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 [2024] at his home near Ann Arbor, Michigan, is honored among those closest to him for his foundational work in building the Sword of the Spirit (Word of God) ecumenical communities and the Servants of the Word brotherhood 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.
This article by S.M. Hutchens is excerpted from the July/August 2024 Issue of Touchstone: A Journal of Mere Christianity, © 2024 The Fellowship of St. James.
Top image credit: an earlier photo of Stephen B. Clark speaking at a Christian conference, image © courtesy of the Servants of the Word archives.
Dr. Steven Mark (S. M.) Hutchens is an Evangelical Protestant. He is a senior editor and longtime writer for Touchstone: A Journal of Mere Christianity. He has also published essays and reviews in The New Oxford Review, The Congregationalist, The Southern Baptist Journal of Theology, The Religion and Society Report, The Evangelical Catholic, Sursum Corda, Books and Culture, and The New Atlantis. He and his wife Mary live near Racine, Wisconsin, USA and have two daughters.