ultimatum that he “repent” of his “sin” of “homosexual” feelings, undergo a course of “conversion therapy” and cease all contact with gay men. If he did not agree then she would leave him and they would make public the real reasons why he was leaving Eden. When Roy refused to agree those terms he knew a public outing of his sexuality was inevitable. What he didn’t anticipate was that this would happen on page three of The Times – before he’d even had the chance to explain himself to their three children. He was instantly cancelled. His publisher immediately withdrew all 14 of his books and had all copies destroyed. Funding for his Master’s degree was removed and his plan for a new academic career went up in flames. He went into hiding. The one shaft of light was that Chris returned to him and their partnership blossomed anew.

Our reaction to Roy’s “outing”

Roy had baptised my oldest friend in 1987 and the following year my girlfriend, now wife, Hannah. 11 years later in 1999 when the news broke that he had “left his wife for another man” Hannah and I were both quite shocked. We both still held traditionalist evangelical views about sex and marriage. (In our wedding vows 8 years earlier Hannah had even promised to “obey” me – not that I’d ever seen much sign of it!)

But Hannah’s reaction to the “news” about Roy was slightly different to mine. Although shocked, in some ways she said she wasn’t surprised. I’d only ever heard Roy preaching from the front. But she’d had much closer contact with him in her baptism classes. From meeting him there she’d noticed certain gentle mannerisms and tones that made her suspect he might be gay.

I summarily dismissed this “worldly nonsense” and remarked, “It just shows you how Satan can enter the heart of even Jesus’s most faithful followers.” But the truth was Hannah had rather better insight than me; not just because she’d met Roy up close, but because, unlike me, she’d actually known members of her family who were gay. For me, being “gay” was just something you chose to do. But, as Roy himself had discovered, Hannah knew being “gay” was something you were - just the way God had made some people to be. And when church or society pressed people into moulds that didn’t fit them the outcome was inevitably damaging.

Next time: Questions & Answers with Roy Clements, part 1 - 1946 to 1990