Beth Allison Barr

Review: Becoming the Pastor’s Wife

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Cover image of "Becoming the Pastor's Wife" by Beth Allison Barr

Becoming the Pastor’s Wife, Beth Allison Barr. Brazos Press (ISBN: 9781587435898) 2025.

Summary: Examines the connection between the decline of female ordination and the rise of the role of pastor’s wife.

Beth Allison Barr is the wife of a minister. She is also a full-time Professor of History at Baylor University. While joining in her church’s ministry, she does not fit the stereotype of “the pastor’s wife.” She does not see “pastor’s wife” as a calling for all women married to ministers. And in this book, she makes a case that the elevation of the role of “pastor’s wife” corresponds to the decline in the ordination of women, particularly in evangelical churches.

She begins by observing what we see in the New Testament accounts. There are women like Phoebe, Prisca, and Junia who engaged in ministry. Junia is “among the apostles.” And then there is Peter’s wife. Barr asks, “where is she?” The silence of scripture suggests that there is no role definition for her, unlike the growing consensus in conservative church circles treating “pastor’s wife” as a calling. (Barr and her researchers even compiled the literature on the subject, which appears as a special bibliography.)

Rather, for the first millennium, Barr shows that there were women who were priests. She describes the Priscilla Catacombs that portray a women leading liturgical prayer. There were the presbytera who served communion and otherwise participated in ministry. And she points to stained glass representations of women with croziers and to the powerful role of Milburga as abbess over a double community of women and men. Such an ordained position was the equivalent of a bishop’s. Likewise, there is the example of Hildegard of Bingen, who preached throughout Europe.

Barr traces the decline of women in such positions to the celibate male priesthood. Female bodies became a problem as the “Geese” of the Cross Bones Graveyard attest. Located near Winchester, it was unconsecrated burial ground for women prostitutes working in brothels under the bishop’s jurisdiction. And when the Reformation came, the priest’s whore became the pastor’ wife.

From here, the book takes a turn to the role of the pastor’s wife in the Southern Baptist Convention and the elimination of ordination as an option for women. Here, Barr brings in her study of books written for pastor’s wives. The picture is one of the church getting “two for the price of one” in addition to being the dutiful homemaker who served all her husband’s needs. She traces the evolution of the Willie Turner Dawson Award, recognizing the best pastor’s wife.

She explores how women were ordained in the Southern Baptist Convention–as missionaries. And prior to 1973, women were ordained to ministry positions. At this point, complementarianism began to be increasingly embraced, and with it, women’s ordination increasingly opposed. And during this time, sexual abuse and misconduct and coverups became part of the Southern Baptist culture. Barr juxtaposes the story of the 2023 vote to disfellowship churches ordaining women with the story of Maria Acacia. An SBC missionary to Toronto, she found herself in an abusive relationship with her husband. Church leadership covered up the abuse. He remained in leadership. She filed for divorce. No one spoke to or for her.

Barr concludes the book proposing the the role of pastor’s wife can be different, pointing to the Church Mother role in Black churches. She contends that women can minister as co-pastors with their husbands. And men and women can team together in ministry.

It was my privilege to work alongside amazingly gifted women in campus ministry, striving together for God honoring excellence. We had clear policies and good training about sexual harassment and inappropriate behavior. So I would applaud Barr’s vision.

I also applaud her calling out the stultifying expectations of the “pastor’s wife” role and the injustice of the “two for one” system that made wives unpaid employees of churches. I’ve seen the oppressiveness of these expectations, the harm to marriages, and the children alienated as a consequence.

The pivot in the second half of the book to a focus on the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) came as a surprise. While this is a significant body that exemplifies beliefs and practices of other evangelicals, Barr’s account seemed ‘inside baseball” to this outsider. It was helpful to bring in examples from the Black church. However, the title and promotional material material about the book didn’t prepare me for the heavy SBC focus of the book. And counter-examples from other church bodies, if such exist might have been helpful.

In sum, Barr’s research on the role of “pastor’s wife.” and the corresponding decline of women’s ordination is an important contribution. It highlights, for me, the constrictions we have placed on the gospel freedom of women and the loss to the whole church that has resulted.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Finally, thanks for visiting Bob on Books.  I appreciate that you spent time here. Feel to “look around” – see the tabs at the top of the website, and the right hand column. And use the buttons below to share this post. Blessings! [Adapted from Enough Light, a blog I follow.]

Review: Tell Her Story

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Tell Her Story, Nijay K. Gupta, Foreword Beth Allison Barr. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2023.

Summary: The often overlooked stories of women in the New Testament and how they led, taught, and ministered in the early church.

Not unlike the “hidden figures,” Black women engineers at NASA, Nijay Gupta contends that there are a number of women who played vital roles during the New Testament era but whose stories have been overlooked. They taught, led, and ministered in the church. For example, in Romans 16, ten of the twenty-six people commended by Paul are women. Gupta shares his own journey of moving from overlooking these stories to growing awareness and appreciation of them.

Before considering women in the early church, Gupta looks back. He begins with Deborah, a woman who led Israel during the time of the judges, perhaps the most exemplary of the lot. We know she has a husband because he is mentioned–once. He plays no part in Israel’s deliverance. She speaks prophetically, exhorting her military commander, Barak, and because of his reticence, prophesying that Sisera’s death would come at the hand of a woman.

Then Gupta turns to Genesis 1-3, portraying a unified species in two types with man needing a helper and woman helping (a word often used of God’s help). There are no roles of gender superiority or inferiority, but only role distortions in the fall. Following this, Gupta discusses the New Testament era. To be sure, patriarchy existed in the Roman world, but there were many women, often wealthy widows who exerted power, ran households and businesses, owned property under certain circumstances, and even rose to political office.

Likewise, women played a significant part in the ministry of Jesus, beginning with Mary, the mother of Jesus as caregiver, teacher, companion, disciple, mourner, and eventually church leader, mentioned in the Pentecost accounts. Women like Mary, Elizabeth, and Anna prepared the way for Jesus. Jesus, in turn, cared for women including the woman caught in adultery. He talked with and taught them. They ministered to him, supporting his itinerant ministry. These and others, including Mary Magdalene, may have been among the larger group of disciples, sent out at points to minister. Of course, Mary Magdalene is the first to give testimony to the risen Lord.

The second part of the book focuses on the early church. He begins with looking at the leadership of the early church and the language of overseer (episcopos), elder (presbyteros), and ministers or servants (diakonos). He notes women specifically designated as the latter and argues that women householders who headed house churches would have been considered episcopos and that no prohibition existed against women as elders and that Junia, also called an apostle, would certainly have fallen in this category. While most leaders would have been men, he notes there were a number of women who were exceptions. He discusses how women co-labored as ministry leaders with Paul.

Gupta then considers in consecutive chapters three of them: Phoebe, Prisca, and Junia. Phoebe is Paul’s trusted proxy in Rome, not only carrying the letter to the Romans but, as letter carriers did, reading and interpreting the intent of the letter. Prisca, almost always named first, is a strategic leader whose business enables her to set up house churches and to give instruction at crucial points, as with Apollos, correcting an incomplete message. Junia is also named apostolos. Gupta not only offers evidence that Junia was a female but holds her up as one so bold in testimony that she endured imprisonment.

The book concludes with a “what about?” section concerning the prohibition of women teaching in 1 Timothy 2:11-15 and the instructions to women to submit in the household code passages. Gupta concludes that the unusual language of the prohibition in 1 Timothy focuses on a special situation where a kind of “lockdown” was necessary that should not be universalized. He notes that the household codes were reflective of Greco-Roman rather than Hebrew culture, that for the church to contravene these would incite unnecessary opposition, and yet in how they are framed (for example, the preface to mutual submission), Paul gestures toward redeemed relationships reflecting mutual love, respect, and service rather than power/subservience defined relationships. We should no more universalize wifely submission than Paul’s instructions to slaves.

What distinguishes this work is that it clothes scholarship in storytelling. Gupta brings women like Phoebe, Prisca, and Junia to life, while offering biblical warrants for his account. This results in a highly readable work that serves as a good introduction to more technical studies of women in the Bible. It makes the case that while patriarchy, both in the New Testament and subsequent eras, meant that men dominated the narrative, women were not confined to being good housewives. Women did exercise significant influence both in Greco-Roman culture in many instances, and in spiritual leadership in the New Testament. They supported the work and were disciples of Jesus, and co-labored with Paul, who never speaks critically of, but only commends women by name.

This work is probably best-suited for the student of scripture with questions about women in the church but open to considering a biblically grounded argument for women leading along with men in the church. It is a book that will be a great encouragement to women. It really should be to all of us, particularly as we glimpse the courage of Junia, the missional heart of Prisca, and the confidence Paul places in Phoebe to interpret his most challenging letter.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.

Review: The Making of Biblical Womanhood

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The Making of Biblical Womanhood, Beth Allison Barr. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2021.

Summary: A study of women in church history and the construction of the idea of “biblical womanhood which underwent a series of developments from the Reformation to the present.

This is a work of histories–one personal and one of the history both of women who defied the stereotypes of the submissive woman, and the construction of the idea of “biblical womanhood” used by patriarchal religion to keep women subjugated. What makes this book compelling is the collision of these histories, as Barr, the wife of a pastor in a conservative church collides with Barr, the Baylor medieval historian who studies women and the sermons about them in medieval and early modern England. It is a collision that eventually resulted in her husband’s loss of his position and their departure from that church. It is a collision that brought to the surface abuses Barr had experienced as a younger woman that were emblematic of the ways women were oppressed as a patriarchal church used “biblical womanhood” to limit women’s contribution to the church’s life, define their role in marriage, and sometimes expose them to dangerous abuses.

Barr begins with a definition of and discussion of patriarchy. She focuses her attention on patriarchy as “a society that promotes male authority and female submission” (p. 13). She traces an arc between the Epic of Gilgamesh and the contemporary construction of biblical womanhood rooted on select passages of scripture expecting women to submit to husbands and not teach men in the church, ignoring both Jesus own relationships with women and numerous examples of women who teach and lead in the New Testament, and egalitarian readings of marriage passages. She goes on to make the argument that “biblical womanhood” cannot be based on Paul and those who do misconstrue his teaching. She then turns to medieval history and women like Margery Kempe, Brigid of Kildare, Julian of Norwich, Joan of Arc, Hilda of Whitby and Hildegard of Bingen.

She argues that these possibilities for women changed with the Reformation where the focus shifted to the ideal of the woman as wife under a husband’s headship. It limited the field of women’s aspirations to the household, and it was at this time that teaching began to focus on the Pauline verses that appeared to limit women’s roles. This was further followed by the translating of women out of the English Bible, removing gender inclusive renderings of medieval clergy and using male terms for humanity. She traces the arguments about the weakness of women and how these were used in the Industrial Revolution to foster domesticity in which piety, purity, submission, and domesticity are upheld. Yet even with this growing cult, there were a host of women in the eighteenth and nineteenth century who defied this ideal of womanhood, at least 123 that were documented preachers between 1740 and 1845.

Her survey concludes with more contemporary developments and figures from James Dobson to John Piper. One of her most trenchant criticisms is of the move to affirm the eternal subordination of the Son as the basis of a hierarchy that subordinates women to men. She unflinchingly calls this a resurrection of the Arian heresy. She also concludes her argument that biblical womanhood isn’t rooted in scripture at all but in a culture of patriarchy attempting to control and limit the freedom of women. Her concluding chapter asks, “Isn’t it time to set women free?”

I find the broad contours of her account persuasive but I also fear that what makes the account compelling, the mix of personal narrative and historical discussion, also makes it subject to criticism. A more extensively and carefully argued historical case would have been less interesting but perhaps more persuasive. At very least, it would not appear as a case of a historian with a personal ax to grind. As I write this, I realize this perhaps sounds harsher than I mean it. Patriarchy and the abuse of women is a universal condition across cultures and, I believe, both a consequence of the fall, and not the way God meant it to be. Nor do I believe this is how gospel people ought live. Perhaps those on the receiving end of patriarchy do well to be angry!

While Barr has sketched both compelling portrayals of women of God and the various historical turns patriarchy has taken in Protestantism and evangelicalism, this work needs to be developed further (and some of it is in Barr’s scholarship). We need a narrative that goes beyond patriarchy to partnership in marriage and ministry. We need models of men and women in flourishing marriages without the hierarchical roles of “biblical manhood and womanhood” and models of men and women leading together with integrity and grace in the church that reflect the better way of a Galatians 3:28 gospel.