I’m told by a mutual friend that Dr. Catherine Kroeger has passed away this week due to complications of pneumonia. Catherine was both a scholar and a guiding light in a movement that continues to need leaders of her caliber.

Catherine Kroeger was a classics scholar who brought much-needed insight to biblical source material about women and their proper place as equals with men in the home, church, and society. Her research, along with the collaborative efforts of her husband and other like-minded scholars, fueled (if not gave impetus to) a movement among Evangelicals known as egalitarianism (more recently dubbed “mutualism”). She was in fact the founding president of Christians for Biblical Equality (CBE), a coalition of Christians united around the belief that Scripture supports the equality of men and women. She was also a champion for women and children against all forms of abuse.

But that is just the tip of the iceberg when summarizing Dr. Kroeger’s accomplishments. To read more about her, please click on the various links embedded in this blog post.

I plan to re-post some of Dr. Kroeger’s work here at Rethinking Faith over the next day or so. More than a decade ago she gave us permission to reprint a couple of significant short essays she wrote. The links to those essays have been posted ever since at what is now RTF’s old site (see the link in the right column of this page). I will be excerpting and/or re-posting them (and perhaps some other sources) here in our new format over next few days. Let’s see what develops as those interested post reactions and comments. I look forward to discussing with you anew the issues Catherine raised and devoted her life to.

With Catherine’s passing we know that while the world has lost a precious beacon, the church has simply moved her office to another floor, and the kingdom of God has just transplanted her brilliant soul to a lovelier setting.