THE VFA PIONEER HISTORIES PROJECT

Patricia Gundry

March 2, 1937 – July 31, 2024

“I had always been a feminist and egalitarian, before I knew those terms. I’d been raised to be an independent thinker, confident in my ability to do and be whatever I set out to do or be. It came as a shock to me as an older child to realize that some people would want to limit my opportunities solely because I was female.”

Author and speaker. Reading Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex while still a teenager had been a watershed experience for her, and the cause of equality for women in the church soon became the focus of her work as an author. Published four books on that subject that had a global impact in Evangelical circles: Woman Be Free! (Zondervan, 1977), Heirs Together (Zondervan, 1980), The Complete Woman (Doubleday, 1981), and Neither Slave Nor Free (HarperCollins, 1987).