A Tale of Two Clerics “The Rise and Fall of Roy Clements” Roy Clements’ Story Part 3 1992–1999

This is a summary of my full article & interview with Roy which you can read here.

The 1990s were a decade of turbulence, transition, and painful contradictions, especially for gay people—and especially within the church.

Globally, progress was unmistakable: the World Health Organization finally removed homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses in 1992; several European nations legalised same‑sex unions; and Ellen DeGeneres’ coming‑out moment in 1997 reached 43 million viewers. Yet in the UK, change lagged. The age of consent for gay men was only lowered to 18 in 1994, and Tony Blair’s new Labour government kept the notorious Section 28 firmly in place. Even the Anglican bishops’ 1998 resolution managed to condemn homophobia while simultaneously rejecting same‑sex relationships as “incompatible with Scripture”.

Into this fraught landscape stepped Roy Clements—pastor, scholar, and one of the most respected evangelical Bible expositors of his generation. But behind the acclaim, Roy was living a private story of profound inner conflict, and the years between 1992 and 1999 would become the most fruitful and yet the most devastating of his life.

A Shattering Realisation

By 1992, Roy knew he was gay. The revelation had come six years earlier, through the shock of falling in love with another man in his congregation. Until then, he had believed himself to be a happily married heterosexual  man. His life was the picture of evangelical success: a thriving ministry, a respected voice, a growing national profile, supported by a loving wife and three children.

But beneath that picture lay a truth he could no longer ignore. It was like he had scratched beneath the top layer of paint to see the true original: he was a gay man with an intrinsic need for intimate male companionship—something he could neither admit nor pursue without blowing up the foundations of his entire life. And the reality of his deep need for a male life-partner became even clearer when in 1993 he fell in love for a second time – with Chris who was to the great human love of his life.

This was his “weakness”, the flaw he believed could destroy everything. And yet, paradoxically, it became the very place where his ministry deepened and flourished.

The Creative Power of Pain

Before his first gay heartbreak, Roy had never published a book in his own name. After it, the floodgates opened, especially after he met Chris. Between his first gay love in 1986 and when he met Chris in 1993 he wrote five books. After he fell in love in with Chris he published nine more—works that shaped a generation of evangelicals.

Two of them, in particular, reveal how God mightily used Roy’s personal mid-life crisis for His own purposes.

“Songs of Experience” (1993)

Here Roy explored the emotional life of faith, drawing on the Psalms to show how raw human emotions can flower into a profound honest and open trust in God. Roy’s own emotional awakening—triggered by the ecstasy and agony of his forbidden love—had broken what he called his “emotional constipation.” Suddenly, he could no longer keep his inner life sealed off from his God.

“The Strength of Weakness” (1994)

This book, inspired by Paul’s reflections in 2 Corinthians, argued that God works most powerfully through human fragility. Paul’s “thorn in the flesh” became Roy’s interpretive key. His own “thorn”—his unspoken love for another man—forced him to lean on his God in new ways. It was, he believed, the very thing God used to deepen and widen his ministry.

The Christian Herald would later describe Roy as “possibly the UK’s most incisive Bible expositor,” a bridge between conservative and charismatic evangelicals. But no one had understood the cost at which that ministry was being sustained.

The Impossible Future

Even before he’d met Chris, Roy knew he could not remain at Eden Baptist Church forever. The evangelical world was hardening its stance on homosexuality, treating it as a defining boundary marker. As Roy put it, “Dissent on my part would be very divisive and admission of my own gay orientation would cause enormous shock.”

He saw only two options:

• remain permanently closeted

• come out and leave ministry

He knew he did not have the gift of lifelong celibacy. So he began planning a careful, compassionate exit—one that would minimise harm to his church, his wife Jane, and their children.

He sought an associate pastor who could succeed him. He ensured Jane had financial security and a home of her own. He accepted that he would need to wait until their youngest child was older. And he resigned himself to years of loneliness, joining the ranks of married gay Christians living in silence.

Meeting Chris

In 1993, everything changed again.

Chris was a Malaysian economics student at Jesus College, referred to Roy for pastoral support. He was deeply depressed, torn between his sexuality and his faith. Roy met with him weekly. A friendship formed. And then, unexpectedly, love.

Roy was stunned when Chris reciprocated his feelings. “A dam of suppressed desire inside me broke,” he recalled. Their relationship had physical expression, though “with limits.” But it also had a secretive, fragile quality. Roy was still committed to his marriage and his church. He told Chris their love would have to remain hidden for a long time.

It was, in Roy’s words, “far too soon.”

Losing Chris

Eventually, Chris’s patience ran out. He wanted a life with Roy, but Roy could not yet offer one. Chris met another man—a businessman with none of Roy’s constraints—and moved in with him.

Roy was devastated. “I had never experienced such intense emotional distress ... In private I howled for my loss.”

The breakup forced clarity. He could no longer delay coming out. The church had finally found an associate pastor. He planned to leave Eden in Easter 1999 and begin a Masters in the Public Understanding of Science, funded by a Christian trust. He hoped to build a new career as a writer and speaker engaging with figures like Hawking and Dawkins.

He prayed constantly about when to come out publicly. He felt it should be after leaving Eden. But he hesitated.

And then events overtook him.

The Weekend That Changed Everything

In early summer 1999, during a weekend away, Jane asked about Chris. She knew him well—he had lived with her mother as a carer for two years. Now he had moved in with his new partner, and she was curious.

Then came the question Roy had long feared: what was the nature of his relationship with Chris?

Roy felt he had no choice but to be honest with her. “I told her everything … She was totally devastated.”

He assured her he would not desert her, but he also made clear that he intended to come out eventually. They returned home in in turmoil.

The Ultimatum

Jane sought counsel from two of the most influential evangelical leaders of the time: Sir Fred Catherwood and John Stott. On their advice, she presented Roy with three conditions for remaining married:

1. He must keep his homosexuality a permanent secret.

2. He must undergo conversion therapy to “cure” it.

3. He must sever all contact with gay people—including Chris.

   
   

If he refused, she would insist he leave, and she would make the reason public.

Roy agreed to therapy, though he told her he had “absolutely no confidence in its efficacy.” He offered two more years of silence so she could adjust. But he could not agree to cut off all gay friends. Chris, though now partnered, remained “special” to him.

He hoped, faintly, that they might find a way to coexist. But he doubted it. Jane was deeply homophobic, and the leaders she trusted reinforced her fears.

The Life Crash

Before Jane responded to his counter‑proposal, Roy wrote a confidential letter to about twenty close friends, explaining the situation and asking for discretion.

Within days, his story appeared on page 3 of The Times, complete with photograph.

The leak came from the Evangelical Alliance.

The consequences were immediate and brutal:

• Tabloid reporters descended on his family.

• He had no chance to speak to his children first.

• His publisher, IVP, ordered his books destroyed.

• The trust funding his master’s degree withdrew support.

• He was left with almost no money and no home.

  
  

He had ensured Jane was financially secure. He had not done the same for himself.

Aftermath and Accountability

To my mind, the way Roy was outed was callous and unchristian—publicly, inaccurately, without warning, without even the chance to speak to his children. But Roy refuses to blame Jane or those who advised her. Gracefully and humbly, he says, “They were, I am sure, obeying their consciences … No one should ever be blamed for doing that.”

And Roy very candidly accepts his own responsibility, “I fully accept that allowing myself to develop an intimate relationship with Chris was a breach of my marriage vow … I am truly sorry for the hurt that this sin caused my wife and children… When I married, I honestly had no idea I was gay. I believed what I am now convinced is a dangerous lie – that homosexuality is a choice about how a person behaves. It isn’t – it is the truth about what some of us are by nature… Those Christian mentors who told me as a young man the dangerous lie about homosexuality share my guilt. Like them, I trust in the atoning sacrifice of Christ as my only hope.”

As Roy says, only discovering he was gay in mid-life many years after marrying a woman presented him with a profound moral dilemma. “I felt I could not in good conscience go on indefinitely promoting the lie that was responsible for my reckless marriage. I had a responsibility to the gay community and to Chris, as well as to my family. I did not have the gift of lifelong celibacy.”

He did not plan to leave Jane. She chose to divorce him, but for entirely understandable reasons, and he does not fault her for it.

In the end, he places his hope where he always had: in grace. “I am a debtor to mercy alone ... ‘My Saviour’s obedience and blood hide all my transgressions from view.’”

A Happier Ending?

Thankfully, this was not the end of Roy’s story. As we’ll see in Part 4, in His mercy God had marked out a happier time for Roy. But it was far from a Disney perfect picture of happiness. It was the happiness of a life finally lived out honestly as the person he truly was, shared with the life-partner with whom he could enjoy the full extent of human love. And for Roy as a gay man that had to be with another man. But it was a happiness mixed with much sadness and loss.