Becoming the Pastor's Wife: Challenging the Norms with Beth Allison Barr

 In this insightful episode of Faithful Politics, hosts Josh Burtram and Will Wright welcome back historian and best-selling author Beth Allison Barr. Known for her groundbreaking book, The Making of Biblical Womanhood, Dr. Barr delves into her newest work, Becoming the Pastor’s Wife: How Marriage Replaced Ordination as a Woman’s Path to Ministry. The discussion explores the historical evolution of women's roles in the church, the intertwining of patriarchy with church culture, and the societal shifts that led to the emergence of the pastor’s wife as a key figure in evangelical spaces. Drawing parallels to medieval history and the Reformation, Dr. Barr provides a compelling narrative about the sacrifices and challenges women have faced in ministry. This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in gender, faith, and the shifting dynamics of power within religious institutions.


Pre-Order Beth's book: https://bakerpublishinggroup.com/books/becoming-the-pastor-s-wife/414910


Guest Bio:
Dr. Beth Allison Barr is a distinguished historian and the James Vardeman and Dow Chair of History at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. With a PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, she is an expert in medieval history, women’s history, and church history. Her writing has been featured in prominent outlets such as USA Today, The Washington Post, and Christianity Today. She is best known for her bestselling book, The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth. Dr. Barr’s latest book, Becoming the Pastor’s Wife: How Marriage Replaced Ordination as a Woman’s Path to Ministry, examines the historical shifts that reshaped women’s roles in ministry and their enduring impact on contemporary church culture.

Transcript

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Hey guys, this is Josh Bertram, your faithful host on the Faithful Politics Podcast. Welcome back for another episode to our viewers and listeners. Thanks so much for joining us. If you're joining us on YouTube, make sure you like, subscribe, hit the notification bell, do all that fun stuff so that we continue to get you great content. And of course, we're always joined by the ever political political host, Will. Will, how are you? It's good to see you. Yeah, that's what I tell my mirror every morning too. Yeah, thanks. Yes, you are absolutely welcome. And today we have the privilege for having on a second time professor and doctor, Beth Allison Barr. She is a historian, author, and pastor's wife with over 25 years of experience in navigating the assumptions and challenges tied to her role within the evangelical church. She has her PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. is the James Vardeman and Dow Chair of History at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. She has written in USA Today, Washington Post, Christianity Today, The Dallas Morning News, Sir Johners Baptist News Global, and was the author of the best-selling The Making of Biblical Womanhood, How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth. We're here to talk to her about her latest, Becoming the Past's Wife. How Marriage Replaced Ordination as a Woman's Path to Ministry. Beth, it is great to have you on the program again today. It's fun to be here. Yeah, thank you so much. You know, I gotta say, I love the book. I love the, I love the image as well. What a cool, what a cool image. It's like Saint in the back. You can't really see this like saintly ghostly figure. And then the nice proper wife. I would love that, please. before you do, I also have to show that the cool thing I got from your publisher, it's like the little... Isn't that amazing? Okay, so here's the thing. they my general philosophy in life is to let people do their jobs. And so like when they come to me with marketing ideas and stuff like that, and I'm like, I don't know, that's not my job. Y'all, whatever you think works. And so they called me about the cover, and they were like, Well, what do you want? And I said, I don't really know. But I want it to reflect that this is not just a modern story that it's a medieval story, too. I want that to be part of it. And they were like, well, do you have any ideas? And I said, said, OK, I don't know how this will work. But I said one of the coolest movie posters I've ever seen is for is for Star Wars, The Force Awakens, which is isn't that the one with the one that has young Skywalker and in the back is the shadow of Darth Vader. And I was like, that seems like a really cool image. And They like took that and ran with it. And so that's what this came from. It was born in a Star Wars movie poster. That is amazing, dude. So Darth Vader, but this isn't Darth Vader though. That's not, that's not the Darth Vader figure though, right? I hadn't thought about that parallel. I was more just thinking the shadow of the, you know, it's the reverse shadow. It's the shadow of the past instead of the shadow of the future. somebody. Yes, that will preach, dude. And I think that might preach this weekend. That is awesome. So, Beth, thank you so much again for writing this book, for being here. What inspired you to write this book? I I love the tagline, how marriage replaced the subtitle, rather how marriage replaced ordination as a woman's path to ministry. And that's a provocative subtitle there because it's making me wonder. it's... basically implying, and I'm sure that you show, right? In showing the book, how there was a path to ordination, and then that got changed and replaced, and it seems like recently. So kind of talk to us about that. Yeah, talk to us about the inspiration for the book. So this book was clearly born in the aftermath of the making of biblical womanhood. When the publishers first asked me to consider writing another book, my first response was like, no way. You know, I've already done this once, no way. But then I got some good advice from a friend who told me to... think about what I would like to say that I was unable to say in the making of biblical womanhood. And like, do you have anything that you still left unsaid? And one of the things that I had left unsaid was because simply for the lack of time is I wasn't able to follow the history of women's ordination. I just really didn't do that very much in the making of biblical womanhood. And this kind of came together when I was reading a book from one of my colleagues at Baylor called Into the Pulpit. on Southern Baptist women in the post-World War II era, women in power in the post-World War II era. And it's Elizabeth Flowers, she's a great historian, and she had this connection in there that I had never made before, in which she's talking about the rise in the Southern Baptist Convention, the conservative resurgence that's pushing women out of ministry. And the voices that spoke on the floor of the Southern Baptist Convention, against women's ordination were pastors' wives, prominent pastors' wives. And that made me start wondering about what the connection was between the story of what happened to ordained women and the rise of the role of the pastor's wife. And so that's where the story, and that was when I came back and said, yeah, I think I have something else to say. And here we are just a few years later. Yeah, that's great. I could have sworn the last time we spoke you were going to write a book about Catholicism or something. who knows? So maybe when I spoke with you was when I still had all these ideas circulating around in my head. one of the things that I wanted to do was a book on medieval Christianity. And that was another sort of idea that I had that I'd left unsaid. And so I kind of pulled a... You know, I pulled what clout I had with the making of biblical womanhood and my press was really actually they're fantastic. I love them. I was like, I'll write a second book for you if I can write a third book too. And so I actually have my third book is my medieval Christianity book. And, you know, if I can go back to the Star Wars metaphor, you know, the making of biblical womanhood is the it's the one that a new hope that got everybody's attention. Becoming the pastor's wife is the dark side. It's the dark story. It's the hardest story for me to write. And so that means my third one is Ewoks. And I'm really looking forward to Ewoks. likes Ewoks, Beth. I'm glad. Yeah, yeah. You know, in your first book, we learned about Marjorie Kemp. I remember talking to you at length about Marjorie Kemp and your excitement about talking about Marjorie Kemp. In this book, you talk about another figure, Milburger. Can you explain who Milburger is and how did they kind of play into the bigger theme of your book? Yes, Milburga. So I have to say that when I told my daughter I was writing on Milburga, she looked at me and she said, Mom, that sounds like a disease. And she just was not she was not impressed with the name Milburga. But Milburga is a woman that most people will not have heard of. Even many medieval scholars actually will not have heard of her, although she is a pretty common type of woman in the early or at least a pretty common type of church leader in early medieval Europe, especially in what is now England and France. And that is a woman who holds significant pastoral leadership. In this case, she is a female monastic. And we have all these stereotypes about what monastics are. And we often think that female monastics in the medieval world are like shut behind walls and aren't ever out. You know, it's that whole sound of music thing. And this is not at all what is actually going on, especially in the early medieval world. Women who were in these positions actually functioned as political leaders as well as religious leaders. They often had significant political and territorial authority. including over governing and law, et cetera. And in the case of Milburga, her monastic institution had both women and men in it. And so she had pastoral authority over men within that congregation. And what is really fantastic about her story is that she was ordained by the Archbishop of Canterbury. And so, you know, I just want people, we have all of these. debates about if women can be ordained and there's claims that ordination for women is a product of the 1960s feminist movement and that it doesn't have any basis at all in church history. And I'm sitting here like, actually, there were a lot of women who were ordained in the medieval world. And so women like Milburga on the one hand are extraordinary for what they do, but they are also not unusual. and women were able to exercise that type of authority. yeah. Just real fast, just for context, when you talk about medieval, what time period are you? oh, thank you for that. So roughly medieval, know, it's in between, it's in between the classical era and the modern era, which, you know, sometimes why it's the overlooked era, but it's roughly 500 to 1500 is what we're thinking about. So the end, can think the aftermath of Augustine, Church Father Augustine in the fourth century. And so after Augustine, all the way up through the 16th century, which is the beginning of the era of reformations. That's really helpful. So obviously this has been not only an act of service to the church, service to the academy, and also an act of serious scholarly research and historical research, but it's also seems to me an act of personal exploration and maybe even vindication, your own journey, being a part of this story, right? Where you see yourself and you place yourself in becoming the pastor's wife and how this has affected you being a pastor's wife, right? So how has your personal journey informed, influenced your research, and how did you kind of, in your method, help yourself kind of set aside your own bias maybe? for maybe seeing the negative parts of the journey. you know, this is historians, most historical research stems out from who scholars are as people. And this is one of, you'll see this, you know, the things that they're interested in, et cetera. Like my very first book, my dissertation was on the pastoral care of women in late medieval England. And it, drove it was inspired by me watching my husband try to figure out how to navigate within conservative evangelical circles, how to provide a pastoral care to women. And I made me start asking questions about what about in a world where we have an all male priesthood and we have clerical celibacy, how did this happen? And so it's a really natural part of what I do to speak out from the things that I'm familiar with. So in some ways becoming the pastor's wife it is. It was looking to see where does this role that I have, is it really a constant in church history or is it something that has been uniquely created as a product of 19th and 20th century culture? Obviously that's probably where I really am on it, on what the role of the pastor's wife is. But nonetheless, where does it fit? Where does it come from this? And I would think too thinking about you know, your bias in writing history, this is often a question. First of all, you know, I don't think anybody, I think it's, I don't think anybody writes history without bias. I think it's just those of us who admit that we have bias and what our biases are. And so when you're aware of your biases, then it allows you to actually be able to investigate other, other parts of it that you might not naturally be drawn to because you understand what your biases are. So it allows you to actually have a broader exploration. And I think in the role of the pastor's wife, one of the things that I have struggled with writing this book is having a great deal of sympathy for women like me who have lived in conservative evangelical spaces with all of the rules of what the life of a pastor's wife should be. And yet we are doing our hardest to do the work of God with what we've been given. but yet also understanding that the role of the pastor's wife has been part of this bigger story within conservative evangelicalism that has limited the calling of God on women and in some ways has worked against women in ministry. so understanding the harm that it has done as well as the good that it has done. And both of those things are true. You know, I didn't grow up in the church. So a lot of, like, there's still lot of things I don't understand. I mean, I came to the faith in 2008. My wife was actually the one that led me to Jesus. And, you know, I would hear stories that she would tell about growing up in the church. She's a PK, pastor's kid, you know, and she would tell me just a lot of the same stuff that I hear from, you know, folks like yourself and others that, you know, want to... you know, take down the patriarchy or whatever. like, and I'm fascinated by the sense of, is the patriarchy in the church a microcosm of the patriarchy in society or is it flipped? it basically, you know, society culture is, you know, seeping into the church, making it more patriarchal or is it the opposite, if that makes sense. So, you know, that's a, there's a woman who wrote a book in the late 70s, early 80s, a historian named Gerda Lerner called The Creation of Patriarchy. Well, she was actually exploring kind of what you just asked me. Like where the heck did patriarchy come from? What, you know, is it, how did it get into our institutions? Why is it such a constant in human history? And one of the problems with understanding patriarchy is that it is a constant in human history. And I agree in some ways with Gerter Lerner that it comes out of the construction of civilization in which people gain power and part of gaining power is making sure that other people don't have that power. And or, you know, for whatever reasons, I mean, that's obviously simplifying it. And so I think the church grew up in human culture. It was born in human culture. It was born into these types of patriarchal attitudes. And what, you know, I always tell people that it is no shock at all that we find so much patriarchy in the Bible because the human cultures that wrote the Bible were patriarchal. What is surprising is when we see those moments where God reaches out to women and listens to women and interacts with women in ways that are less common. in patriarchal world. And this is true in Judaism as well as in the early parts of Christianity. And so I think the church is not really separated in some ways from human culture because it was born in human culture. It is the human extension of the gospel and it is to carry out the gospel on this earth, but yet this is the... This is the irony, I suppose, of it in some ways is that it is still human. It is not divine. We follow and we try to model ourselves after God, but yet we are, it is created by humans and human culture. And so we carry this human into the church with us. Yeah, that's really well said. I would love for you to help us understand the major events that have taken place that have created the environment that we have now. Walk us through this. Women were... set to be ordained or how did that happen? Like you just said, most of the world throughout its history has been patriarchal in some way. so women have always had to face that. And it seems like in the church revivals or in the church, Christianity as an early religion gave a lot of freedom to women as opposed to right, what was expected in the broader culture in terms of leadership and things like that. But then we have this decline in... I would just love for you to outline this for our audience. Yeah, what these major events, the historical moments that kind of cemented the decline of female ordination. Yeah, no. So, you know, when we think about the early church, we think about the early church is born in Roman culture and Roman culture is indeed patriarchal. But it is also a culture that because of its legal system, it actually had there were a lot of loopholes for women and women actually were able to often have a lot of what we would consider to be freedom, political power, religious power. You know, in the Roman world, women actually could be priests in some areas and exercise very similar authority to men. And so Christianity is born in this world. It's born in the Judaic world, the Judaic world where we do have women who are significant teachers, synagogue leaders, et cetera. I you can think about the prophetess Anna very early on, you know, who holds Jesus. And she is in, you know, she is in the temple. And she is a significant religious leader. I don't know why we overlook her so much, but she is a significant Jewish leader. And so the world of Christianity was born in a world where women could exercise this type of religious authority. And it is not at all a surprise to see the early Christian world using, you know, using women to do the things that they are already doing. You know, as I said, and this is, you know, it's we think about the significant female patrons of early Christianity. We know that half of the house churches in Rome are named for women, which suggests that women were leaders of those house churches. So you kind of think about the early Christian world, possibly 50 percent of the churches were led by women and they were not all white women either. You know, the Roman world was a very diverse world. know, for those who've seen Gladiator 2, I actually had a lot of issues with it. But I did like the diversity of their, the Roman world is not a white world. It is a very diverse world. And so the early church also would have reflected this type of diversity. And so you can think about that. And so this early Christian world, think, you know, yes, there are restrictions against women. And yes, there are times that we see patriarchy come through, but this exists alongside women being allowed to be leaders just like men. And both of these things are true at the same time, I think. And often I think in the Christian world, we want either one story or the other to be completely true. And the Bible gives us both because this is the way the human world worked. And what happened over time is as the as the early church became connected with empire, we can talk a lot about that actually today, so it became connected with empire, and as the ecclesiastical structure became more organized, we see, and more connected to territorial power, we see less opportunities for women. Now, at the same time though, this is a slow process. And what we have in the early medieval world is a time in which women who have significant religious and economic power are able to serve in significant religiously authoritative roles, like what we see with Milberga and with Hilde of Whitby. I actually just went to Whitby last week, two weeks ago, I guess, and she'll be in my third book. And so we see these, this common framework of these women who are serving in these type of really significant roles. And part of this also has to do with thinking about what does it mean to be a religious leader in the early church? And often what it meant to be a religious leader in the early church was to be a, to be tied to a particular location or a particular church, okay? And so when you were ordained, you were ordained to be to be a monastic, to be an abbess, to be a bishop, something such as that. You are ordained to a particular thing. This shifts in the central Middle Ages in the medieval world. Again, as we see this ecclesiastical consolidation continuing and the church trying to separate itself from empire, and it changes the rules on what ordination means. And it begins to tie ordination not to a job, but to the sacramental power to transform the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. And this is what we often consider to be an important part of ordination, the ability to perform at the altar. But this did not become a thing tied specifically with pastoral functions until the central medieval era, when we start seeing the ecclesiastical office becoming more clearly defined. And this is where we see women beginning to really be written out of this, was because of this changing ecclesiastical structure. And also part of this was the push for clerical celibacy. And that's not a word that we like in our modern culture, but celibacy is the choice to remain single and to not engage in sex. throughout your life, your adult life hood. And this became tied to being a clergyman for very pragmatic reasons because it was thought, sorry, I have to drink some water, but. It was thought that if a clergyman was not married, then they cannot pass their church, their position, their land that is connected to the church. It won't go to their children. And this will help separate the church from ordinary people. You see that? It's starting to create this. so clerical celibacy and clerical, which means that in the central Middle Ages, to be a priest literally became to be a person who is not only gets this sacramental power, but is physically distanced from women. And we see that distancing of women really began to take off in the history of the Western Church. So I'll stop there. That was a whole lot. So yeah. that's awesome. remember when we talked to, I don't know if he's a bishop, I'm not really quite sure, James Martin, he's Catholic, kind of like an LGBTQ Catholic activist. We talked about the celibacy thing and he explained basically like everything that you said, yeah, we don't have kids, so you can't pass it down to... the next generation and yeah, that's so wild. I wanted to ask you more about ordination because I mean, I know nothing about what it takes to become ordained. know, Josh probably does. But but like when you talk about changing the rules, is that just so I can kind of put it in context, would that be like everybody in the country can vote, but we're only going to count the votes in Florida? Would that would that be sort of like how they changed it? So what it was, mean, part of this is, so part of this is between the 11th and the 13th centuries in Western Europe, there was what we would consider to be a significant amount of ecclesiastical corruption. And part of this was because the priestly office, including the papal office, had become hereditary to some degree. And so powerful families got a hold. This whole thing starts in the 11th century. My students love the story. When a Holy Roman Emperor goes to Rome to get crowned in the 1040s and he gets there and there's three people claiming to be Pope and they're all fighting each other. They're backed by different powerful factions and he's like, what the heck is going on? And so he kind of moves in there and make a long story short, they depose everybody. And he appoints a new person and says from now on, clergy can't be appointed by lay people. Like I'm the last person who can do this. Like, you know, okay. And so the church needs to appoint the church because these people need to be people called by God, not people who are from wealthy families. And this sets off a series of what we call eventually the Gregorian reforms. And in the Gregorian reforms is an attempt to really cleanse the church of this type of what they consider to be secular corruption that had moved into it. and to help clergy. And part of this also is sort of an awakening of what we would call pastoral care, a push for pastoral care, that what the church is for is to help people on the journey to salvation. And so we need to equip people to be able to do that. And so there's all of this change that's going on. And so as they are tightening the rules about who could be clergy, they start defining what those rules are. Like who gets to be ordained? Who and what they start doing is they and this is really where we see an interaction of we see more of a hierarchy put in And where the highest clerical calling really becomes the office of the priest Because that's the only office that can That can do the sacraments. Okay And so, and then to be a priest, you need to be completely free from worldly entanglements, which means you need to have put away, you're not married or you put away your wife and you are separated from your natal family, you know, at least to certain extent. by doing these things, by shaking off these worldly sort of ideas. In fact, there's one scholar named Robert Swanson who's written a whole article on if clergy were considered a third gender. It's got very controversial because, in fact, I talk about a woman whose name, Jennifer Thibodeau in the book, and I actually agree with her where she says that for the priest, a new masculine identity was created for priests. And the role and the new masculine identity was instead of conquering women, it was resisting women. And so it's still sexual interested. And this is also where we start to see a lot of fear of the female body, but this new definition of the priesthood. Wow, I'm just trying to get my head around all this and get my head, you know, because I want to understand the story and I want to be able to communicate it to people when they're asking, well, what is that? What is that all about? I heard you interviewed Beth Allison Barr and what's going on? What is the pastor's wife and why is this a big issue? I guess a question that comes into my mind thinking about this history is why weren't women seen as appropriate vessels for sacramental power, sacramental theology? What happened there that created this tension, yeah, and this gap? Yeah, so part of this, the church was born in this patriarchal world where there were always more restrictions and limitations on women and also concerns that the female body, there is something, classical teachings about the female body is that the female body was not as perfect as the male body. that it is corruption to at least a certain extent. That's what Aristotle teaches this, that the female body is a corrupted male body. And so there are this carrying with it this idea that there is something wrong with the female body. This is intertwined with early Judaic Christian theology that teaches that a woman was part of the stories of Eve. et cetera, and that this was explained, you know, that's the corrupt female body that does this. Women are able to overcome that corrupt body within the church by rejecting their sexuality. You know, entering the church, they're not doing the things that a woman does. They're not getting married, they're not having kids, et cetera. And so this gives them an opportunity to exercise this type of religious authority. And so virginity is always more important for women than it is for men throughout. That's pretty much constant throughout church history if we look at it. And so there is this, but so women are able to exercise authority, but yet there is always still more concerns about them exercising that authority. If I can say it that way. Milberga, one of the reasons why she is able to get around this is because she's from a very wealthy, politically powerful family. And so it is easier for her to get around these types of restrictions. And so that is the case. Women do do these things and there's not theological reasons that are consistent in keeping women away from doing these things, but there are also fears about the female body. As we see definitions about the priesthood shifting and this emphasis on the sacrament and performing the sacrament of the altar. There were a lot of concerns that priests be free of sin and that sinful priests corrupted the sacraments that they offered. And our friend Augustine, Church Father Augustine, wrote a very persuasive, contributed a very persuasive piece to early Christian theology that the sin, human sinfulness was passed through the sex act, which meant sex itself was sinful, this original sin. And the female body then, which is where this human seed created in sin grows, was also seen connected with being more potentially sinful than a male body. And so there's all of these fears wrapped up around what the female body is. And as we move towards this defining, you know, we do know that women in the early church performed the sacrament at the altar. We do know because we have people talking about them doing it and saying, stop women from doing this. And so, you know, we know women are doing this. But as we move to the central Middle Ages, as it becomes more important to clarify the significance of the priestly role and separate it from the laity, as well as to emphasize the purity of the clerical role, there became more of an emphasis to separate it from the female body, which was seen as more potentially corrupt, more potentially sinful. They did not stop ordaining women. We have ordained women all the way through. through the Reformation era. These are nuns, that's what they are. They are an ordained, accepted ecclesiastical position. They continue to exercise significant clerical authority. However, they do stop being allowed to perform the sacraments of the altar. And so that's the really big, or we know for sure that there is, you know, they're told that they cannot do this. We also know there's more concerns about female monastics in the 13th century. They pass a law called pericoloso. which is danger, starts off the danger of the female body. And so women are told to stay within the walls of their convents. It's called enclosure. So sound of music. But it doesn't start until the 13th century. And it's part of this story of this increasing concerns about the female body and the association of the female body within pure sexuality. You can also tie this to stories of prostitution, et cetera. Yeah. Is that a little bit helpful? Does that help you? Hey, hey Josh for our audio listeners, they can't see you nod your head He's not... I don't know if I believe him. No, it is helpful. No, no, I'm not. I think I get it. Go ahead, Will. I'm still wrapping my head around it all. So I want to better understand how did the role of the pastor's wife evolve from where it started? Because a lot of the things they're talking about happened overseas, different time period, and then a bunch of stuff happened. Now there's people living in America. Obviously, that's the made-for-TV version. But how did he get into like... you know, the 2025 church door where you still got folks out there, you know, passing out bulletins and running kids ministry. Yes, yeah, so it's the Reformation. The Reformation is the linchpin to all of this. And in my chapter, The Rise of the Pastors' Wife, I talk about this, which again, you will all see that I like Star Wars a lot, but The Rise of the Pastors' Wife. what happens is that the medieval Catholic world defined clergy pastors by their celibacy. And so as Reformation theology begins to grow and people begin to leave Catholicism, one of the markers of having left Catholicism was getting married. And for priests, one of the greatest markers of claiming clerical authority outside of Catholicism was by being married. And so the pastor's wife became the marker of evangelicalism. And by evangelicalism, mean, Reformation evangelicalism. So the pastor's wife in some ways symbolized the success of the Reformation because now we have priests who are married. And I talk about a really extraordinary book in this chapter written by a woman named Marjorie Plummer. And the book is called from Priest Horde, A Pastor's Wife, which is something that people don't, thinking about that this transition to evangelicalism was marked essentially by the changing status in the sexual partner of clergy. And she went from being the whore to the wife. And it was actually, you know, I talk about these early women, these early female, these early pastors wives, they were actually extraordinarily brave women, because many of them faced execution for marrying these clergy. And it was dangerous. And so they, the marker of the pastor's wife, not only was a marker of the rise of Protestantism, but she's also a symbol of bravery and sort of grassroots success that now these pastors are able to openly live and have families with female partners. And so we have that happening in the Reformation. And that's pretty amazing to hear about, you know, right, the bravery to think about the bravery of these women and the kind of danger that they would have put themselves in and risk they would have put themselves in just to get married. Right. What a decision and what a testimony to their willingness to, you know, do what they felt like was the right thing in, you know, even in the midst of of trial and facing dire consequences. And I'm just wondering what... So we have the Reformation and where we move from here. it sounds like the pastor's wife, it was this really almost this brave act to do this. And then... there's a shift moving from that Reformation to today. What happened in the intervening centuries, maybe getting up to the beginning of the 20th century, where the shift, what happened to the role of pastor's wife during that time? So what is extraordinary, I think, is that for a moment in church history, we have this where we have pastors' wives who are symbols of the rise of Protestantism, who often served as ministers with their husbands, including preaching alongside them, or at least being significantly involved. And we also had a lot of women who believed that the Reformation gave them the ability to be in ministry apart from their husbands or without husbands. And so we actually see this trend where we see women who claim pastoral authority and who are able to exercise pastoral authority in many significant ways. There are some places that do ordain women during this time. And so we see this sort of side by side. where we see the idea of women in ministry is much more diverse than what we would have today. But over the time from the 17th through the 19th century, we see the Western culture begins to shift its understanding of marriage laws and its understanding. of work laws, the rise of industrialization, et cetera. Also the rise of a market economy. I think this is one of the most crazy things about the pastor's wife role is that it was really born in the emergence of capitalism. If we think about this domestic figure who takes care of her house and bakes cookies for the congregation, this is really born in the rise of capitalism in this industrial era. And so these shifting ideas, especially about marriage, begin to emphasize the legal dependency of women on their husbands. And so you can even think about like this, we even see this with Katie Luther, with the wife of Martin Luther, with the Reformation, and she was this powerful voice who worked alongside theologically, challenged her husband all the time. He said lots of horrible things to her, and she held her own. against him and they had a very happy marriage. But when he died, she lost all support and her family essentially ended up in poverty because her role was dependent on her husband's. And we see this dependence, this idea that women in ministry that they can do it, but it is connected only through the role of their husband. And we begin, and so what we begin to see as these laws, these legal changes about what women can do, the rise of industrialization, which begins to push women out of the workforce, at least wealthier women out of the workforce, and at least also out of leadership positions, that this also begins to impact the church. And we see that more and more the correlation grow between being a woman in ministry and being a woman married to a pastor. So by the time we get to the late 19th and the early 20th century, the pastor's wife has begun to emerge as a prominent ministry figure for women in the church. Does, do different denominations have like different, I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So on the one hand, I would say as we move in the 19th and the early 20th century, there are a lot of continuities between women serving in different types of past, whatever the denomination may be. But I would say that there begins to become more diversity. within that, within denominations, after the fundamentalist modernist controversy of the early 20th century, where we really begin to see the rise of conservative Christianity, including the emphasis on inerrancy of the Bible, and also a very clear articulation, a backlash against the first wave of feminism, which really begins to emphasize gender roles for women and men, and that women are called by God to be in the home. And so we begin to see that denominations that are more conservative that fall on that fundamentalist modernist controversy more on the fundamentalist side, begin to have more expectations for women in ministry to be dedicated to the job of their husband that you don't see in some more progressive. denominations. And you know, like I have my friend at Baylor who told me that he was like his Methodist, he's a pastor's kid, and he's like, my mom would have never done any of those things. But he was like from the Northeast, and from a very different type of denomination. And he's exactly right. There were less expectations on women, those where it became strongest, this model of the pastor's wife of this conservative pastor's wife who supports the job of her husband, who is expected to do part of her husband's job. to be focused on home and family and to be a model of biblical womanhood was born in Southern conservativism. So in Southern States. And so you see this marriage between the role of the pastor's wife and the expectations of Southern hospitality that were born in a culture of enslaving people. And that I think says a whole lot about this pastor's wife role. Yeah, mean, it's really amazing to think about this history and how it's just crazy to me how things shift, how they move, something can gain so much traction and then lose traction based on... You know, I don't want to say the vicissitudes of history necessarily, but based on, you know, things that you can't predict or someone who starts a movement or writes a book or yeah, go ahead. give you an example here. You know, we think about women as being in charge of the house, you know, where all of the decorating shows are geared towards women and having, you know, the perfect house. And they're the ones who bake the good. Like I was actually just watching on Instagram because I'm bored at home. I don't actually usually watch a lot of reels on Instagram, but I was watching on and it was put out from a church that I really like. And it showed these two women who were talking about their life and how they, you know, they were confessing their sins and their sins were hiding. food from their husbands in the house when their husbands were at work, know, like food that they liked, like chocolate &Ms and stuff like that. And I was like, how stereotypical can we get here where we, you know, where we actually, this is what wives do because we're at home all day and we hide our snacks from our kids and our, anyway, this, you know, this association of women with domesticity was born in this rise of a capitalist market economy in the medieval world. Another book that I mentioned is written by a good friend of mine, Catherine French at the University of Michigan. And she has this great book on good households and good householders. men actually were the ones who really were the decorators in this late medieval early modern world, because they were the ones who were interested in buying fussy furniture. and having the pictures on the walls and stuff like that. They were also actually, my students always get a huge kick out of this, that men's fashion was the sexy, fussy fashion in the late medieval world. Fashionable men wore very long pointy shoes that were supposed to show their virility. You're gonna think about that and things like that that emphasize, you think about, you've seen pictures of Henry VIII who wore very tight pants and cod pieces, all of this to emphasize this, you know, this sexualization of the man in his clothing in the late medieval world. And now that has really switched to women being sexualized in our clothing more so. And so, you know, this shift for women being really associated with the household and with caring for the household. in this type of domestic space of decorating it, et cetera, like that, was born in the rise of capitalism and also shifted where even women being in charge of domestic tasks, they used to have male servants who would do all of these domestic tasks. And then it became what women, good wives, they were the ones who did all of these tasks in the house. This is a historical shift. that we can trace that is not at all connected to anything biblical at all. It's connected to the rise of a market economy. Hmm. I mean, that is just so interesting to think about. Again, these shifts in history that create these massive changes that you don't even know about because you just lived in it and this is what you've experienced and this is the world that you grew up in, right? So you won't really question these things necessarily until you're... a little bit older, you could do it, you can have the resources and the tools to be able to figure it out. Now, I'd love for you to describe the issue as it stands today in terms of the pastor's wife and the expectation on pastor's wives and how they're viewed in the broader culture. What is the state? of the pastor's wife today and where do you see things really needing to shift? Yeah, so on the one hand, I think the pastor's wife role is a really powerful role within the evangelical space because it is a position that gives women, that potentially gives women a lot of authority. In some churches, women are even able to take on co-pastor responsibilities in this role. And sometimes even women and men, when they get into ministry together, they get in in order to serve together as co-pastors. And this is a space, it's easy, you in some spaces it's easier for a woman to be a pastor if she's a co-pastor alongside her husband. And so it's a way that enables women to have more direct access, I suppose, to being able to live out their calling if they are called in that area. It also enables them to be able to be teachers and influencers and be able to influence churches for. better and for worse, I would say. I even knew this in my role. There's a lot of women, young girls that came through our youth group who ended up going into ministry and going into things. that was a direct, think, my husband and I helped influence them in that way. And so the pastor's wife role can be a really powerful and really helpful role if she wants to do it. This is the catch with the pastor's wife role is that not everybody who marries a pastor wants to be in ministry or feels that as their calling. Some women, know, this is too, if you like talk to some women who say that they are accidental pastor's wives or they got duped into the job that their husband was an insurance salesman and then he all of a sudden switched on it like when it was too late and went into ministry and they had no interest in doing this. And so, you know, what do you do with women who don't feel called to this role at all, who are in the church? And it is very challenging right now for those women. There's a lot of expectations that are put on them. In fact, I had you know, I had coffee with someone not too long ago who told me, who confessed to me that when she found out that the wife of one of their, she's in Anglican church, and when the wives of one of their priests actually went to a different church, that that made her, she was like, what? That? Why? Why does she not like your priest? You know, it made her think detrimentally of that priest. And she was like that, you know, why do I have that reaction? And so the role of the pastor's wife, the wife reflects on her husband, whether she wants to or not. And her husband's success in being a good pastor is often seen if his wife is toeing the line, doing the work of the church, being involved in the church. And so this puts an enormous amount of pressure on the pastor's wife. I think, you know, some women really do well with it. Some women do not do well with it because this is nothing that they ever wanted to do before. And so I think that's the catch, I think, of the pastor's wife role right now. I also think that the pastor's wife role, especially in conservative evangelical spaces, has been taught as the avenue towards women in ministry. If you are called to ministry, you are called to marry a pastor. And which means, and this is also why in conservative evangelical spaces too, there is much less room for women who are called to ministry outside of their husbands. And this of course is the catch of what I say in my subtitle. how marriage replaced ordination as a woman's path to ministry. And that I think is where the pastor's wife role needs to shift. We interviewed a friend of my wife who is a woman pastor and she's a big fan of your work. It's actually funny because like when we decided to have her on, I kept calling her like a friend of my wife and she's like, you know, I went to your wedding, right? I was like, really? I was like, the whole day was a blur. Like, I'm sorry. But she was heavily influenced by your work, Nijay Gupta's work. yeah. She runs a church. name is Pastor Amanda Clark. Great, great person. And I just remember her telling me stuff about how she does church or how it's different than if she were a man, such as meeting with congregants. She had talked about, you know, I needed to talk to this one gentleman. He didn't feel comfortable talking with me. alone in my office. So like, you know, we went and had coffee at some public outdoor, you know, place and I'm just like, really? Like, that just seems so so wrong. And it just sort of goes to show that, like powerful women, like, like, still have to struggle with just all the misogyny and everything else. And this is my last question. And towards the end of the show. And I didn't send this question to you, so hopefully, like, feel free to answer it or don't answer it. But I'd love to get your hot take on another powerful woman that's been in the news lately. My wife. No, No, she is a powerful woman. But the one I'm talking about is the Episcopal bishop, Marian Edgar Booth, buddy? B- yeah, B-O-D-D-E, right? yeah, yeah, yeah. know, and for those that are unfamiliar, she gave a sermon, some cathedral in DC recently. The last like two or three minutes of her, made a personal plea to Trump to show grace to, you know, like a couple of different groups. So I'd love to just get your hot take. mean, it seems like your hot take would probably be the hottest take out there, to be honest, but I love to. Love to hear what you got to say. Yeah, so I mean, I, my hot take, I guess of that is that she was doing exactly what a pastor is supposed to do. And that is that she felt called by God to deliver this, she was in this position where she could call on this political figure to have mercy and compassion. And that is very much, know, I mean, I saw a lot of people, they're like, that's not the role of a pastor. And I'm like, really? It isn't to actually urge people to follow the teachings of Christ and to urge goodness in our broader world. This is exactly what pastors are called to do. But I also am my other, you know, hot take with it is if she had been a man. I suspect the pushback against her would have been much less and it also would have not been as hateful. Part of the reason that she got so much hate and is still getting that hate is simply because she is a female body exercising pastoral authority and extending that pastoral authority that she has over a man. And in fact, my favorite image was her holding her bishop's crozier. which is that shepherd's crook while she was standing next to Trump. And I was like, that's it. And that is also the image that our world, you know, doesn't, isn't as comfortable with, is a woman holding the symbol of pastoral authority. Yeah, I agree. It's funny, Josh and I were just talking about that thing we were talking about, about the bishop. And, you know, I told Josh, yeah, no problem with the message, no problem with, you know, the messenger. It's like, but I've been in those church services where you're like, I feel like that pastor is talking to me, you know? But like this pastor, he used my name. He used my full social security number. you know, like, so like, I'm just like, maybe maybe the location could have been different. I mean, I don't know, as an anti person, I'm just like, hey, I'll take what I can get. You know, I mean, it's, I think this also is the complexity of the pastoral role. There's a lot of pastors out there who really feel they're like, hey, we actually, we're just here about the spiritual stuff and we're not trying to buck the water. not, you know, we want everybody in our congregation, all sides to be here and to listen to us. So we're just, you know, we're just going to preach love and justice and well, not justice, but we're just gonna, you know, whatever and have really what I would call, you know, light sermons that make people feel good about themselves or maybe give a little bit of urging to do whatever. And, you know, that's all, or call out the things that we really like to harp on, you know, with stuff, you know, like any pastor can stand up and give a whole sermon on the danger of pornography and everybody's going like, you know, and that sort of stuff. And so there's certain things that you can talk about and that you can get or, you know, standing up and saying the problem with the world is the power of Satan. And so let's all be anti-Satan. We can all be anti-Satan, right, and anti-demons because everybody agrees that demons are bad. So, you know, you can do things like that and everybody's on your side. But when you get into those areas of justice and and especially social justice, that makes people uncomfortable. And people have, and I think those are the sermons that make people more uncomfortable. But you know what, we have biblical examples of people in pastoral authority doing this type of thing. mean, Nathan and David, you are the man, is what Nathan said to David. You can also think about the prophets of the Old Testament. I just recently taught through the minor prophets of the Old Testament, I said in school class. And if you talk about pastoral people giving messages that make people very uncomfortable. I mean, just go read the Minor Prophets. Nobody liked what they had to say because they were calling out on social injustice. that? Anyway, they were. job. It's okay. It's fine. my anyway, I don't know why it's so loud. But anyway, that social justice. Yeah. Okay, so let's sell some books. can people find this book and make you rich and famous? So Becoming the Pastor's Wife releases March 18th and it is, I think is, I'm sorry. It's a just say, you can say for your audience that my parents are bringing my child home and that's what's causing my dog to bark. So, you know, there we are. But it releases on March 18th. You can find it anywhere that books are sold. For those of you who read the Making a Biblical Womanhood, I think this will be a very natural follow-up that answers some of the questions that I left unsaid. That's really awesome. thanks again, Beth. This has been really, really amazing. We love talking to you. Wish you nothing but success in your publisher, Brazos Press. They are pretty amazing. yeah, thanks for joining us again. Yeah, and to our audience, hey, thanks for stopping by. And remember, keep your conversations not right or left, but up. And we'll talk to you later. Bye-bye.