A Pastor and a Philosopher Walk into a Bar

Adding to the Good Pile: Women's Ordination and the Role of the Pastor's Wife with Beth Allison Barr

• Randy Knie & Kyle Whitaker • Season 5 • Episode 19

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How did the role of "pastor's wife" replace ordination for women in church history? Is the news that there was women's ordination in church history hitting you unexpectedly right now? It's cool, we get it; take a moment and come back when you're ready.

Historian and actual pastor's wife Beth Allison Barr returns for a potentially revelatory conversation about her latest book, Becoming the Pastor's Wife: How Marriage Replaced Ordination as a Woman's Path to Ministry. Drawing from extensive research, including archival discoveries and reading 150 pastor's wife books/manuals (yes, that's a real genre), Beth uncovers how the glorification of this role coincided with efforts to restrict women's ordination.

This interview weaves eye-opening historical findings with deeply personal experiences. Beth shares stories of pastors' wives—herself included—being treated as church property, essentially an extension of her husband and his ministry rather than a full person. These aren't isolated incidents; they are systematic experiences faced by countless pastors' wives who are expected to provide unpaid ministerial labor while supporting their husband's careers.

Perhaps most striking is the historical evidence that women served in virtually every ministry role men did for the first thousand years of Christianity—including as deacons, bishops, and preachers. The rise of complementarian theology—spoiler warning if you're not a regular listener of this podcast—is a modern development that deliberately ignores this rich history.

While Beth doesn't shy away from the harm these practices have caused, she leaves us with hope borrowed from Doctor Who's beloved Van Gogh episode: while we can't undo past damage, we can "add to the good pile" by recognizing the truth, stopping harmful practices, and building a better future where women's gifts are fully welcomed in ministry. This is a conversation that will challenge your understanding of church history and inspire you to imagine new possibilities for what the church could be.

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Cheers!

Beth:

We can't undo all of these horrible things, and since I wrote the book, in fact today, I got an email from someone who told me her story and I was actually in the archives and I just had to stop and sit down because her story was so terrible, what happened to her in an SBC church, and we can't change the trauma that was caused to all of these women. There's nothing that can be done. But what we can do is we can try to add to the good pile of the church. We can try to not undo the damage that we've done, but to not keep doing that harm, to stop now and to start making it better for women moving forward. And so it was the only way that I could think about bringing hope into the story was, like you know, was recognizing. We can't change the horrible things we've done. What we can do is recognize them, stop and then see if we can change things moving forward.

Randy:

I'm Randy, the pastor, half of the podcast, and my friend Kyle is a philosopher. This podcast hosts conversations at the intersection of philosophy theology and spirituality.

Kyle:

We also invite experts to join us, making public a space that we've often enjoyed off-air, around the proverbial table, with a good drink in the back corner of a dark pub Thanks for who is now my wife, sarah and I.

Randy:

But we were having an intense conversation about basically whether or not we want to get married and I. But we were having an intense conversation about basically whether or not we want to get married and one of my distinct memories of that conversation was her throwing her mitten at me. We live in the Midwest and it was cold out. But one of the things that she said the reason that she didn't want to get married to me was, she said, I don't want to be a pastor's wife. And I was like what? That's why you don't like you literally might not get married to me because you don't want to be a pastor's wife. She's like, yeah, you want to start a church and I think you should. You're called into it, you're gifted for it, you should go do that, but marrying you means becoming a pastor's wife and I'm not ready for that in my life. I'm not ready for we know what it means to be a pastor's wife and as my current wife, now just about 20 years, was looking at me and facing down that future, she said that's not the future that I want.

Randy:

And I remember the feeling of like holy shit, that's real. But then I remember talking to her and having a lot of conversations through the last two decades of we don't have to do it that way, right, like we can do this differently. We can. You don't have to be that kind of pastor's wife. As a matter of fact, you don't have to be a pastor's wife at all. You can just be Sarah and that's perfect. But this is the kind of thing that women are facing when they're talking about, when we're talking about being a woman in the church and when you're talking about how do I exist in the church and how do I serve in the church and lead in the church and be myself in the church and be who I feel like God's called me to be in the church? We're talking to Beth Allison Barr today about her new book called Becoming the Pastor's Wife how Marriage Replaced Ordination as a Woman's Path to Ministry, and it's a really, really interesting book, I think.

Kyle:

Yeah, that's a fascinating story. Thank you for sharing that. That's really good. We need to talk to Sarah because I want to know what changed and how it can be different. Totally.

Kyle:

Yeah, samantha's so great, it's so good to catch up with her and talk to her again and to explore this new book, which is very much of a piece with the last one, but a lot more personal. I think it shows she's developed a depth of thought about this. She's done a ton of research about this and it comes from a lot of experience, because she is a pastor's wife in addition to being a wonderful historian, and so this is a really excellent book and a really good conversation. I hesitated there because all of our previous conversations with Beth have been fun. We talked to her solo.

Kyle:

We talked to her with Scott McKnight. Every time it was fun. There was a weight to this one. She's still herself, still fun, still fun. But there's an undercurrent to this topic and to the world right now.

Randy:

Frankly, that makes this urgent and serious and so go into it knowing that, yeah, and I want to say, as Beth will say, you'll hear, it doesn't have to be this way. Yeah. It remarkably, not remarkably, it profoundly and depressingly is this way in most, in vast majority of Protestant churches. But it doesn't have to be this way. We can change that narrative, we can change the story, and people like Beth make me hopeful that we are actually changing the narrative and changing the story for women in the church. Beth, how are you?

Beth:

Good to see y'all again.

Randy:

Yes, I'm pretty sure this is extending your record of appearances by guests on our podcast. So congratulations.

Kyle:

It's either you or Scott. I think it's Beth, yeah.

Randy:

Beth, the new book is Becoming the Pastor's Wife and I think I saw on Twitter a long time ago because you don't tweet so much anymore, right?

Beth:

Oh no, good for you, I deleted my account.

Randy:

Yeah, yeah, good on you. By the way, is this kind of like part two in a series or is this a standalone book?

Beth:

okay, yes, no, no. So when I agreed to write a second book, um, I said I would write a second book if I could write a third book oh so I actually am hard at work on the third book already, and then that will be my trilogy.

Randy:

Okay, all right. Should we save the third book in the trilogy for the end of the conversation?

Kyle:

Are you willing to tell us anything about it?

Beth:

If so, we'll ask about it later. Okay, yeah, let's save that. Yeah, certainly, I'm actually. I think it'll be. I'm writing it already, because I actually started working on it when I started working on the Pastor's Wife book, so it's in progress, okay well stay tuned, listeners.

Randy:

It's been a while since we've talked. A lot of things have happened in the world. A lot of things have happened, you know, to you. Your book exploded and then all the Theobros found it and chased you away from Twitter and all the things.

Beth:

All the things. Yeah, you know, you know I didn't leave Twitter. I don't know how much you. I left Twitter over the Southern Baptist Convention. That was actually what it was. It was when they put out the doxing list in 2023, they put out they first introduced the law amendment, which is the amendment that says that women cannot be in any sort of pastoral positions, and they released a list that they posted on the Baptist Standard website that included the pictures of female pastors and their addresses to their churches, and I was very upset about that and I got them to take that down. And that was when they all went after me and I was just like, yeah, I'm done. So it was quite a thing. And that was actually also the same month that I ran into the story that I found the story that I tell in Becoming the Pastor's Wife about the pastor's wife named Maria, which I found her story in the Southern Baptist. So I was sort of like done with the Southern Baptist Convention in June 2023.

Randy:

It's remarkable that it took you till June of 2023 to be done with SBC. She's so gracious, she's so gracious, yeah.

Beth:

Gracious person you know I keep hoping that people will be better.

Kyle:

Yeah, same.

Randy:

Yep, yep. So tell us, beth, about Becoming the Pastor's Wife. Your books to me, these last two seem. I love the balance of personal and historian. There's both of them very much in the book and it's almost impossible to divorce one from the other, and that's what I think makes your book so powerful. So can you tell us where this book came from, what you're trying to do with it?

Beth:

Yeah, sure. So when I wrote the Making of Biblical Womanhood, it was really a one-off. I saw it as a one-off that I was going to do a last-ditch effort, try to see if we could help move the needle on this conversation on women in the church, and then I was going to go back to academia and I never thought the book would take off the way that it did. So when it took off the way that it did and everything exploded and my life changed. So when it took off the way that it did and everything exploded and my life changed and I started thinking about doing another book, it was actually Scott who encouraged me to do another book. I reached out to him and I was like Scott, I don't think I can. I don't want to ever do this again. This was just like awful. And he said OK, beth, I get that. But he said but if you left something unsaid in the making of biblical womanhood, you have a. You know you've been given here a platter that you can write. You can say what you left unsaid. And he said so it's your chance if you want to take it.

Beth:

And what I had left unsaid in the making of biblical womanhood was what happened to women's ordination, and so so I started thinking about that, and then I was simultaneously reading one of my colleague in religion department here, a woman named Betsy Flowers, who's actually currently writing a book on complementarianism, so you might look out for that one.

Beth:

But she wrote this great book called Into the Pulpit Southern Baptist Women in Power in the Post-World War II Era, and in it she's talking about the rise of the conservative takeover of the SBC in the 1970s, and she highlights that some of the most vocal voices on the front lines pushing against women's ordination were pastor's wives. And that really caught my attention as a pastor's wife myself, and I started thinking about how the role of the pastor's wife was a part of the decline of women's ordination. And so that was where this book really started, and it was a story I didn't know. It was like I had these two pieces and I was like my gut tells me these fit together somehow, but I don't really know how, and so I started chasing it down.

Kyle:

Yeah, there are probably some listeners already who heard you say the decline of women's ordination and they're like wait a second in order for something to decline. It had to have existed. Yes, what are you talking about? Let's dig into that. So give us a general idea of the sorts of things that women were up to in ministry before the common era, where it's hard to imagine that they were ever actually ordained.

Beth:

Now, if I can still Nije Gupta's phrase, women were doing everything men were doing and they were serving in every ministry role that men were serving in. And this is really about the first thousand years of Christianity. Women, of course, were less. There were fewer of them serving in these roles. They often faced more obstacles Imagine that women facing more obstacles than men. But they still were doing it and they were recognized as doing it. You know, we have evidence all the way up through the 8th century that women were serving at the altar in clerical roles. You know, this is something people all the time they're like. Name me one time that women were serving at the altar in ordained roles.

Kyle:

Wrong question. Buddy, I can name you a lot of times actually.

Beth:

There's a lot of evidence for this and so, all the way up through the 8th century, we know that women were serving in roles at the altar.

Beth:

We know that this started in the early church, because we have inscription, we have evidence, depiction evidence that women were at the altar with men, conscription, we have evidence, depiction evidence that women were at the altar with men. And we also know that women were serving in roles, as you know, essentially as preachers, evangelists, missionaries, as well as in clerical roles like bishop and so you know, and that they were being ordained into these roles. In this book I tell a story of one woman that was a pretty common story and she was ordained by the Archbishop of Canterbury into this ecclesiastical role and she's depicted with the symbol of the authority of a bishop, which is the crozier, which is the shepherd's hook, and you'll see images of women all the time carrying these shepherd hooks. And it's not just a fun image, it actually means something. It means that these women were recognized with the power of being a shepherd, an overseer, a bishop, a pastor.

Randy:

So when your book Becoming the Pastor's Wife is littered with these examples throughout history and how historians are confident, and why historians are confident that women were serving in these roles in the first thousand years of the church.

Randy:

But I'm imagining that there's I'm going to mention the Theobros a few times in this conversation, because they're out to get you and they're out to get us with this conversation, I think. And the response would be well, first of all, how do you know right? And then the you know, they forget that they're actually talking to a real life historian. But second of all, they'll say well, the scriptures don't justify that, so I don't care. You know, what are your, what is your, what would you say is a good way to think about this juxtaposition between what we find in the scriptures and what we see within church history? Beth?

Beth:

Yeah.

Beth:

So I mean, we've actually done this on this podcast before, where we talked about Bible translations podcast before, where we talked about Bible translations, and we actually know that some of the reasons why we don't recognize women serving in the same types of roles as men is because English Bible translations have intentionally minimized what women are doing and so, instead of them calling women by the same titles, that we see men like Phoebe, who is a deacon, junia, who is an apostle, all of those women in Romans 16 who are clearly church house church leaders, lydia, who is a house church leader, and even, like Martha you know, this is a story that I find works really well with undergraduate students is we talk about the story of Mary and Martha and I ask them what the work is that Martha's doing, and they're all like well, she's cleaning the house and she's cooking dinner, et cetera, et cetera.

Beth:

And so then we look at the word that is used to describe Martha's ministry and the word is the same word that diakonos. It's the same word that's used to describe the ministry of Paul and the other disciples, and the only reason that we turn her into a housewife is because, number one, she's presiding over the table. But that's actually in her role as a householder. It's not in her role as the person who was cooking the dinner.

Beth:

It's because she's the head of the household, which also changes the dynamics of what she's doing, and then also because we have imagined that the work that women do must be housework, it must be domestic, and so we have added that to the biblical text, instead of seeing a woman who was probably one of the 70, one of the disciples that was sent out by Jesus it certainly is possible that she was part of that group and who was doing, whose ministry work is described in the same way as the ministry work of men. So I would say, let's open our eyes and look at the Bible and see that women are doing everything that men are doing.

Beth:

If you're looking, yeah, if you're looking, yeah, and once you see it, yeah. If you're looking, yeah.

Randy:

And once you see it, you can't unsee it. And you even say in this book explicitly, like I'm not saying that Paul was egalitarian. I'm not trying to make that case right.

Beth:

No, egalitarian is a modern concept, just like complementarian is a modern concept. Really, I think the best scholar on this right now is Susan Hyland, and she has a couple of great books, one just on women in early Christianity and then another more popular level book called Finding Phoebe. And Finding Phoebe is fantastic because what she kind of talks through. She says look, what is keeping some women from being able to serve in roles like men is not actually their gender, it is usually their class or their education level and so the barriers. So, yes, there are some women. You know, 1 Timothy 2 is a prime example.

Beth:

There are some women who are not acting in the way that they're supposed to in church and are teaching out of bounds. But the problem isn't that they're women, the problem is that they have not learned what they are supposed to before. They don't have the authority yet to speak out. And so Paul says you know, sit down and shut up until you've learned. But this is the same thing that we see happening with Prisca and Aquila. That's what they do with Apollos. They take Apollos aside and they're like hey, you're actually not teaching right, you've got to learn from us before you can go out and teach more. So this is a common theme that we see and somehow we have taken that idea and made it gendered and said that all women can't teach, whereas all men can. And you know, just those examples I gave you of Prisca and Aquila and Apollos, as well as what we see happening with the women in 1 Timothy 2, shows us that this isn't a gendered thing. This is about people having the knowledge and gain the credibility to teach.

Randy:

Thank you.

Kyle:

Yeah, I loved that insight in the book I think that was in the chapter two that the Bible isn't egalitarian, but neither is it purely patriarchal, neither is it complicated? Because that's all anachronistic right and it's a complicated book. We come back to this constantly in our own conversations and on the podcast, like it was written by complicated people in complicated times with complex social relationships, and those people didn't always agree with each other, and so what we have is, you know, in some cases an ongoing conversation in our hands, and this is one of the things they probably didn't all agree about right, and it would be kind of foolish to think that Paul would have as advanced views about gender and women you know, as we do, extremely foolish, yeah, so why would we expect anything else?

Beth:

Paul is sort of a practical person, he, I think. I think he uses what he has you know sort of that principle of missionology.

Beth:

You know you use what you have to get done, what needs to get done, and so Paul used the people who were around him, regardless. And so I mean, I think that's really what we see with Paul. He's just like, okay, this person, this woman, has the influence, the money and the belief. Go do it, phoebe, take that book, because you have the ability to do it. And so I think you know he did live in a patriarchal culture and he certainly would have imbued those patriarchal characteristics, and we see some of that coming out in the text. But it's not the only story we see, and I think that's what you know. We also see him sending Phoebe, and so you can't argue for one without the other. They are both there.

Randy:

Yeah.

Kyle:

That's so crucial yeah.

Randy:

So we've jumped in immediately in the deep end to the biblical reflection stuff and studies. But the book is called Becoming the Pastor's Wife. Many people everyone listening hopefully knows that you're a historian from Baylor University Brilliant but not everybody also knows that you're also a pastor's wife.

Beth:

I am.

Randy:

And you litter this. Every chapter starts with a personal story or a story of somebody that you've connected with another pastor's wife and I love them. I mean and by I love them I mean like you're a great storyteller and these are insane stories, some of them, my two favorites being the one where you were engaged and a woman- talked about you know, and then I would tell you her name, but I'm not going to say her name.

Randy:

Oh good, I still know her name you her name, but I'm not going to say it. I still know her name. The other one would be you talking about your roles within the home and how you and some pastor's wives would actually say I do this even though I don't do that, because you want to kind of fit the status quo and what they expect of a pastor's wife. Can you just tell us a story or two? Our listeners about what it's been to be a pastor's wife.

Beth:

Yeah, so I mean, you know this is the thing is that I have I have always been a pastor's wife, while I've always been an academic. Those two things have gone together. I started graduate school 10 days after I got married to someone who was starting seminary at the same time and then, within six weeks of us living in North Carolina, became a youth pastor and actually had already been a pastor in Waco when we first started dating. So my whole life alongside him has been in part of pastoral ministry, and so this is something that I started experiencing very early on, as soon as I got engaged to him these assumptions that began to be made about who I would be and what I should do. And so you know, I tell the one story about the first woman who told me that I belonged to him, and even then, even as a, you know, I was barely 21. I was too young to get married but whatever but.

Beth:

I was, you know evangelicals. Yeah, I know I'm sorry. It worked out for us so there you go, but we don't tell our kids, we tell our kids. We were, like you know, 29.

Randy:

We were 45.

Beth:

We were like we're really old, but anyway, um we uh. It was the first time I'd been told that I belonged to somebody and that just even then that struck me as really and so it's clear for the listener not in like a sweet lovey-dovey way, like a property kind of it was just.

Beth:

It was like you are, you know you are engaged to him and so you are now part of you are, so you are now part of, you are now, you are now his and you are now part, you know, of what he's doing and his ministry. And it was. It was a weird thing to sit on me, but I soon realized that not only were those assumptions that I was part of the job description wherever he went, but also that the church could ask me questions, like about when I was going to have children, and I would have people who would come up to me and like put their hands and I'm actually not a real touchy person, I'm just not that way anyway and so it would be weird for me for people to come up and like think they could put their hands on my stomach and ask me if I was expecting, or when I was going to be expecting, or why wasn't I expecting yet. And it was just, you know, and they didn't do this to other women, it was because I belong to the church, so to speak.

Beth:

And this is a story. My story is very similar to many other pastor's wives. In fact, I've heard from so many pastor's wives who have read this book who are like that's me, that's me, that's me. And then also I read 150 pastor's wife books in research for this book, and so I can tell you that this also just isn't me, that these are the assumptions for this book, and so I can tell you that this also just isn't me, that these are the assumptions that churches have about the female spouses of their male ministers, that these women are part of the job, and that includes even their bodies.

Kyle:

Yeah, can I just ask and this might sound half-jokey, but I'm kind of serious why 150? It seems like somewhere around 76 or so you might have thought.

Beth:

I've got an idea we could have kept going, because they really start picking up in the 90s and the early 2000s and now they're just kind of like this exploding genre.

Beth:

But we decide and I'm saying we because I had two research assistants who worked with me we decided to do a century. At first we were actually going to go all the way back to the 17th century because there are some pastor's, wives sort of texts, but I quickly realized that first of all, those texts were different, they were very different, and that I couldn't do all of that. And so I decided to give it a good century where we could see change across, where I could talk about what's happening at the beginning and then follow it all the way up through to the modern era. And so the 150 actually wasn't an intentional number, it's just kind of that's what it you know that was. I was like, okay, we've got to, we've got to cut it off here at 2024. And and this was, it was a not, it was the number that we were at, so we just cut it off, yeah.

Randy:

I could have kept building, god bless you. And we just cut it off. I could have kept building it. God bless you. And that just puts on display. I mean, I think many people who might read this, or listeners, would think, okay, this is kind of an old idea, right, the pastor's wife being the property of the church and she belongs to all of us. But there are books, as we speak, coming out that are written to pastor's wives for how you be a proper pastor's wife, correct?

Beth:

Absolutely, absolutely, and they are actually becoming well okay. There are actually some that are becoming much more reasonable. So, like I recently spoke with a group of pastor's wives called the Pastor's Wives Tell All, and they have a book that came out that actually is a pretty reasonable pastor's wife book, where they're, you know, they talk about the reality of it, but they talk about it in a much more like hey, this isn't something that all women should be doing. You know it's I really, anyway, I found it to be.

Beth:

it's one that I actually recommend when pastor's wives are like I found it to be it's one that I actually recommend when pastors, wives, are like I need something to help me and I'm like this one's actually OK, you can read this one. So there's some of those, but there also are, especially in these more conservative circles, complementarian, especially with the focus that God calls women specifically to be in this subordinate, helpmate role and that if you do anything else that detracts from that role, that it's sinful. And that message got stronger and stronger as we moved across 2000 and even up through 2010. That's really where you see the strongest of this message, and I would like to point out to people that this is also when John Piper is in his glory and when the height, I suppose the Southern Baptist Convention is at its height. It's over 16 million by 2007. And so this is sort of like the glory days of the complementarian movement, I suppose, when everyone seems to be getting on board with it.

Randy:

So this isn't a question in the outline, but in whatever. Do what you want with it, beth, but you weren't always. If I'm remembering our conversations in your books correctly, you weren't always an egalitarian, correct?

Beth:

Yeah, I mean, you know I talk about this in the Making a Biblical Womanhood, that it wasn't. You know, I was a teenager in the late 80s and the early 90s and this is where this shift is happening in churches. So I actually still knew the model that there were women present and women active and doing things in churches and there were not. You know, there wasn't. It wasn't like all women were called to this type of submissive role and it certainly wasn't the role, the model I saw in my home growing up. So when you know, I always tell people that the Danvers Statement came out in 1987. I didn't know it came out in 1987. I was, you know, I was a junior high kid in rural Texas and I didn't know about the Danvers Statement.

Beth:

It took a while for this to actually catch on and for it to start to get into the water of churches, and so I was kind of at the very beginning of that movement, and so it really wasn't until the late 90s, early 2000s that I began to hear words like biblical womanhood, complementarian, and then sort of it was this idea.

Beth:

It's like, well, yeah, I guess. So I guess that's right, because the Bible seems to say that and I hadn't you know, and so it seemed to make sense, but it also wasn't something that you know. Especially after I got married, you know, I had my little brief encounter with the Bill Gothard movement which I talk about, which even then seemed really deep and scary to me and I was like, well, those people are really far out and but that's not what normal people are doing. So it wasn't until later that I began to realize that that fringe movement that we see with Bill Gothard was actually moving into mainline, into main evangelical spaces, and was really starting to take that over, to grow over time as I watched this movement grow roots and the implications of this movement becoming more clear, and that was also when I started to become increasingly uncomfortable with it.

Randy:

Yeah, I asked because I'm a white dude right, so I'm like kind of centered in all the conversations and you know I don't have to have any issues with the way our society is structured, because it's all structured for me, it works for you. It works for me very well, right yeah?

Randy:

But it fascinates me when we see you know in the faith tradition that we are a part of collectively. When you see women who do what you said you did, which, it was like well, it wasn't really a thing. And then when it became a thing with biblical womanhood, I was just like well, I guess. So it's the same thing. When I see people like Candace Owens saying what she says about race in America, I'm just like how.

Randy:

How does that happen? So maybe just help me out. What is that like as a young woman who's hearing this stuff? You grew up in the church. You want to be obedient and faithful, blah, blah, yada, yada, yada. And all of a sudden some people start saying you can't do things because you're a woman and you just kind of are like okay, how does that feel? Do you think it through? Can you tell me that process a little bit?

Beth:

You know I think part of you know this is part of it is like for me I did not feel called to ordained ministry. I never wanted to be a pastor, I wanted to be a professor and and so, and as long as my husband was on board with that, especially in the early churches we were in, it was a little weird to have me in a PhD program, but people weren't like, oh, that's not something you should do, and so I wasn't hitting, especially in those early churches, when we were still in North Carolina, those churches actually didn't have a problem with me teaching Sunday school or even teaching adult classes, and so I wasn't hitting barriers. It was something where, you know, I was uncomfortable with some of this theology as I learned more about it and as I began to also see it from the perspective of a historian through my graduate work. But I also wasn't hitting barriers in the church, and so it really it wasn't, until we moved into a different church that became increasingly hyper-complementarian and suddenly I began to hit walls. I mean, unfortunately, this is often what it takes. People don't realize the impact of these ideas until they start hitting them. And when I started hitting them and I realized how arbitrary they were, and then you start looking at the theology behind them and you're like wait, this doesn't make any sense. That is when I began and began thinking about it, and then when I began hearing from other women who were really hitting walls, and I was like this is just not right, and so I mean, I think part of it is that some of these women, they're able to do everything that they want to do within these churches, and you can think about this with the pastor's wife role.

Beth:

I mean, there are many women who the pastor's wife role affords them. It affords them authority, it affords them the ability to have influence, to be able, you know, in many spaces they're able to have pretty significant influence, especially in women's ministries. They're able to do the things that perhaps they feel called to do, and so when people come to them and are like, hey, your church doesn't support women in ministry, they're like, of course they do. Look at me, and the problem, of course, though, is that they're not getting paid for that job, and their presence as a unpaid, unofficial woman in a role that is safely under male authority is that that is also negatively impacting women who feel called to independent, ordained professional roles. So I think some of it is just ignorance. I think some of it is willfully not wanting to see because it's not hurting me, and if I push this it's going to hurt me. And so I think sometimes motivating people to look out for the interests of others is challenging.

Randy:

Yeah, and patriarchal spaces that prop up complementarian theology probably are not going to be very welcoming to a woman asking questions about why can't I do some certain things right?

Beth:

Yeah, and you can get your husband fired. I mean, I'm a poster child of that and for lots of women, you know, I hear that all the time they worry about getting their husbands fired. I mean, that to me shows an unhealthy environment when a woman is worried that what she posts on Facebook is going to get her husband fired. But that's the reality for so many of these women in these spaces. That's, that's the reality for so many of these women in these spaces, and so they're afraid to speak out because, um it, it will cost their husbands their job.

Kyle:

Yep yep yeah I know how that feels. It's funny. I was telling my wife she asked me what the book was about that we were talking about tonight and I told her and she was like oh, is sarah gonna be on the podcast? That's randy's wife and she's like you should totally bring her in for like a Q&A after and ask her about all that unpaid labor.

Beth:

Yes, Yep, I thought about it. We could probably have a really good conversation.

Randy:

She's with some friends tonight, but it would have been fun for you two, Beth and my wife Sarah, to compare some stories. Yes, yeah.

Kyle:

I was really taken aback by that blissful, unaware naive me like how much widespread just this forthright norm that pastor's wives are unpaid labor in so many churches that that's just expected when the dude applies for the job. If he has a wife who can be that he's more likely to get the job than the guy who doesn't or the guy whose wife isn't willing right, that's like you're definitely not going to and that's just shocking to me.

Beth:

Yeah, I mean, I told the story of my friend who's you know. The church flat out told her that her husband was in the running for the job, was the you know, the top candidate. Until they talked to her yeah, because she was like I can't really do anything to help y'all. Yeah.

Beth:

You know, I don't feel called to ministry and they were like, oh well, your husband's out. Then they were like, oh well, your husband's out then. And I mean it's you know it's insane. But it's also like, yeah, this happens all the time and which shows, you know, it's just, it's an insane model for hiring, for hiring positions.

Kyle:

Yep, yeah, totally. You said another thing that I wanted to follow up on. You used an important word, a heavy word. You said arbitrary, when you were referring to a lot of these restrictions. That's a word we don't throw around in philosophy because it's a fighting word. So back that up a little bit. Give us a historical case for how some of these complementarian restrictions are arbitrary.

Beth:

Okay, sure I'll give you one of my favorite examples that I talk about in the book. She's a woman who's become close to my heart because, as you know, I'm no longer a faculty in residence at Baylor, but last time y'all talked to me, I still was living on campus with a whole bunch of undergrads and the residence hall I lived in was Dawson Residence Hall. And, lo and behold, when I started researching this book and I was in the Southern Baptist Convention archives and I was going through the Pastors' Wives material that I lived in for six years, staring at me and her name was JM Dawson, willie Dawson, and she became the. She was named for the Pastor's Wife of the Year Award essentially is what it is which they started giving out the first one that they gave out was in 1959, and then they named it after her in 1963. So awesome, yeah. So I mean, it's this great story. And Dorothy Patterson, in 2006, nominated a woman named, oh, draper I forgot her first name, yeah.

Beth:

But, anyway, she nominated her for the role and she said the reason that she deserved the Pastor's Wife Award was because she was such a supportive spouse and because she worked behind the scenes to help her husband's ministry flourish. And in fact, on her resume that she submitted as part of the materials for the Pastor's Wife Award, she described her education as having a PhD, which she spelled out as put hubby through.

Beth:

And so you can see, you know, in 2006, the pastor's wife award was given to the ideal biblical woman the woman who supports the ministry of her husband and, in the words of Dorothy Patterson, holds the ladder for him to climb, when Willie Dawson was a pastor's wife, and when the award was named for Willie Dawson, willie Dawson was the pastor's wife of First Baptist Church of Waco, a man named JM Dawson, who was a very popular pastor in where I live now.

Beth:

They decided to name the award for her, not because of her role in First Baptist Waco, but because of her role on the national and international scene, where she actually preached internationally. She preached for the Baptist World Alliance as well as for another international congregation of Baptists, and she also went on tours nationally as well as within Texas, where she preached regularly in front of large audiences, often on issues of missions and raising money for missions. And she was one of the national leaders of the WMU, the Women's Missionary Organization. And she was so well known and effective nationally in the Southern Baptist Convention that they nominated her in the 1930s to be vice president of the Southern Baptist Convention, and so I think this just shows, you know, the rules about what you are to be as a pastor's wife changed dramatically from the 1960s to the early 2000s.

Beth:

Yeah, which is what you would never imagine from the 1960s to the early 2000s, yeah, which is what you would never imagine, right? Yeah, you would imagine the 1930s women to be much less public and much less sort of you know, able to preach on an international level. So that's what I mean by arbitrary. You know the rules about what it means to be a pastor's wife. Suddenly, for really almost no you know why suddenly these women were told that the best thing was not to do the ministry that God has called you to do, but it was to support your husband.

Randy:

Yes. So speaking of arbitrary, that word arbitrary makes me think of like maybe it was accidental, right, and I don't remember if I saw this in the book, beth, but where do you think this idea that you, you know, like, make a great case for in the book, that the pastor's wife role has kind of become this way to diminish women and to like seem like we're highlighting them but not pay them, not honor them?

Randy:

and not give a vocation and an office and a role to other women, right yeah, their suits in their 1970s, 1970s, and they're conspiring. It's like a cabal and they're conspiring. How do we suppress women? I know what it is. Let's make them all pastor's wives and blah, blah, blah. You know, was it that extreme or was it like accidental, or was it somewhere in between?

Beth:

So I'm not sure how far off you are.

Kyle:

There actually does seem to have been some of. There was a room. I can smell it yeah no-transcript.

Beth:

You know, scott McKnight told us last time about a car ride that he had where he overheard. You know this intentional like to get a hold of the revised standard version to actually read, to change it to emphasize gender roles. I mean that happened, and so we do see these men in leadership positions in the Southern Baptist world, but also in sort of these parallel spaces, these evangelical parallel spaces that are getting together and are concerned about women's authority within the church and within broader society. And so I would say that there's a few triggering factors for this. I would say one of them is actually something that I really want somebody to take and go write a whole dissertation on, because I want to know the whole story about how the decline in women's ordination connects with the redefinition of ordination in the US because of changing tax laws.

Beth:

I am an economic historian, that's where I started off, and so I was so fascinated by this that it's not until the late 1950s and the 1960s where the IRS is like you've got to define what it means to be a clergy if you want to get the clergy tax credit. You can't just say I'm clergy and get the clergy tax credit, and so they said you have to have criteria. And so when they listed those criteria, what we immediately see is that Southern Baptist is like oh, let's make everybody fit that criteria so that everybody can get the clergy tax credit. And I don't think what they thought about was the fact that when they made everybody able to get that criteria, it meant women too, especially because women, with the coming down of sort of the educational barriers and some of the legal barriers, we see women moving into theological training and moving into training to want to be pastors themselves, and that meant that they would now be eligible not just for the clergy tax credit but to be ordained. And so it's not a surprise to me that in this immediate aftermath, all of a sudden the Southern Baptist Convention is like wait a minute, you know, we know this, you can look at the resolutions and in the early 1970s, one guy stands up and he's like let's make an exception and say everyone can be ordained except for women. And this is really the first time we see this.

Beth:

And so I would say that there was fear that women were moving into these male spaces. We also know that this is the rise of the ERA, the Equal Rights Amendment, and we know that conservative women were on the forefront of fighting against the Equal Rights Amendment, and part of this battle was happening in churches, in which churches were saying that if women get equal rights, it's going to destroy the family. And it's not a surprise that part of this that women getting equal rights would also allow more women to become ordained and to become pastors. And so we see this backlash to women's ordination and the push for the highest ministry calling for women to become pastor's wives happens in the midst of this fight to push women out, you know, to say women can't be ordained and get the clergy tax credit as well as women.

Beth:

You know we don't want the ERA to pass as women. You know we don't want the ERA to pass. And so you see, and it's exactly in this moment that this glorified role of the pastor's wife is born and we start to see you know this idea that not only is she an important role in the church, but she's the highest ministry calling for women and women who feel like they're called to do ministry. They're not being called to be preachers, they're being called to marry preachers. This is where you start hearing that phrase that if you're called to ministry, you're called to marry a minister.

Randy:

Yeah, and there are literally, you cite this, I think Southwestern, your husband's alma mater, right, there are literally seminaries that teach classes and programs on how to be the pastor's wife.

Beth:

Exactly when this happens.

Beth:

So those classes, those curriculum, it all goes together.

Beth:

We start seeing in the early 80s a shift in the pastor's wife books that start emphasizing this subordinate role, more so than just the man is the head of the household but in fact, like your whole career and everything should be supporting your husband's ministry position. And we start to see that move forward in this pastor's wife literature and really start exploding in the 90s and the early 2000s. We also see the creation of within seminaries, coursework designed for seminary wives and designed for women who feel called to ministry but into positions where, especially if they're going for a religious education degree or something like that, it's a way to still get women's money and still give them degrees, but not give them degrees that lead to the pastorate Now seminary wives and to teach them but into a job that clearly is subordinate to their husbands. So Southwestern, southeastern, southern Seminary, john MacArthur Seminary in California also has a Seminary Wives Institute. All of these start exploding in the 90s and the 2000s. So it all goes together. It's not an accident in that way.

Kyle:

So you say in chapter four and I hope this isn't a weird comparison, but it's fresh on my mind so what the hell? So you say in chapter four the pastor's wife role is a Protestant development, nothing like it ever really existed before. So last week we talked to Matthew Vines about the new edition of his book God and the Gay Christian. So I'm going to make a weird analogy roll with me here so the thesis of that book.

Kyle:

More or less, he argues that our interpretation of passages about non-heterosexual sex and marriage in the Bible, and consequently our current moral prescriptions about those things, are constrained by the fact that sexual orientation as a concept as we understand it today simply didn't exist in the ancient world.

Kyle:

Yeah, he's right, and therefore, if we're going to make moral prescriptions about what LGBTQ people should be doing, they can't be rooted in what the Bible says. So can we say something similar about the role of the pastor's wife today? If it didn't exist in ancient times, maybe the Bible ain't relevant. Is that right? Is that on the right track?

Beth:

Yeah, so you know, I mean, I think, yes, I mean, that's one of the things, one of the crazy things about the pastor's wife role is that in reading all of these books about the pastor's wife, no one can agree who is actually. The pastor's wife role is that, in reading all of these books about the pastor's wife, no one can agree who is actually the pastor's wife in the Bible.

Beth:

You know they come up with all sorts of different ideas. Some people are like she's not there at all, we just made up this role. Some people are very honest about that. Usually it's in the black churches where you see that honesty, like we made this role up. But in many of the white ones, you know, there's this sort of it's like well, if this is a biblical rule, surely she's there. And so you see people like trying to find her, like in the Proverbs 31 woman, and you see them trying to find her in the household codes.

Beth:

You know, again, this glorified sort of housewife that people try to find her in all sorts of bizarre. You know Sarah, people try to make Sarah a pastor's wife. People try, you know, priscilla and Aquila. Dorothy Patterson even argues that Priscilla is a pastor's wife. You know which I mean. I just don't even understand how she even attempted that.

Beth:

And then Peter's wife. This is the one too where people are like, you know, honestly, peter, probably his wife was like a pastor's wife, except for we know nothing about Peter's wife. That's my whole chapter. You know, where is Peter's wife? She's just not there.

Beth:

And so I think that that's one of the problems that the pastor's wife really demonstrates is how this ideal model of biblical womanhood doesn't exist in the Bible, and I think that the pastor's wife, in some ways I think the pastor's wife really shows that even more so because you know, when you think about the concept of biblical womanhood and you're not thinking about it in a particular woman or a particular, you know a woman doing a particular thing then you can apply concepts abstractly, but when you try to make the pastor's wife, you know she's just not. There is nothing that looks like the pastor's wife role in what we find in the biblical text, and so, yes, so I mean I think she really shows how much we have tried to take modern ideals and apply them to the Bible, to support our modern ideals, and so in that way she in some ways can be the undoing of biblical womanhood undoing of biblical womanhood.

Kyle:

Um, because what we? She shows how artificial this concept actually is. Just like um um kristen's book. Right how she ended it.

Beth:

If it was done, it can be undone yeah, although I yeah, I think it can be undone, it can't undo the damage. Yeah, but we can't I think that's so crucial.

Kyle:

Bet, beth, in philosophy, I run into this all the time with the problem of evil, which we've talked about a lot on this show, and it's the thing that gets me the most about the problem is it doesn't matter what your theodicy is, it doesn't matter how good your future vision of anything. This happened.

Beth:

We can't undo that it had not happened, and we're going to have to come to terms with that and our complicity in the harm that we've done and that's I think that's what made in some ways made this book feel a lot heavier to me than the making of Biblical Womanhood, of how this concept has so harmed so many people and so many people you know, so many people that I didn't even know of that I hear from now who tell me their stories, and it's just, I think it's when we will never know the harm that we have done.

Randy:

So I was really delighted there was. This was one paragraph in the book, but it was very fun because I think my favorite Oscar song performance of all time was Ryan. Gosling singing. I'm just Ken in the 2000,. I think it was the 2024 Oscars and you have a. You have a little homage to Ryan Gosling and Ken in the I'm just Ken song. Tell us the common themes common to your book and I'm Just Ken that you saw and heard.

Beth:

Yeah. So I mean I'll just say I love the Barbie movie. Yes. The Barbie movie has made my life. Teaching patriarchy to undergraduates really easy. Yes, Because now they understand it. And for people who didn't understand the movie and thought that Ken was being treated badly yes, because Ken is in the role that women are in. Yes, you know that's the whole point.

Beth:

And so this Ken saying that I am number two, it doesn't matter what I do, I'm always number two and my whole existence I mean you can think about this, ken's whole existence revolves around Barbie. And even this idea that I actually didn't ever realize, but that you never saw just Ken, it was always Ken and Barbie like together you would never see, you know, you see Barbie and things, but it was always Ken and Barbie. And so this idea that his whole existence is because of Barbie, and this is exactly what is being taught, it's sort of biblical womanhood on steroids, that your role and this is, you know, dorothy Patterson says this out loud in her handbook for pastor's wives. She says God never calls couples to different roles, that if the husband is called, the wife is called to serve in that ministry role alongside and supporting him. And this is exactly what Kenneth, you know. As he said, he is that supportive role whose whole life revolves around Barbie. And that is the ideal biblical woman.

Kyle:

Ryan Gosling.

Beth:

That's fantastic I know I love it.

Kyle:

Yeah, I'll see your pop culture reference and raise you another. I loved the part where you talk about Doctor who and probably my favorite episode of Doctor who. Do you want to describe that and how it's relevant.

Beth:

Do you cry?

Kyle:

Yeah, I cry too. How do you not?

Beth:

Every time my daughter and I sit there and we both cry.

Randy:

I need to watch Doctor who, I guess.

Kyle:

Yeah, I mean, you have to commit because those, those seasons are no joke, but it's worth it.

Beth:

So I will say my daughter is the one who got me into Doctor who. As a British historian, it took me a really long time to get into Doctor who. It took my child to get me into Doctor who, but now I'm. You know, once I got into it there was no turning back and our hands down favorite episode. I remember when I first started watching and people were like, have you made it to the Van Gogh episode yet? And I was like, no, I haven't gotten there yet. And so when we did get to it, you know, I honestly thought I was like it's just hyped up, it isn't what everyone claims it is, but it is one. You know it's a. It's a.

Beth:

It's an episode about, about mental illness and about you know that Van Gogh, what he faced, that he was. You know he faced so many challenges in his life. Nobody recognized his talent, challenges in his life, nobody recognized his talent and he was. You know. We know that he committed suicide at the height of his career, of what we would now see, the height of his career. And so the doctor and Amy at that time, who is the one who is traveling with him when they go back, amy's goal is, she's like, you know, we can make his life better and we're going to help him fight his demons, which literally it's Dr who, it really is a demon. We're going to help fight their demons. And then he's and he's going and we're going to show him how important he is. And so they actually take him and take him to the future and they show him, you know, in one of those Van Gogh experiences where he saw all of the people talking about his art and you just see the change on his face. And Amy is so certain that when they come back to the future after dropping him off, that they're going to find that Van Gogh lived a long, healthy life where he had children, got married and because that's what you did in those days and he kept producing art. And what she found you know, spoilers for everyone is that history hadn't changed, that Van Gogh still, you know, still ended his own life.

Beth:

And the doctor says something that you know just really haunts me. He says look, he says there, you know, life is a pile of good things and a pile of bad things. And just because you add to the good things doesn't mean you take away the bad things, or vice versa. And he said we didn't change his life, but we added to his good pile, made parts of his life better. And that was, you know, when I was thinking about how to end this book.

Beth:

I, honestly, I was a little depressed by the time I got to the end of this book because I was like, oh my gosh, you know this is, this is awful. This is even more awful than I realized it was what, and I've been complicit in this. And so I got to the end and I was like, you know, we can't undo all of these horrible things. And since I wrote the book, in fact today I got a email from someone who told me her story and I was actually in the archives and I just had to stop and sit down because her story was so terrible. What happened to her in an SBC church.

Beth:

And we can't change the trauma that was caused to all of these women. There's nothing that can be done. But what we can do is we can try to add to the good pile of the church. We can try to not undo the damage that we've done, but to not keep doing that harm, to stop now and to start making it better for women moving forward. And so it was the only way that I could think about bringing hope into the story was, like you know, was recognizing. We can't change the horrible things we've done. What we can do is recognize them, stop and then see if we can change things moving forward.

Randy:

It reminds me of talking to Kristen about Jesus and John Wayne, where the end is very bleak. It's not hopeful or optimistic. There are many people in your position, a woman in the church, a woman who's whether a pastor's wife, or just a woman in the church who's just been dumped on over and over again and rejected, even though she might.

Randy:

She's called and gifted in certain ways, whether it's just women, or whether it's just people who are like I. I'm at my wits end with the church. I can't anymore. Yeah, that's a legitimate choice, right.

Beth:

It is.

Randy:

What, though I'm interested, beth, just for you personally keeps you coming back. What makes it so that you don't give up on the church? Because I know that you're a pastor's wife, but I know that you're also a pastor's wife who, if you felt like being done with the church, you probably would, and your husband would probably say you do you, I'm with you.

Beth:

So what keeps Beth Allison Barr coming back? Yeah, it's honestly, because I'm a historian, you know I can just say that and I can say that, even though you know this moment what's going on with this church is absolutely horrific. It's not the only time that the church has behaved horrifically. You know, this time is very different. Every time is very different. Every time is different, but at the same time, it's not the only horrible moment in the church, and history shows me that the church has made it through.

Beth:

And I'm not talking about the horrible parts treating people as inhuman, etc.

Beth:

I'm talking about the people who really saw God and really understood what it meant when Jesus said that he came for those who were the undesirables and the ones that nobody else cared about, and that the first will be last and the last will be first.

Beth:

And they saw that, and they saw that what had happened to the church was the destruction of people, and they saw that enduring message of Jesus that the kingdom of God is better. And so, you know, I can look back and I can read the sermons and the words and the words of these women who were living through these horrible moments and saying that, yes, everything's awful right now, but Jesus is better. You know that the kingdom of God is better and that we can strive to be better, and so, and I believe that I believe that we can strive to be better, and so, and I believe that I believe that we can strive to be better, and so I think that's what keeps me in and, honestly, you know, the message of Jesus is just so beautiful. If you honestly, really, if you just look at the message of Jesus, it's beautiful, and I believe in that beauty and I can still see that beauty and I'm going to fight for it.

Randy:

Let's go Beth.

Beth:

Yeah.

Randy:

We started out saying this is the second in a trilogy, perhaps right so you had making a biblical womanhood. Now we have becoming the pastor's wife. And what's next? What are you working on right now, Beth?

Beth:

So in some ways, what I am working on now is maybe the thing that I'd actually thought about even when I first thought about doing a trade press book, long before I even envisioned doing something like the Making a Biblical Womanhood. I wanted to write something for the church that showed what women you know, showed what women were actually doing in a ways that people you know, especially not just in the ancient church but in the entirety of church history, and I also wanted to show the damage that had been done by writing histories that continued to leave these women out. And so that's what this book is. I've tentatively titled it In Remembrance of Her how Reclaiming the Past Can Build a Better Future for Evangelical Women.

Randy:

Dude, you are the best at titling books, beth, like we hear from people who are like, oh, I wanted to title this and then my publisher said you can't do that. Are these titles you or what's like in remembrance of hers?

Beth:

so ridiculous, so caitlin baby, my original title of the making a biblical womanhood was the myth of biblical womanhood. Okay, and she was like what? Why don't we make this? You know, because you're not. You're not describing something static, you're describing something that's ongoing. And I was like, oh yeah, that's brilliant. So she did, that was her.

Randy:

She changed that and yeah, she was brilliant.

Beth:

And then when I start, but Becoming the Pastor's Wife, that was my title and, as it was sort of because again, it's this idea that the pastor's wife isn't something that's always been there, it's something that was created and then, as the story started coming together, I realized that what the pastor's wife role had done was replaced this ordained role for women, and so that's where that subtitle came from, this final book. I actually originally I started telling this book as Losing Our Medieval Religion. That was the title I was sort of working with. I am a 90s child, so I am, and so that.

Beth:

But I was actually at Aaron Moon's book talk not too long ago and I was sitting there and it was a really profound moment for me because I was hiding in the room with some other people from my press and I was just listening. And I loved it because I just got to listen and listen to her talk, listen to the women in the room, and I was struck by the hopelessness of the women in the room. The questions that they were bringing to Erin were just you know, it was just. It just really showed me how hard things are for women right now and I was like you know what? I don't want to tell people just how things have fallen apart. I want to help people, show how we can build things moving forward. And so that was when I told Caitlin. I was like I don't think I want to do.

Beth:

Luzine Aramadiva, I think you know we started throwing around and I was like I really like In Remembrance of Her, there was a feminist book, elizabeth Chouselier I can't say her name, fiorenza and she wrote a book called In Memory of Her, and so I kind of wanted to spin on that, but put it in a sacramental sense because, of course, in remembrance is what we do at the altar, and so, in remembrance of her, and tell the stories of these women, with the eye towards how we can actually you know, with that Van Gogh show move forward.

Randy:

Yes, Yep, so we're going to be enjoying this book for a long, long time. It's called Becoming the Pastor's Wife. Just for fun, any hopeful goal as to when in remembrance of her might be completed and ready to go.

Beth:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm turning the manuscript in in January 2026. So it should be out in 2027.

Randy:

Awesome.

Beth:

I'm motivated.

Randy:

Super fun. Well, we're motivated to read your books and to pay attention to your work because we think it's really important and we really just are grateful for you, beth, and your work and who you are. So the book again listeners is Becoming the Pastor's Wife how Marriage Replaced Ordination as a Woman's Path to Ministry. Beth Allison Barr, so good to see you and talk to you again.

Beth:

Thanks for having me. It was so great to talk to y'all.

Randy:

Thanks for listening to A Pastor and a Philosopher Walk into a Bar. We hope you're enjoying these conversations. Help us continue to create compelling content and reach a wider audience by supporting us at patreoncom. Slash a pastor and a philosopher. We can get bonus content, extra perks and a general feeling of being a good person.

Kyle:

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Randy:

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Kyle:

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Kyle Whitaker

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Randy Knie

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