Helen Gray Crotwell (October 8, 1925 – April 9, 2006) served as the Associate Minister to Duke University from 1973 to 1979. She had previously served as the associate director of the Duke Methodist campus ministry. During her time at Duke, she published a compilation of sermons written by women and participated as a campus minister in the Silent Vigil at Duke University. Crotwell was the first woman appointed as a district superintendent in the United Methodist Church in North Carolina and one of the first in the Southeast. She served as the chairperson of the Commission on the Status and Role of Women in the United Methodist North Carolina Conference and advocated for inclusivity and female empowerment in the church. Her major interests included women and the church, women and theology, counseling, and the church and social justice.
Early life and education
Helen Crotwell was born on October 8, 1925, in Newberry, South Carolina, the daughter of James Calvin Crotwell and Mary Helen Gray Crotwell. She grew up in Leesburg, Georgia, where she and her family attended Leesburg Methodist, a small rural church. As a young girl, her early involvement in the church led her to dream about being a minister, even though the Methodist churches did not ordain women at the time.
Crotwell graduated from high school when she was sixteen years old. She went on to the Georgia State College for Women, now known as Georgia College & State University, in Milledgeville. She attended during World War II, from 1941 through 1945. After graduation, Crotwell moved to upstate New York to join the Lisle Fellowship, an intentional Christian community that exposed her to ethnic and racial diversity and cooperation she had not seen in Georgia.
Early career
After leaving Lisle, Crotwell decided to pursue work in the church. Because the Methodist churches did not ordain women at the time, Crotwell obtained a master's degree in religious education from the Candler School of Theology at Emory University.
Upon her graduation from Candler, Crotwell secured a job working in campus ministry in Rock Hill, South Carolina at Winthrop College, at the time a women's college and now the coeducational Winthrop University. There she was director of the Wesley Foundation, the Methodist ministry which served over 300 students. Crotwell found ministry at Winthrop to be dynamic and interesting, and she engaged with her students in discussions linking theology and social justice.
Crotwell still felt called to ordained ministry, a vocation she could not pursue, but her first work experience in campus ministry took her a step closer. Crotwell wrote that she picked campus ministry in part because it was more open to women, saying that “It provided the opportunity to minister and work with people without feeling like I had to be second string." In order to further her career, Crotwell left Winthrop to spend one year at Harvard Divinity School. At Harvard, she took classes with Paul Tillich and Krister Stendahl, whom she later cited as one of her most formative teachers.
After Harvard, Crotwell moved back to New York, where she spent two summers at Union Theological Seminary. Eager to continue her studies, she pursued further education in Europe. She studied with the second order of the Taizé Community in France and studied German at the Goethe-Institut in Germany, and visited the Iona Community in Scotland. Crotwell decided to return to the United States when a friend taking a leave of absence from his position at Duke University asked if she would like to serve as the associate to the Methodist campus minister there. In 1965, Crotwell moved to Durham, North Carolina to serve as associate director of the Wesley Foundation, the Methodist campus ministry.
Wesley Foundation at Duke University
As the associate director of the Wesley Foundation at Duke University, Crotwell became a leader for students eager to become involved in the civil rights movement. Twice she travelled with students to protests in Washington, D.C. After hearing of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1968, nearly five hundred Duke students marched to President Douglas Knight’s house. Faculty members joined in, and President Knight invited the crowd into his home. Students called for a campus minister, and so Crotwell joined the sit-in. She stayed the night, sleeping on a landing at the top of a stairwell and offering conversation, counsel, and companionship.