Stephen B. Clark, R. I. P.
In the early 1980s I was finishing my seminary years during what retrospectively seems a term of radical disruption in a calm and self-confident Evangelical world. That world was now in the midst of the early assaults upon Christianity launched by feminism, Evangelical and otherwise, whose partisans were accusing the churches of offending Christian women by denying them the authority and offices which were their due as the spiritual equals of males. They not unreasonably accused Evangelicalism, which had no developed theology, of uncritically assuming the faulty universal tradition on the disputed issues.
The Evangelical movement was insufficiently fortified at the time to present a deep apologetic front against the onslaught. Its intellectual leadership, represented by Christianity Today, was, as a group, ambivalent on women’s ordination and content to accept the novelty as at least acceptably Evangelical. What was needed by the theologically interested opposition was a long, magisterial book with a title like, Man and Woman in Christ: An Examination of the Roles of Men and Women in Light of Scripture and the Social Sciences. Browsing the seminary bookstore, I came upon the very item and purchased it.
Stephen B. Clark, its author, who died on March 16 at his home near Ann Arbor, Michigan, is honored among those closest to him for his foundational work in building the Sword of the Lord (Word of God) ecumenical communities of single men devoted to disciplined service of Christ. But he may best be remembered outside this fraternal circle for his timely and seminal work on the roles of the sexes as understood by orthodox Christianity. His influence on Touchstone has been indirect but substantial.
Steve was born in 1940 in Queens, New York, and educated in philosophy at Yale (where he became a Christian and was baptized a Catholic), the University of Freiburg, which he attended as a Fulbright Scholar, and Notre Dame. He suspended doctoral work to follow the example of St. Francis of Assisi, seeking a life of prayer, simplicity, and service, and will lodge in our memory as a splendid example of the spiritual power of a quiet, devout, and self-effacing life, one of our many unseen foundation stones, now resting in the earth.
S. M. Hutchens is a senior editor and longtime writer for Touchstone.
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