Claire Randall, a Presbyterian elder who served the church and ecumenical movement for more than 30 years in top posts, died Sept. 9 in Sun City, Ariz. She was 91.
Randall, a native of San Antonio, Texas, was an artist, designer, music director, educator, Bible scholar and theologian. But her greatest gift to the Christian church was her commitment to ecumenism.
She served on the staff of Church Women United from 1962-1973 and in 1974 was elected general secretary of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA (NCC), the first woman to hold that post. Later, after concluding her four-year term, she was elected president of Church Women United from 1988-1992.
Randall graduated from PC(USA)-related Schreiner College in Texas and from the Presbyterian School of Christian Education in Richmond, Va. Trained in art and Christian education, Randall frequently found herself starting things that had never been done before, incorporating young people and the arts into worship.
Randall went to Nashville in 1949 as associate in missionary education for the former Presbyterian Church in the United States, where she continued her innovative work in incorporating the visual arts into mission education conferences and educational materials.
On the staff of Church Women United, Randall was instrumental in turning the World Day of Prayer from a national to an international observance and planning and organizing some of the first theology conferences designed especially for women.
Randall was also noted for her social concerns, leading both Church Women United and the NCC into involvement in the major causes of her times — civil rights, farm workers rights, domestic workers’ rights and liberation movements around the world.
But she always decried what she termed “the artificial wall” between social action and evangelism. “I think action must grow out of faith commitment,” she said. “Increasingly we must work with our faith, our personal commitment and action all interact to nourish faith.”
The Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick, General Assembly stated clerk of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), said, “We have lost a great ecumenist and a great Presbyterian.”
A private family service was to be held at a later date.
