DANVILLE, Va. (ABP) — Christine Gregory, a Virginia missions leader who broke barriers to women in Baptist leadership roles, died Jan. 22 in a Danville, Va., nursing home. She was 89.
Christine Gregory following her election as Virginia Baptists' president in 1982.
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Gregory was elected first vice president of the Southern Baptist Convention in 1981, the first woman to fill one of the SBC’s top elected positions, and in 1982 became the first woman to serve as president of the Baptist General Association of Virginia.
In the 1970s, she was president of the SBC’s Woman’s Missionary Union and of WMU’s Virginia affiliate, roles that placed her at the heart of Baptist administrative life and catapulted her into leadership roles previously held only by men.
“I certainly would not have been elected today if it hadn’t been for WMU, because that’s where I got my leadership training,” she said following her election as Virginia Baptists’ president.
Her long list of involvements included service as a vice president of the Baptist World Alliance and a trustee of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C. Both the University of Richmond (Va.) and Averett College (now University) in Danville — schools with historic Baptist ties — awarded her honorary doctorates.
In 1985, Gregory was named to the SBC Peace Committee, an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to resolve theological conflicts between conservatives and moderates in the convention. She was one of two women added just before approval of the 22-member committee — originally consisting only of men.
“My and Jodi Chapman’s [then of Wichita Falls Texas] relationship to the Peace Committee from the day of its approval by the Southern Baptist Convention was different to that of the other 20 members,” Gregory later told the Religious Herald, the Virginia Baptist newspaper. “We were on it because of pressure put upon the men who were selecting the makeup of the committee to put women on it.”
Her involvement on the committee “caused me more pain than any experience in my Christian pilgrimage,” she said.
“I was perceived to be a liberal because I am a Virginian, have been closely associated with an agency of the convention and do not tell other people what God is saying to them.”
Christine Burton Gregory was born April 15, 1921, in Greenville, S.C., where she was raised in Baptist churches with a steady diet of missions education. While at Winthrop College in Rock Hill, S.C., where she earned a bachelor of science degree, she met A. Harrison Gregory, a student at nearby Furman University. They married in 1948 and he landed a job at a textile company in Danville, where they lived the rest of their lives.
At First Baptist Church in Danville, Gregory quickly became involved in WMU, serving as president of the congregation’s affiliate and later that of the local association of churches. Biographer Catherine Allen wrote that Gregory was unsettled by the illiteracy, racial prejudice, poverty and plight of migrant farm workers she found in Southside Virginia. Wide reading and a family vacation to an American Baptist conference center in Green Lake, Wisc., where she was introduced to a more activist social ministry than she had experienced among Southern Baptists, inspired her to incorporate new concepts in WMU’s local ministries.
Gregory’s growing awareness of Christian social concerns coincided with similar changes among state and national WMU leadership. In 1968 she became mission action chair for Virginia WMU and in 1971, was elected president of the state organization, a position that automatically made her a vice president of the national organization. Four years later she was elected president of the Birmingham, Ala.-based organization.
“From its beginning, WMU of Virginia has been blessed by women of vision and courage,” said Laura McDaniel, executive director of Virginia WMU. “Mrs. Christine Gregory leaves a legacy of servant leadership, faithfulness and wisdom that continues to be an example for generations to come. Indeed, we will always remember her as a bold and influential leader, not only for the women within WMU but throughout Virginia Baptist life.”
Gregory, whose husband died in 1994, is survived by three sons — Harrison, Eugene and Joel. A memorial service will be held at First Baptist Church in Danville on Jan. 30 at 3 p.m.
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Robert Dilday is associate editor of the Religious Herald.