Shifting Culture
Shifting Culture
Ep. 281 Beth Allison Barr - Becoming the Pastor's Wife
Today, we're exploring the hidden history of women in ministry through the lens of the pastor's wife role. Historian Beth Allison Barr takes us on a journey that challenges everything we think we know about women's leadership in the church. We'll trace how women went from being active leaders in the early Christian church to being systematically pushed out of ministry. Barr reveals how the pastor's wife role evolved from a radical act of Protestant resistance to a complex system that both empowered and constrained women. The conversation digs into some tough terrain - how complementarian theology has created environments where women's ministry is limited, and in some cases, where abuse has been hidden. But it's not just a story of limitation. It's a powerful call for reimagining how men and women can work together in ministry. At its heart, this is a conversation about breaking down barriers, recognizing historical complicity, and creating spaces where all people can fully express their calling - regardless of gender. We'll explore how the Southern Baptist Convention became a flashpoint for these debates, why ordination became a weapon against women's leadership, and most importantly, how we might move forward toward mutual flourishing in church communities. Get ready for a conversation that challenges, enlightens, and offers a hopeful vision for the future of ministry.
Beth Allison Barr (PhD, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) is James Vardaman Endowed Chair of History at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, where she specializes in medieval history, women’s history, and church history. She is the author of the USA Today bestseller The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth. Her work has been featured by NPR and the New Yorker, and she has written for Christianity Today, the Washington Post, The Dallas Morning News, Sojourners, and Baptist News Global. Barr lives in Texas with her husband, a Baptist pastor, and their two children.
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You know, I think the first thing that we have to do is recognize how we have been complicit in obstructing God's use of women in vocational ministry. And then we have to move to work together to make sure that all women, no matter what they are called to are supported within the church.
Joshua Johnson:Hello and welcome to the shifting culture podcast in which we have conversations about the culture we create and the impact we can make. We long to see the body of Christ look like Jesus. I'm your host. Joshua Johnson, Today we're exploring the hidden history of women in ministry through the lens of the pastor's wife role historian Beth Allison Barr takes us on a journey that challenges everything we think we know about women's leadership in the church will trace how women went from being active leaders in the early Christian church to being systematically pushed out of ministry. Barr reveals how the pastor's wife role evolved from a radical act of Protestant resistance to a complex system that both empowered and constrained women. The Conversation digs into some tough terrain how complementarian theology has created environments where women's ministry is limited, and in some cases, where abuse has been hidden. But it's not just a story of limitation. It's a powerful call for reimagining how men and women can work together in ministry. At its heart, this is a conversation about breaking down barriers, recognizing historical complicity and creating spaces where all people can fully express their calling, regardless of gender. We'll explore how the Southern Baptist Convention became a flashpoint for these debates, why ordination became a weapon against women's leadership, and most importantly, how we might move forward toward mutual flourishing in church communities. Get ready for a conversation that challenges, enlightens and offers a hopeful vision for the future of ministry. Here is my conversation with Beth. Allison Barr, Beth, welcome to shifting culture. So excited to have you on thanks for joining me. It's so
Unknown:good to be here. Thanks for having me, and thank you for letting me be recovering from the flu. So of
Joshua Johnson:course, I'm so glad you're recovering and you were almost all better. The flu is no joke. It is not fun at all. It took me out for a week after Christmas. My son had it, then me, and then my wife, and it was just, yeah, we were in Seattle to be with my family, and we all just got to sit around. Well,
Unknown:I will, I will occasionally have to drink to keep my voice going during this interview. No problem,
Joshua Johnson:no problem. Well, I'm excited for this, becoming the pastor's wife. It is, I think, an important work for people to recognize where women's ordination came from, and what happened and how the pastor's wife actually became the way for women to have pastoral roles in mystery, and sometimes they're forced into it, right? So let's, let's get into it. I would love to start with your own story of, yeah, becoming a pastor's wife and what that that was like for you? Yes, what you chose and what you didn't choose in the midst of that role? Yeah,
Unknown:so I went into being a pastor's wife with my eyes wide open. When I met my husband in college, he told me, like very early on that he felt called into ministry, and I told him that I felt called to be a professor. And so we both went in with eyes wide open. And so when I married him, I knew what I thought. I knew what I was getting myself into. I had grown up in the Southern Baptist Church. I had watched the pastor's wives come before me, and what I had seen was that these women always played a very active role alongside their husbands. And so to me, that was just part of the deal. And so when I married my husband, I assumed that I would be stepping into a similar type of role, and honestly, this didn't bother me. I've always been very ministry oriented. My family's very ministry oriented. And so it wasn't, it didn't seem like it was going to be that much of a change in my life to continue to stay ministry oriented as a pastor's wife. So I wasn't a one of those pastors wives who felt like I had, you know, my husband changed his mind along the way. Sometimes you see that where people go from insurance to being pastors, and their wives are like, whoa. Wait. What happened here? But at the same time, I also began to realize, as our marriage got older. Her. And as my degree got older, I was working in graduate school alongside my husband. And while you're a student, people are like, Oh, she's a student. What you know, it doesn't but when it's student moves into being a career, that's actually when I began to hit some issues in being a pastor's wife, because people began to question, are you sure you should be doing a job that is going to take you away from the house? How are you going to support your husband and ministry if you have a full time career? That's actually something I heard a lot, and especially when I had kids, that was the question. And in fact, I remember this one moment when I found out that there was an entire elders meeting about whether or not it was appropriate for me as a pastor's wife to actually have a job outside the home. And I think that's when it really hit me on how weird my role was.
Joshua Johnson:If a whole elders meeting is revolving around whether you could have a job outside the home or not. That is a, that's a that's interesting. I have an elders meeting in the church. I have tonight, and I don't think we've ever jumped on something like that. I don't think we ever would, you know, and
Unknown:the, the actual, the funny thing about it was, it was the it was the senior pastor who had concerns, but the elders actually were like, why are you even worried about they're still like, What are you saying? Are you saying that your daughter should go to college and then actually not have jobs? And so the elders actually talked the pastor down from it at the time, but it was still this really strange thing that my career was a subject of this elders meeting because of my husband's job.
Joshua Johnson:So I want to say, where are we in our culture right now, and where is the the pastor's wife? And then I want to get to how we got here and the culture how we got here throughout history, which is fascinating. So where are we? And you're going to talk about the Southern Baptist as, yeah, as an insider, as a key figure, yeah, yeah. And so I think that's important. And why? Why are we talking about Southern Baptist and what they're talking about in the role of a pastor wife? Where are we right now in the culture? What happened in 2023 as proclamations of what women can do and can't do, and if
Unknown:it's okay, I'm gonna go back a little earlier than 2023 not too much earlier. You know, I'm a medievalist, so we're still really modern here. We'll get back. We'll get back there, but we're still really modern. But I just in 1973 the Southern Baptist Convention, and the Southern Baptist Convention, for people who do not know it, we call it a denomination. It's a cooperation of around 41,000 churches. They boast over 12 million members. Their high point was in 2007 which I think they had over 16 million members. Claimed over 16 million members, so largest Protestant denomination in North America. They also are a major influencer. Can I use that word, major influencer in the evangelical the white evangelical world through their connection to politics. Okay, we could talk all day about that, also through their connection to controlling the literature. So you think about their control of publishing outlets like Lifeway, which is their publishing arm, also their connection to places like crossway publishers and these conservative publishing movements, where the Southern Baptist Convention has been a major player in controlling what is being printed to educate church people. So if you think about that, and then also the Southern Baptist Convention, it has six flagship seminaries that were they're not as influential today as they once were, but in the by in the 90s and the early 2000s these six flagship seminar seminaries were some of the, you know, major producers of pastors, and they also begin to produce, essentially, they had these whole sections started at Southeastern, southwestern and Southern Seminary were the three main ones that were geared to creating the pastor's wife that you could go and take as a minister's wife. You could take free classes on how to be a pastor's wife. That's the integral thing, I think, of the Southern Baptist Convention. And in 1973 a woman named Jesse tillingson Sappington, who was the wife of a of a significant Southern Baptist pastor from Houston, actually stood up and made one of the first declarations in on the resolutions on the floor of the Southern Baptist Convention against the push of women moving into ministry and moving into ordination. And she emphasized was that a woman's place is not to be that a woman's place is behind her husband. And this, in many ways, you know, this is what I is the definition of biblical. Womanhood complementarianism, where a woman is divinely called by God to follow her husband. It is also the pastor's wife role. The pastor's wife role is sort of this idea on steroids, that a woman because her husband is called into ministry, she is called to divinely by God, Her job is to make sure her husband's successful. And Dorothy Patterson, who wrote, you know, another major player in the Southern Baptist world, wrote the handbook for pastors wives in 2001 where she literally said that a pastor's wife job is to hold the ladder for her husband to climb. So the pastor's wife role in conservative evangelical circles, influenced by the SBC, is a two for one model where women are to give their free labor to the church in the name of ministry to make sure their husband's successful. And they also can be held accountable. Their actions can reflect badly on their husband, on their husband's job. And so that's the other side of it, too.
Joshua Johnson:So we're in this place. There is not very many roles than for women in major leadership positions. No Southern Baptists, this
Unknown:is the primary role in conservative evangelical churches that do not support women's independent ministry. The pastor's wife role is potentially one of the most powerful roles. This plays out differently in different churches, but it is what we would call, as a historian, we call it indirect power, and so a woman does a pastor's wife does not have an official title or salary or role, but she can have significant influence on the church. So it can be an incredibly helpful, important position. But at the same time, it is also a position that is completely dependent upon her husband and is defined by her husband's role. So it is also a very it is a very fragile position.
Joshua Johnson:Let's talk about ordination really quickly, and how, what do we see it as? Now, in in this area, and what has it been in the past? What is ordination, and why do we put so much emphasis on women's ordination at the moment and the controversy around that? Yeah,
Unknown:so ordination has, you know ones, one scholar wrote that ordination became the Baptist weapon of choice against women. And in many ways, the battle over ordination didn't heat up until after the 1950s and I know people may think that strange. They're like, well, hasn't that always been problematic for women to be ordained? And we can talk a little bit more about that, yes and no, but in a different way. And what happened after the after World War Two, the era of World War Two, we begin to see some loopholes that happened in the broader North American world that actually allowed women to move more easily into ordained positions. And part of these were I talk about briefly in the book clergy tax laws, which is actually a crazy thing, where the Southern Baptist world, in attempting to get the clergy tax exemption for all of their missionaries, they inadvertently made it possible for anyone who was a missionary or any sort of or a chaplain to get ordained roles, which opened up, In some ways, the floodgates for women to be officially moved into these positions. And so this is also then, as soon as the warning bells begin to go up that you begin to see women moving into these positions, the Southern Baptist Church begin to crack down on that and begin to argue that ordained roles, and by ordained roles, what they're mostly defining is the right to exercise spiritual and pastoral authority over a congregation and to preach at, you know, they often define it as the Sunday morning service, which is so strange historically, but to preach at the Sunday morning service, you know, this is part of that exercising spiritual and pastoral authority as well as to oversee the sacraments. You know, in the Baptist world, this, you know, is communion, etc. And so that this roughly, is this authoritative position, which also is the position that comes with the paycheck. And so this is what has become contentious in the modern evangelical world? What
Joshua Johnson:has ordination been like in the past, the historical view of ordination and what have we been ordained to? Yeah,
Unknown:this is what was so crazy to me as a scholar. I mean, I still remember I talk about this briefly in the book, but I still remember running across a tweet, and I don't remember if the tweet was directed towards me or if I saw it in a conversation, but I remember the tweeter simply said, Show me one woman who has been ordained, and by ordination, I mean not by a. Sect. So something, you know, a orthodox sect that and is able to perform the sacraments at the altar, you know, said, name me one woman who's been able to do that. And I remember seeing that, and my first response was like, okay, I can name you women. But my second response was like, you don't understand the history of ordination, because it wasn't until, you know, in the early Christian church and the early medieval world, you know, for really almost the first 1000 years of Christianity, ordination was not clear cut, and it went by many different names. You could be ordained. You could, you know, you even a blessing, was often considered to be an ordination service, but it was simply the recognition of a person who is serving in a ministry position. And so the recognition that somebody is serving in a ministry position made them ordained. And it didn't necessarily come with being with even wanting to be able to perform the sacraments of the altar, depending on what your position was. You may or may not do that, but it was for a multiple type of roles in the early church and the early medieval church, and it's not until the Central Middle Ages that we begin to see ordination more clearly defined as being able to perform the sacraments at the altar, and that evolved along with the emphasis on clerical celibacy, which is a really fascinating sort of story, so almost 1000 years into Christian history, before we see ordination begin to be associated exclusively, and it was only ordination to the priesthood that allowed you to associate it with the sacraments at the altar.
Joshua Johnson:So things shifted because of priesthood, celibacy and moving away from that. So what was happening for that first 1000 years? What were women doing, and were they in roles of ministry, and were they in authoritative roles? And who were these? Who were these women that were doing these things? Women were
Unknown:doing everything that men were during these times. They were always less it's always more challenging for women to move into these types of authoritative positions for various cultural reasons. But at the same time, women were in all of these positions, and part of this is simply because of the legacy of the early church. I mean, you know, all you have to do is go back and read the New Testament with clear eyes, and what you will see is every early position in the church. You know, women serving as deacons, women serving as house church leaders, women named as apostle. Women are doing all the things that men are doing, and Paul is applauding them as co workers alongside him. So this legacy, and in fact, we know, you know, I talk about this in the book. I talk about some of my favorite encounters with places where we see the visible evidence of women serving in roles that could be as authoritative as bishop. Possibly also, you know what we would consider to be equate with the authority of priest, certainly the authority pastoral authority that they are exercising in these places. I also walk through the documentary evidence that many scholars have pulled together for us, where we see women who are listed in these positions of priest, you know, Bishop, etc. One of the things I really hit home in this book is that oftentimes our assumption, or people try to assume, they take the pastor's wife role today, and they're like, Oh, well, women were just called priests in the past because their husbands were priests. And this is not true. Sometimes it's true, but the only time, it's the only time when women actually serve in the named positions with their husbands is actually when they have agreed to take on ministry roles. Not all women married to ministers in the past served in ministry roles. The flip side of that is not all men married to female ministers in the past served in ministry roles, and we have evidence of that. So there was a much broader range of what women were doing in the early church. Again, as I said, it's always less than men, but they were doing these things, and they were being recognized by it. And we can go back and see their names, and we can say their names,
Joshua Johnson:so just take me into your trip to Rome, and then what you saw physically as some what was happening within the the two. Yes,
Unknown:I love this story. So, you know, I tell this story in more detail in the book, but I was on my son's senior trip. I was a chaperone. I know I like to do things like that, and so I'm traveling with all these high school seniors in Rome. And. And I decided to offer a side trip that wasn't on the schedule, to go to the Priscilla catacombs. And this is something I'd been wanting to see for years, ever since it opened up. I still remember when it first opened again, and it was like in the 2014 2015 I don't remember exactly when it was, but I remember people start sending me these news images, and they're like, oh my gosh, Beth, do you see the female priests? And I'm like, you looking at these images, and just go Google it. Everybody. Just go Google the Priscilla catacombs. And what you will see is this image. This the most famous images of this woman that I talk about in the book. And I got to see her. It's so, so wonderful. But she's this woman standing in what we call the orans position. And the students in my graduate classes, we always read an article on the significance of the orans position, and it is a position that where we see these women standing with their arms raised, the only people who are in this position in this early church are ones that seem to be in church leadership position. It's an authoritative thing. It's like they're praying, they're prophesying, they're preaching whatever. Some men do it, but a whole lot of women do it. And there's other symbols. Some of these women have symbols associated with them that clearly show that they have significant apostolic authority, like having the apostles around them as they're standing in this orients position. Sometimes they have flames of fire coming out, you know, tongues of fire around them that indicate they're you know, the God is speaking through them. And so the Priscilla catacombs is just one of these many places where we can see the archeological evidence that shows that women were serving in leadership roles. You know, we may not be able to know exactly what those leadership roles were, but they were doing it, and they were being recognized and celebrated. So it
Joshua Johnson:seems to me, which that is amazing, but it seems to me this is kind of what God has wanted for a long time that he talks to Israel and says, I'm going to make you a nation of priests. And they're like, No, never mind. I want a king. I don't actually want to be a nation of priests. And then Jesus comes around and he breaks things wide open. Now we see men and women serving together, leading together, doing women doing everything that men are doing. And then we like, oh, never mind. We're just going to have, you know, priests be celibate, and then we're gonna put them in these positions of power, and we're gonna let someone else go, uh, Martin Luther comes around. He goes, Oh, remember the priesthood of all believers? Like, there's a priesthood of all believers. And then we're like, I don't know if I really want that, but we're gonna do this Southern Baptist. There's a lot of Baptists are like, the priesthood of all believers. Believers absolutely like, oh, never mind. We don't actually want that. So this is, this has happened throughout history, yes. So I think one of the tenants of Baptist is the priesthood of all believers. Oh, totally, I don't, why don't they believe it? Like, yeah. Like, I just why don't they believe it?
Unknown:So another tenant of Southern Baptist, a Baptist in general, is something we call local autonomy, and this is also connected to soul autonomy, which is connected to the priesthood of all believers. And it's this idea that nobody can tell anyone what God is calling you to do, that your relationship with God is between you and God alone. I mean, that is a major tenet of being a Baptist, and this applies also to local churches, that this is why, technically, Baptist affiliations are not denominations. We're cooperative of churches that work together, because nobody can tell us what to do, for better or for worse, but this is local autonomy, and so technically, according to local autonomy, nobody can tell a church that they cannot ordain a woman or have a female pastor. But this is exactly what the Southern Baptist world has been doing, and they have been, they've been trying to do it, really. It started in the 1970s but the push picked up speed in the 1980s I tell that story, and the tragedy of that story, in becoming the pastor's wife picks up speed in the 1980s and then, of course, we've seen the culmination of it. In, well, actually, not quite the full culmination of it, but in 2023 and 2024 we saw the Southern Baptist Convention first in 2023 vote to not allow women churches that supported female pastors to be in friendly cooperation with the Southern Baptist Church. And most recently, we have seen the Southern Baptist Church issue or issue. You know, they didn't vote. It didn't pass last time. It was a very narrow margin, but they are attempting to pass a law that says, not only can women not be in senior pastor positions, but that churches to be in friendly cooperation with the Southern Baptist Church cannot have any women who serve in any type of Pastor. Pastoral roles, which is one of the Draco Yeah, it's one of the most draconian measures against women in in church history. I'll just put it out there and say that, as a church historian, I mean, it's just absolutely egregious. It is really in many ways unprecedented, at least on the level that they're attempting to implement it. And yet, they claim that it is simply the Bible, which is just a false claim. Yeah, I mean, I don't know how
Joshua Johnson:I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm a little angry. Welcome to my world. Understand it's not fun at all. I want to know, how do we get to this, this pastor's wife role? I think so, since you we talked a little bit. So go from the the celibacy of priests, yeah, into the Protestant Reformation and then into the fundamentalism of the early 20th century, yeah, could you just take us through some of that history? How did we get to
Unknown:Yeah, you're testing my teaching skills this morning. My big, you know, try to do it and short amount of time. So, um, you know, I tell the story. I told a little bit of the story in the making of biblical womanhood, and I tell it even more so, and I think even more pointedly. And just as a spoiler alert, if you want to know how prostitution is linked to the rise of the pastor's wife role, you've just got to go read the book, because I tell you what happened there. But what we saw in the Central Middle Ages, the reason that we saw ordination being more narrowly defined was an attempt to buttress the power of the church. Okay? Now we often read this as bad. Power is neither good or bad in of itself, it's what you do with that power. And the church was actually trying to separate itself from secular people who were trying to control it. Okay? So you can say, oh, that's actually a good thing. And so part of the way that they were doing this is they were trying to keep clergy from being able to pass their jobs down to their kids. And so, I mean, you can again. You can be like, Oh, these are actually reasonable concerns. So part of the way that they do this, and it's also their theology of the Eucharist, has also been developing over this time. And so the way that they kind of killed two birds with one stone was by limiting the priesthood exclusively to celibate men. And the priesthood is the highest calling, and it's only at the Central Middle Ages that we see a role that is exclusively gendered, male become the highest position in the church. So it's really only at this point that women are suddenly written out of that type of authority. Okay, this is somewhat successful. It, at least is, you know, it causes problems throughout the later medieval period. But one of the things that when we see the coming of the Reformation, one of the things that the Reformers did is they were, like, this whole celibacy thing has caused so many problems. Let's just throw this, you know. How do we even know that God wanted us to do this? Why would we do this? This seems, and, you know, stupid, all sorts of that, you know, don't quote me saying Martin Luther said that. But anyway, he was actually dragging his feet on on this, one
Joshua Johnson:of my some pretty derogatory things. One of my
Unknown:best friends is a Luther scholar. So I always have to, I always see him in my head when I say things about Luther, because I know he's like cringy, like that. One of the things that the Reformers decided to do was to get rid of clerical celibacy, and so in many ways, the mark, and I'm going to use the word evangelism here, because Protestants actually, in this early period, they were, they were, this was the first evangelical movement. It's very different. It's not the evangelical movement we think about today. Okay, so I'm using it these early evange The way you knew an evangelical reformer was by their their by marriage, if the pastor was married, it was a reforming church, and so the pastor's wife actually became a marker of resistance. I love this. She became a marker, you know, she symbolized the rise of Protestantism and the rise of this new theology and the fight, because it was illegal for her to marry a priest, to marry a pastor, and so these women were putting their lives on the lines. It was a dangerous thing the pastor's wife. We don't think about the pastor's wife as being edgy, but she was. She was the edgy law breaker in the beginning of the Reformation era. Her role emerged to help define the beginning of Protestantism. How
Joshua Johnson:did it move from a place of of actual reform protest, of like this is counter cultural saying that we actually have a standing and a. Role and we have a purpose. And then how did that that shift and morph over time? Like, what are we what are we seeing throughout the history?
Unknown:So, you know, I I've been saying that the hardest chapter of the book for me to write was my chapter four, which is called the rise of the pastor's wife. I don't know how many times I rewrote that chapter, and in fact, my husband started being like, are you done with that chapter? Yeah. He was like, my gosh, you've been writing this for so long. It took so long for me to get through it, but once I got through it and real, you know? And I would say the next two chapters actually went pretty fast, because what I saw very quickly, you know, if we think about the modern role of the pastor's wife, which is Office focused on this two for one role, and also this emphasis on being this domestic goddess of the household. You know, you could think about Dorothy Patterson, who makes tea for everyone whose kids are perfect and well dressed. And, you know, everybody's hair looks great on Sunday mornings. I just thought of Beth Moore when I said that. I love Beth Moore. But anyway, so I mean, this is often what we think about with the pastor's wife role. But what we see in these first few centuries of the pastor's wife role is that it was a much broader type of position. I mean, on the one hand, it was simply being a wife. And so some people are like, well, the pastor's wife has always done these things. And I'm like, well, the pastor's wife has always been a wife. That's very true. But the pastor's wife being expected to do the ministry with her husband has not always been the case. And I tell you know, a couple of my favorite stories about, you know, one pastor's wife who actually got mad at her husband because he voted on an opposite side from the rest of her family, political decision in Scotland, and she refused to go to her husband's church for the rest of their marriage. I mean, they stayed married, but every Sunday morning, he'd put her on her horse, and she would ride her horse across town to a different church. And, I mean, you know, and this isn't something, it didn't reflect badly on him as a pastor. And then I tell another story of a woman that I love. This is a church outside of my hometown of Waco, where this pastor's wife in the 19th century divorced her pastor husband, not for any what we would call biblical reasons, but because he was gone all the time, and she divorced him, and she got to stay at the church, and the church, she's buried in the church, and he actually was the one who was pushed out. And so again, this you know idea that the pastor's wife role didn't fit a clear mold until much later, really moving into the 20th century, when we begin to see this push for the pastor's wife to be this two for one model, and this, especially this ideal model of biblical womanhood, which does not emerge until the post world war two era. So
Joshua Johnson:then, if it doesn't emerge until the post world war two era, how American is it like, where? Like,
Unknown:I'm gonna have some fun conversations with my British friends about this. Because, on the one hand, you you do have in the UK, if you think about the the pastor's wife, you have the image of these wives who are, in some ways, do similar things to what the American pastor's wife does, but again, as I said, it doesn't have the same expectations, you know, especially with doing the ministry with their husband. And so I would say that there are a lot of us influences, especially when it becomes merged with biblical womanhood, which is a southern cultural development that is associated primarily in the southern part of the US. And this is also why we see in more mainline denominations that are not southern focused, there is less emphasis on pastors wives to do these types of things. And so you see more variety in the pastor's wife role outside of us evangelicalism, which is often stemming from that southern and western culture of the US. So I would say that there are aspects of this that are very American.
Joshua Johnson:So then, what is the role? Then? Now, I think because we have the largest evangelicals cooperation, I guess I can't call it to nomination. Call
Unknown:it a domination. We all do because it's the easiest way to describe it. Yeah, I just always have to qualify it.
Joshua Johnson:They have a lot of political influence as well. How does the role of the pastor's wife actually merge with a a the political view of the United States in America? And how do they intertwine and our culture,
Unknown:you know, I think this was the part, you know, I have, I have been a pretty happy pastor's wife. Yes, there have been weird things. There's been moments where I'm like, Oh my gosh, I can't believe this is happening to me and so forth. But I've loved the work that I've done alongside my husband. I have, no I've done a lot. Of good. So this isn't me speaking out of like somebody who's hated the role, but what I realized as I was writing this book, and you know, another thing I've said is, when I wrote the making of biblical womanhood, I was writing a story I knew. When I wrote becoming the pastor's wife, I was writing a story I didn't know. And so I'm learning this as I'm doing the research, and I read a book written relatively recently. I think 2016 Bolin and null are the scholars, and I'm trying to remember, I can see the cover of the book, but it's, it's something about ordination female pastors in in the modern us. It's, it's two sociologists, and it's a it's a brilliant study. It's fascinating. And I one of the sections just, I mean, I literally sat back in my chair when I read it, because what it showed was that the pastor's wife role was helping to mask the absence of female pastors. And so let me explain that one of the things that you may see among conservative evangelicals, you know, I think about people with like Denny Burke with the Council for biblical manhood and womanhood, and he's always like, I believe in women in ministry. And I'm like, No, you don't. But the reason he says that is because in conservative churches, yes, women do serve in ministry, 82% of them are not getting paid for it or gain in volunteer status. And that's a life we report on this. They're serving in these ministry roles, but they're not getting official positions for it, and they're not getting paid for it, and it's always controlled under the authority of men. But people who are in these churches where women are serving in these types of official of unofficial, powerful roles, like pastor's wife, they look and they see their pastor's wife doing all these things. They see their pastor's wife leading the Bible studies. They see their pastor's wife, maybe even praying from stage, maybe even in some of these places, preaching, although that's not gonna happen in Denny Burke's church or in most Southern Baptist churches. But nonetheless, they see her doing all of these things. And so when somebody asks them, Well, do you see that the or you know that not your church, not supporting women in ordination, is detrimental to women. They're like no women are serving in all of these roles. I don't see any limits on women in my church, and so the pastor's wife role becomes the symbol of the success of patriarchal theology within evangelical spaces, and she is often used. And in fact, some people have asked me how I even got into interested in writing this story. It was when I found out how instrumental pastors wives were in fighting against women's ordination that they were some of the key figures in fighting against women's ordination in the Southern Baptist Church. And I was like, Why? Why are women in ministry fighting against women in ministry? That was real. I was like, What's going on here? And I found out, you know, it's because the pastor's wife role is so intricately connected with complementarian theology that supports only male leadership, that they have become one of the primary, in some ways, weapons against ordained women. It breaks my heart as a pastor's wife, and especially as a pastor's wife who advocates for female ordination to realize that I have become a symbol that has kept women down. If women
Joshua Johnson:are saying no to ordination Southern Baptists, if they don't want want this, how is this system of the pastor's wife and then male authority and leadership? How has that led to the abuse of women? Yeah, and the hiding of abuse of women in
Unknown:the church. This was the most surprising turn my book took when, you know, when I wrote the making of biblical womanhood at the final chapter, I wrote my hypothesis, which I think has been confirmed, not by so much that's been going on in the Southern Baptist world, the link that complementarian theology fosters an environment in which abuse flourishes, becoming the pastor's wife shows very clearly how these two things are connected. Again, it was a story I didn't realize I would tell in the way that I did. And I tell it. You know, the chapter eight of becoming the pastor's wife is a chapter called the cost of Dorothy's hats. And Dorothy is, of course, Dorothy Patterson, this symbol of complementarian theology in the Southern Baptist Church in. In 2023 June 2023 right before the Southern Baptist Convention met to oust Rick Warren and Linda Barnes Poppins church out of friendly cooperation for Supporting Female ordination, I ran across a series of documents from the early 1980s that showed how some major, some of the highest people in the Southern Baptist executive leadership, learned about a case of clergy sex abuse, and when they learned about it, and learned It was true, as in, the guy confessed they chose to not remove this man from leadership because they said they didn't think it was happening still and we have to be a redemptive community. And I remember just, you know, the shock of reading those documents where I saw these men not only just excuse and just dismiss clergy sex abuse, but leave a predator, a potential predator, in a place of significant religious authority within their denomination, and it hit me so much that I spent the next eight months tracking down this story. I don't tell the whole story in the book. I know a whole lot more than I told in the book, but what I learned, and the story that I do tell, is I learned about the life of this man who lived for over 40 years as a pastor's wife, not just in the Southern Baptist world, but around and Baptist, you know, internationally, too. As one of the people I interviewed told me, the marriage was never good, and that just says it the best way possible, you know, the best light on it. She lived a very challenging life as a pastor's wife with possibly people with people knowing what was happening within her home, and yet, because of her position, this position that is always under the authority of a man, and in a place where men mostly have authority, the seat at the table, and where, when her husband was caught, it was men who decided that they had to be a redemptive community and just let him go, and the person who paid the price was not only the victim of this man and potential other victims, but also the woman who lived with him until finally, in her 70s, after being in the hospital after a accident that almost cost her her life within the home, she divorced him. And I'll just let people fill in the gaps about why she divorced him. And this story just emphasized to me, the precarity, and that's a word that we use this precarity, where a woman's power, success, ability to do ministry, ability to flourish, is dependent on how good her husband is. And that's what the pastor's wife role. I mean, some women in the pastor's wife role. Have wonderful experiences. They love it. They have great husbands. Everything works out well. But what about those women whose authority is dependent upon their husbands? And if they speak out, not only may people not believe them, but it will cost their husbands their job. And so they stay silent, and they live within these horrific circumstances for possibly the rest of their lives. So sad.
Joshua Johnson:It's horrific, and it shouldn't happen. It shouldn't happen anywhere, and especially the church, but it should not happen anywhere, exactly right? It's horrible. So where do we go from here? How do we make sure that we can actually see the mutual flourishing of men and women? How can we see health in the church? How can we see women lifted up into their rightful place as CO laborers with God and with men and with all of humanity and ministry. Where do we go?
Unknown:Yeah, my final chapter is probably one of my favorite chapter names, and it's called together for the gospel, which is a very intentional choice. What I suggest, and I pull on the black church tradition, actually, to help with this suggestion, is that it is time for women in ministry to stop fighting against each other. And not only is it time for the church to recognize that God has always called Women and has always called women to independent ministry roles, but it is also time for women, whether we be women called into ministry alongside a spouse. Spouse, or women called into ministry separate from our spouse, or women who are simply living in households with people called to ministry who don't actually feel that specific vocational calling that it is time for us to actually work together to support each other, instead of fighting against one another. One of my inspirations for this is that I've actually seen this in the pastor's wife literature written by black pastor's wives, and it was so encouraging to me, and some of it was so different from what I saw in the white pastor's wives books, that it made me realize that a different world was possible. So that is, you know, I think the first thing that we have to do is recognize how we have been complicit in obstructing God's use of women in vocational ministry, and then we have to move to work together to make sure that all women, no matter what they are called to, are supported within the church.
Joshua Johnson:Amen. Let's do that. And it might, maybe the time that we actually have to sit at the feet of the black church in America and learn something Praise
Unknown:God. That's i Yes, I think Yeah. So
Joshua Johnson:we need to do that. My question is, okay, so Protestants were born out of protest, yeah? And they have been people of protest for centuries, and so this is why we have, you know, 1000s upon 1000s upon 1000s, yeah, denominations, right. We're protesting saying, I don't believe this. We believe this. So we're going to form our own place. So because we're now in this place of protest, like we were protesting, how do we not just say, you go do your thing, we're gonna go do our thing over here. How do we get to this place of not fighting with each other and coming together?
Unknown:Yeah, okay, so I'll tell you an anecdotal thing. When I first announced that I was going to write a book on the history of the pastor's wife, and I didn't know exactly what my thesis was going as I said, I just started this whole thing out. And so I got some fascinating Facebook messages. I got, actually a really angry Facebook message from an ordained woman who was like, how you know, it's, I think she felt betrayed. I'd written the making of biblical womanhood, which is all you know. And she was like, What are you doing writing a book about these people who have done nothing but fight against ordained women? I mean, it was, it was, clearly, it was this betrayal coming out of it. And then I got responses from, you know, pastors wives who were like, Oh, good. Finally, you're going to be writing about the women who the real women in ministry, you know, the women who really, and it just, it really just stopped me for a minute, because as a pastor's wife, who actually has always worked in circles and seen a lot of female pastors, I've never seen myself as at odds with them. It's like we do different things. We're called to different things. It's never and suddenly I realized the deep rift in evangelical culture, the deep wounds in evangelical culture between pastors wives and ordained women. And I was like, Oh my gosh, I want to do something about this. I think one of the first things we have to do as pastors wives, we have to acknowledge our complicity in helping, even intentionally or not, our role has been used to harm female pastors, and we've just got to recognize that. I mean, that's the first thing you you have to recognize your complicity. I think part of that too is you've got to apologize. We've got to say we are sorry for saying that our role is better than your role. And then I think we also have to recognize the harm that has been done to the pastor's wife, how challenging this role has been for women, this precarious role in which her whole identity, every time she shows up at church, she can, you know, harm her husband's job. You know, if she says something off it, I mean, I mean, I've been one of these things, you know, I've said things before where people are like, Oh my gosh, did you know the pastor's wife said this? And I'm like, I mean, in fact, I still remember this. I said something that actually did it got my husband in a whole lot of trouble. Well, I tell about one of the things in the book, where I was taking girls to Starbucks and caused this whole thing, but then another thing where I actually said something and it was misinterpreted, and then it was used against my husband and the church. And I mean, it's still, it's just like we have to recognize how. How stressful and challenging and how much pressure pastors wives live under every day in these evangelical spaces. And you know, one of my favorite things in the pastor's wife book is actually a group of Southern Baptist women that got together in the light in the 1950s to create an organization to support pastors wives, you know, showing that we have to support each other and provide ways to help each other. And that's what I think. I mean, we've got to do that for women. And I would like to see these support groups actually reach out across the divide, to include all women in ministry, to help us understand the strengths and the weaknesses and the challenges of all of us, so we actually can work together and in even in egalitarian spaces, where we have female pastors, and then we have pastors wives, often, those women are seen as in competition with each other, and that, You know, that is just of Satan. Can I just say that we have got to realize that the only way we're going to get through this is by working together, and the only way we're going to advance the gospel is by working together. Amen,
Joshua Johnson:let's do it. Beth. I have a couple quick questions. Scare the answer. One, if you go back to your 21 year old self, what advice would
Unknown:you give my 21 year old self. You know, my 21 year old self was so naive, it never occurred to me. I think I would have maybe told myself, you know, I wouldn't tell myself to change anything I think about what I did. You know, that's when I was going into graduate school, I was getting married, etc. But I think I would have maybe cautioned myself to be to have my eyes more open about what the pastor's wife role actually was, and how it was not necessary that it wasn't a biblical role, but it's A culturally constructed role that's still important, but also is limited and possibly damaging because of the cultural context in which it was created. It's
Joshua Johnson:good. Anything you've been reading or watching lately you could recommend,
Unknown:oh my gosh. So my good friend, Malcolm Foley, has a book that is highly relevant right now, that is the anti greed gospel. By the way, he's a blast. I love Malcolm. So I've known Malcolm since he was a grad student, and he's one of my favorite people. So anyway, I'm hoping to be at his book launch event tonight, but he Yeah, anyway, that's definitely one. You know, another book that I think is really relevant. Speaking of the black church, Kelly Carter Jackson has this great book called we resist. And it's about the role of black women in US history, and also from the perspective of a black woman. And it is fantastic. And so I would recommend go pick up. We resist. I think it's really relevant for right now. Too awesome.
Joshua Johnson:That sounds great. Your book, becoming the pastor's wife is fantastic. I told you, before we started that knee Jay Gupta said this was even better than biblical making, a biblical womanhood, which is hard to think about, because that was fantastic as well. So if you have read the making of biblical womanhood, you need to read becoming the pastor's wife. It's incredible. If you haven't read her first book, just read that and read the becoming the pastor's wife. They're both fantastic. I actually would also then recommend you have a chapter out and need to know that Danielle Strickland and that compilation is fantastic to think about women and their role in the church as well. So I would recommend that as well, absolutely,
Unknown:absolutely. And that book is actually sitting right here next to me. Too nice.
Joshua Johnson:That's good. How can people go out and get that, get becoming the pastor's wife? Where else would you like to point people to? Yeah,
Unknown:they can find it anywhere. I often say the best price is on Baker book house, but or go to your local bookstore. It's right now we're still in, you know, up until the day it releases. You can get the pre order price on it through Baker book house, and you can also find me on all social media places except for x, you will never find me there, and I'm always Beth. Allison Barr,
Joshua Johnson:perfect. Well, Beth, this is a fantastic conversation. Thank you for taking us through the history of ordination, the history of women in ministry and leadership, and then how we got to this pastor's wife role, what that looks like, how it can be actually lift up some women and in the roles, and if they have some, some great pastor husbands, that was fantastic, how it could actually be, then detrimental women and ministry and that we have, women have been fighting too often. And too long, and it's time for us to stop fighting and work together, work together and come together for our good. So thank you. Beth, it was fantastic. I love this conversation. Thanks
Unknown:for having me. You.
