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.
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.
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.
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.
[1][2][4] 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.
[2] In 1965, Crotwell moved to Durham, North Carolina to serve as associate director of the Wesley Foundation, the Methodist campus ministry.
[3][7] 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.
[10][11] The action, later known as the Silent Vigil at Duke University, was one of the earliest of the mass student protests that emerged around the world in the weeks following King’s assassination.
Tamela Hultman, one of the student leaders of the silent vigil, recalled, “Among our most stalwart supporters were campus ministers like Helen Crotwell, whose apartment in the Methodist Student Center had always been a place of nurture and refuge, while she herself was a role model, especially for women students.”[12] The vigil lasted from April 5 to 11, 1968, and resulted in Duke’s recognition of a nonacademic employees’ union and a raise in worker’s salaries.
[13] She signed a statement written by Duke's Religious Life Council recommending the discontinuation of the university's Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC), arguing that it perpetuated military interests.
[15] After her work with the Wesley Foundation, Crotwell left Duke and moved to St. Mary’s College of Maryland, where she was an administrator in the residential halls.
In 1973, Crotwell was ordained as a deacon in the United Methodist Church at a time when over ninety percent of the ministers in the North Carolina Conference were men.
[25] She supervised a number of service projects at Duke, including an initiative to provide money and fuel to Durham residents who could not afford to heat their homes.
[26][27] Along with teaching classes at the Divinity School, including one called "Women and Ministry," she also counseled students and staff members in the Duke community.
[3][22][28] During her time at Duke, Crotwell also published a compilation of sermons written by a diverse group of both ordained and lay women from a variety of political and theological backgrounds.
[30] She wrote that churches that invite female preachers “may well hear the word of God come to them in a new and different way”, but also observed that no major pulpit in the country was at that time filled by a woman.
In August 1977, she was named as a trustee of the Resource Center for Women and Ministry of the South, founded by her close friend Jeanette Stokes, a Presbyterian minister.
", and in 1978 she participated in a panel in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, for the American Association of University Women, in which she discussed her experience as a woman in a traditionally male profession.
[34][35] In 1977, Crotwell also served as a principle speaker at a United Methodist conference at the University of San Diego, where she delivered a talk on gender inclusivity in Christian theology.
In the Duke student newspaper, Charlotte Dickson, a member of the Coalition on Chapel Policy, wrote, “If women are confined to junior positions which are subject to frequent turnover, their chances of advancing are slim.”[42] Other groups also acted on Crotwell’s behalf.
[43] Female faculty and staff members in a group called “The Women’s Network” partnered with students to petition to have Young reverse his decision and suggest alternate hiring and contractual procedures.
In 1980, as per the recommendation of both the network and President Sanford, the university established the Religious Life Council to advise the chapel minister on policy and personnel decisions.
[48] James B. Craven III, Duke class of 1967, wrote in the Chronicle on June 18, 1979, that Crotwell's dismissal “Upset just about everybody connected with Duke—men and women, whites and blacks, faculty and students.