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A Liberating Woman: A Reflection on the Founder of Christians for Biblical Equality
Catherine Clark Kroeger championed women’s equality without budging on scriptural authority.
Elaine Storkey | posted 7/12/2011 09:42AM
With the sudden death of Catherine Clark Kroeger on February 14, evangelicalism lost one of its most admired biblical scholars. At age 85, Kroeger was still lecturing and researching at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Massachusetts. Her love for the Scriptures, quick mind, and linguistic abilities made her an entertaining communicator and reliable exegete; she memorized entire biblical narratives and could recall them on demand. That she left manuscripts unfinished compounds our loss.
Yet Kroeger's most defining legacy is her wise leadership in the early evangelical women's movement of the 1970s. Without her stand on the centrality of Scripture in responding to contemporary questions of gender and justice, along with her compassion for the abused, much of evangelicalism would be theologically afield. As founder and president of Christians for Biblical Equality (CBE) and of Peace and Safety in the Christian Home (PASCH)—as well as in 13 books and hundreds of scholarly articles and lectures—Kroeger demonstrated, while holding to scriptural authority and evangelism, that the gospel addressed many concerns of contemporary feminism.
Kroeger was born in 1925 in St. Paul, Minnesota, one of five children, to Homer and Elizabeth Clark, devoted Christians. She graduated from Bryn Mawr College in 1947 and went to Yale University, where she met Richard Clark Kroeger Jr. Both helped found InterVarsity Fellowship chapters at their colleges, thus beginning a gospel partnership that was to last for 60 years. They married in 1950 and went on to minister together in 10 Presbyterian pastorates in five states. While serving in the Twin Cities, they raised five children and cared for numerous foster children and exchange students.
Catherine resumed her education when their youngest child started kindergarten, and received a Ph.D. in classical studies in 1987 from the University of Minnesota. She served as Protestant chaplain and lecturer at Hamilton College, then as professor of classical and ministry studies at Gordon-Conwell from 1990 until her death. Richard had died just three months earlier, a loss she felt keenly.
I first met Catherine in 1986, when on sabbatical with my husband and young family in Cape Ann, Massachusetts. Catherine and I had corresponded about a new initiative in the UK associated with John Stott, and she invited us to her home. Stott had been concerned about justice issues raised by secular feminists—such as equal pay in the workforce and abuse of power—and had convened a working party in the UK affiliated with his London Institute for Contemporary Christianity to seek biblical insights on gender issues. As always, the pastor-scholar's emphasis was on double listening: listening faithfully to the Word of God and to those with integrity within the culture, assessing their challenge.
The result was a new organization ambitiously named "Men, Women and God." Its first conference, held in London in 1985, examined the "feminist case against God and the church" and sought an authentic evangelical response. Several hundred people attended, and Stott chaired the sessions at which Mary Evans and I spoke. The day was very much in keeping with the 1982 Lausanne Conference in Grand Rapids, where Stott had played a major role. It resulted in reaffirming the centrality of the Scriptures and committing to integrating evangelism and proclamation with social justice, especially regarding discrimination against women.
A Liberating Woman, July 2011, Vol. 55, No. 7, Page 42
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