[1][2] Mickelsen, who was born in 1919 as one of five children of Swedish immigrant parents, was raised in a small farmhouse just outside La Porte, Indiana.
[1] In 1965, the family moved to Arden Hills, Minnesota, where Berkeley Mickelsen had been hired as a professor of Greek, Hebrew and theology at Bethel Seminary.
[1] Together, Alvera and A. Berkeley Mickelsen published two books which cited Biblical passages that supported the equality of the sexes.
[1] They began touring Minnesota to debate leading pastors and theologians on the topic of gender equality within Christianity.
Mickelsen replied that the host should look up feminism in a dictionary, where the word was defined as "a belief that women should have social, political, and economic equality with men.