They’ve Been Preaching All Along - Women Leading in the Church, with Beth Allison Barr
⭐ In this insightful Theology Lab conversation, historian and theologian Beth Allison Barr explores the Bible, women, and the role of women pastors in the church. We examine what Scripture really says about gender, leadership, and ministry, and how historical and cultural context shapes our understanding of these debated issues. Perfect for non-expert Christians, curious believers, and anyone still in the church wrestling with big theological questions, this video offers a thoughtful, nuanced approach to reading the Bible and engaging with gender andBecoming The Pastor’s Wife leadership in a faithful way. If you’re interested in theological learning, Bible study for ordinary Christians, and nuanced conversations about women in ministry, this discussion with Beth Allison Barr provides clarity, historical insight, and encouragement for exploring Scripture with honesty and depth. Check out Beth's new book! Becoming The Pastor’s Wife
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⭐ In this insightful Theology Lab conversation, historian and theologian Beth Allison Barr explores the Bible, women, and the role of women pastors in the church. We examine what Scripture really says about gender, leadership, and ministry, and how historical and cultural context shapes our understanding of these debated issues. Perfect for non-expert Christians, curious believers, and anyone still in the church wrestling with big theological questions, this video offers a thoughtful, nuanced approach to reading the Bible and engaging with gender and leadership in a faithful way. If you’re interested in theological learning, Bible study for ordinary Christians, and nuanced conversations about women in ministry, this discussion with Beth Allison Barr provides clarity, historical insight, and encouragement for exploring Scripture with honesty and depth.
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Generated Transcript
Beth Allison Barr (00:01.217)
that help? Okay. Okay. There we are.
Scott Rice (00:01.91)
Yes, my goodness, yes, that's much better. perfect, that's great, that's great. Okay, thanks so much for being with us and taking the time to do this.
Beth Allison Barr (00:12.577)
I'm so glad.
Scott Rice (00:14.93)
So, okay, I'll do just a really brief intro. I'm probably not even going to use it for the video. I'll probably do a separate introduction another time. But let me just do one to have here, and then Kristen will get us started with the very first question. Anything you need to know from our end? Okay. Okay. Okay, great, great, great.
Beth Allison Barr (00:27.351)
Excellent.
Beth Allison Barr (00:30.967)
You all look great.
Scott Rice (00:58.83)
Thank you for your patience.
Scott Rice (01:06.126)
Welcome to Theology Lab. I am here with Kristen Lee, and we'll be interviewing Beth Allison Barr. Beth has been a guest at Theology Lab before. We had an interview with Beth after the making of Biblical Womanhood came out. That came out in 2020. I think we had a conversation at Theology Lab with you and Kelly Carter Jackson in around 2023. Beth Barr is a professor of history at Baylor University, and we're going to have a conversation that's centered around Beth's new book, Becoming the Pastor's Wife.
So, Beth, thank you so much for being at Theology Lab.
Beth Allison Barr (01:39.723)
Well, thanks for having me back.
Kristin T. Lee (01:42.196)
We're excited to have you. And jumping right in, there is a way to read your book very narrowly as just applicable to those who are interested in this niche history of the role of a pastor's wife. But there's also way to read it quite expansively. So can you tell us who do you think this book is for?
Beth Allison Barr (01:55.562)
Yep.
Beth Allison Barr (02:02.325)
Yeah. So in some ways, this book is a case study, I suppose. The whole thing is a case study about not only the role of women, but also in one of the most conservative and in but yet influential parts of the evangelical world. And it's also, I think, even though it's niche in thinking about the pastor's wife, it is very expansive.
because the pastor's wife role connects to the large story of women's ordination and what has happened to women's ordination, especially in the modern church.
connected to the evangelical world. So I think on the one hand, it tells you a lot about what's going on in the Southern Baptist Convention right now, which is the largest Protestant denomination in North America. So it's still really important. 12.7 million Southern Baptists still. And although that's down from 16 million just a few years ago, so they are declining. But it also is about this. But then you can also read it expansively about
the story of women's ordination that I tell all the way from the ancient church through the medieval church and up to the modern and then use the Southern Baptist Convention as kind of a case study of what happens when the pastor's wife, Roel, begins to be held up as the primary ministry calling for women.
Scott Rice (03:41.208)
Beth, there is an early part of the book where you talk about how complementarianism overlooks some things that scripture actually says. So I wonder, I've got two questions. One, if our viewers or listeners don't know what complementarianism is, could you give us kind of a general definition of it? And then could you, you you highlight a handful of women in the Bible, and I wonder if you might be able to kind of pick out one of them or two of them that you think are particularly relevant for this question, especially like how
and complementarianism itself can overlook what the Bible says.
Beth Allison Barr (04:14.867)
absolutely. So, complementarianism is just a fancy and very recent term that was born in the 1980s because some evangelical scholars got together and thought patriarchy sounded bad. So, it's patriarchy rebranded in the church and it argues that women are always called to subordinate roles and men are always called to leadership roles.
There's a lot of variety within this. So there's some churches and some spaces that argue that women can't teach at all and that women, you know, can't especially can't teach anyone older than children or other women. And then there's some spaces that say women can pretty much do everything as long as there is a final male authority over her. And so, you know, that she can be everything but senior pastor is something that you'll hear.
quite a bit. but essentially it's just the saying that women are called by God to always be under male authority. And what I always find fascinating about complementarianism is because
While you can find evidence of what I would prefer to call patriarchy in the Bible, the Bible has a lot of patriarchy in it because it was written in a patriarchal world.
different types of patriarchal worlds, but nonetheless. But it also has evidence of what I would consider to be this counter narrative to patriarchy. And you cannot faithfully represent the Bible by telling only one of those stories. If you tell only the patriarchy side, then you are being unfaithful to scripture. And if you tell only the side where women are able to move into more
Beth Allison Barr (06:17.241)
roles etc. then you are also being unfaithful to Scripture. I mean we have to grapple with both of these aspects and so what we you know for example people who adhere to Complementarian theology one of their favorite verses to quote at me is 1st Timothy 2 12 through 13 or two verses but really 12 1st Timothy 2 12 and this is the verse where you know women
are not allowed to teach or have authority over men. Paul tells to Timothy that women are not allowed to teach or hold authority over men and in fact that they are to be quiet. Well you don't have to go very far in the Bible.
to see counter narrative to that. You can just go to Romans, go to Romans 16, and what you find in Romans 16, you know, this is actually my favorite chapter to use to counter the complementarian perspective that only highlights women serve in subordinate roles. Because in Romans 16, we find women doing every role in the New Testament, really every leadership
role in the New Testament. We see a woman appointed as an apostle. We see a woman appointed as a deacon, and in fact it's she's the only named deacon. mean she's the only deacon of a named church that we know of, which I think is quite striking. We also find women who are clearly house church leaders.
in that passage. And so everything that we see men doing, apostles, deacons, house church leaders, or teachers, etc. in the church, we find women doing all of those things within that passage. And so I think it's a really, it's maybe not a passage that you say, okay, this proves that the only way you can read the Bible is through this more egalitarian lens. I don't think that's what it proves. What it proves is that complementarianism
Beth Allison Barr (08:21.689)
is only part of the story and that you have to bring in it's like well if Paul told women not to teach or hold authority over men and this applies to all women at all times everywhere
then what do you do with Junia? What do you do with Phoebe? What do you do with Priscilla? And the only thing that you can do with them is try to rewrite their stories to say that they aren't in leadership. So you get the ESV highlighting that Phoebe calling her a servant instead of a deacon. You get Junia being transformed into a man, Junius. Or the preposition changing where instead of her being outstanding,
you know that she changes from being one of the apostles to being just somebody who the apostles recognize as important. So you've got to you've got to do a lot of rewriting scripture if I can say it that way in order to write out women in these types of authoritative roles that seem to be the same type of roles that men are doing in the in New Testament church. I can tell you more but I can also stop there for now.
Scott Rice (09:14.51)
Hmm.
Scott Rice (09:37.321)
Beth, I'm going to go off script really quick with a question. If it doesn't work out, I'll just cut it from the interview. This idea that you speak of narratives in scripture and then also counter narratives. just have to have the sense that if you're in conversation with folks who are complementarians or sympathetic to that, that that might be almost like an uneasy idea to think about that kind of diversity. wonder if you've seen, if you've had any...
Beth Allison Barr (10:02.135)
Yeah.
Scott Rice (10:05.304)
productive conversations with people, I don't know, either around this book or in your years of teaching, where this notion of there being both like different voices, different perspectives within the Bible itself, and I don't know, maybe helping to change them to a degree, change their thinking to a degree.
Beth Allison Barr (10:09.719)
Yeah.
Beth Allison Barr (10:22.103)
No, so I am very much in favor of really the Socratic teaching method. It works really, really well. It works really well to diffuse situations. So when somebody comes to me and says, you know, quotes 1st Timothy 2.12, especially if it's in person, like if it's on social media or something, use this word, But if they're in person and I'm like, wow, why do you think that verse means that women can't teach?
Scott Rice (10:39.18)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Beth Allison Barr (10:48.951)
men anywhere at all time. Why do you think that? And then they're like, you know, usually they have to start well because this is one they start getting into the Greek grammar if they're a seminary student or something such as that. And I'm like, oh, well, that yeah, that's great. Well, then how do you apply that to what we see going on in Romans 16? And, know, it's just sort of this not challenging, not saying, well, you're wrong and stupid, although sometimes I do.
I did say yesterday that created order is stupid. I'm sorry, but that was a different anyway, but oftentimes when you're talking one-on-one, that's not the best way to do it. The best way is to present to them where, know, in scripture that there is an alternate narrative going on. And it's like, so what do we do with that?
you know, are we going to say, and I believe the Bible, so what, you know, how do we grapple with these seemingly maybe contradictory statements? And, you know, actually what if maybe Paul is not telling all women at all time to sit down and shut up, but he's telling some women at a certain place because of a certain problem to sit down and shut up because they're not, they haven't learned before they taught.
And then he's telling other women who have learned and who are faithful in the ministry to teach and to lead.
because they have been proven faithful in those areas. And that kind of helps, you know, it doesn't challenge people, it doesn't challenge what people believe about the Bible. You're not saying it's not true. You're just simply saying maybe you're only, you're not seeing the whole picture, which is not allowing you to correctly interpret sections of it. So.
Kristin T. Lee (12:52.924)
I love that idea of narrative and counter-narrative in scripture. And I'd love to hear your thoughts on claims that church tradition validates male-only pastoral leadership. For example, Al Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, has said that for nearly 2,000 years, the Christian church has limited the office of pastor to men. So as a church historian, how do you respond to claims like that?
Beth Allison Barr (12:55.51)
Yeah.
Beth Allison Barr (13:20.511)
Yeah, well, this is a time where I will just straight up say that's wrong. That is just there. There's not. You cannot.
say that women have not served in leadership roles in church history because they simply have. And so that, but I think the reason that people make that statement is because it helps buttress claims for their positions. Like, you know, this is exactly, I've been at the Southern Baptist Convention yesterday and I was watching it again today. And their theme for this week was hold fast.
was hold fast to what we believe about the Bible and hold fast to this tradition. And one of, in fact, the president of the SBC, he actually said, we're gonna hold fast to the Baptist faith and message that has been this way for a century.
And I was like, actually, it's only been this way for 25 years because you all rewrote it. And you know, and it's you can go and look, but it's this where people, I think it makes them feel more confident to be like, I'm not doing anything different. I'm swimming in the same stream of orthodoxy that everyone always has has been in since the Nicene Creed. And and I think it makes them feel
Scott Rice (14:19.374)
Hmm.
Beth Allison Barr (14:45.019)
more, it gives them more authority to say this isn't me changing this. This is you arguing with the way it's always been. And I think the reason they get away with that is because we have not been teaching history that includes women in the story. And so this makes it where and we we also don't
teach history in our churches anymore, I think. So you think about in the Southern Baptist Convention, which has two, it's two most important offerings that are given for missions are both named after prominent women in the SBC who were essentially preachers. But
Nobody knows that anymore. Nobody knows those stories about who Lottie Moon and Annie Armstrong actually were anymore because we stopped telling them. And now they've just become these symbols and so people stand up and say women in the Southern Baptist world have never preached. And everybody's like, yeah, that's right.
And it's just simply, you you don't have to go very far back in Southern Baptist history to find women preaching and pastoring. And I will say that that's pretty much true for all Protestant denominations. there may be one or two out there, I don't know, really offshoots. But for most of them, women have served in prominent teaching and pastoring roles at some point during their history.
Scott Rice (16:22.346)
Maybe to do justice to the book to a certain extent, mean, this book covers a wide range of history. So far we've been talking a little bit about some of the recent SBC history, but is there an example from medieval history? mean, you can pick from any time period here. you think kind of, maybe that specifically challenges contemporary evangelical assumptions about women in ministry? There's one line in the book I do remember was like,
Hildegard was called to go and preach and 1st Timothy too was not a barrier for her to do that. And I thought, let's we need to talk about this. So it doesn't have to be Hildegard though.
Beth Allison Barr (16:54.359)
Yeah, yeah, think. Yeah, no, it can be. I mean, that's pretty much true for all women before.
I would say really the 19th century, that, you know, first Timothy two has not been consistently used against women. And that even when it was used against women, women would speak out against it. In fact, I actually have a whole chapter on this in my next book. I'm really excited. I'm doing a historical, you know, dive on first Timothy two and how women responded to it. So I can speak, you know, from that,
It wasn't something that people might quote that at women who were preaching and pastoring, but they always were like, well, you know what? That doesn't actually apply to me. And they would give varying reasons for that not applying for him, whatever. And so you can think about women in the medieval world. I think about Marjorie Kemp, and we don't know what verse was quoted at her. Marjorie Kemp, 15th century lay woman who becomes a street preacher. I talked about her more in the making of biblical womanhood, but she's actually
confronted by the Archbishop of York and told to stop street preaching. And one of the clerks, one of the other priests in the room runs up and reads scripture at her. And we know it's Paul because he says it's Paul. We don't know. It could be 1 Corinthians 14 or it could be 1 Timothy 2. We don't really know 2 12. We don't really know which one it is, but it's one of the ones that says women be silent and women. So that's why. And Marjorie Camp
quotes back Luke 8 at this priest. And this is the story, of course, where there's the woman where Jesus is walking through the crowd and a woman crawls out and said, blessed is your mom who gave you birth and the teats that gave you suck. And Jesus says, yes, blessed are those who hear and do the word of God.
Beth Allison Barr (19:00.551)
That was a major component of medieval theology, this idea of hearing and doing is what makes faith. And so Marjorie Kemp said, I believe, sir, that God gives women leave to speak.
And so when she quotes this, you know, of Jesus and the, you know, this remarkable story, the Archbishop of York is like, okay, go. And he actually writes her a letter so that if anybody else stops her, she can be like the Archbishop said, I'm not a hair tick. so I can do whatever I want. And it, know, it's just, it's this amazing moment where the Archbishop's like, yeah, you know what? I can't argue with you. So go and keep doing what you're doing.
And so, I mean, and you think about that today. like what the I hate to I'm sorry, I just had the Southern Baptist Convention, so I'm not trying to only but you know, they're introducing and it felled again today for the third year in a row. So that gives me a little bit of hope. But they've introduced this amendment. They're wanting to amend the Constitution to put in one of the harshest.
regulations against women in really Western church history in which they say women can never be in any type of pastoral role, not any type of pastoral role whatsoever. And this is simply something that never has happened before. There have always been ways for women to move into pastoral roles and for women to be supported by men, even in environments where maybe they were just put forward as, you know, the extraordinary women.
or something like that, there's still a way for women to move into these positions. And what the Southern Baptist Convention is saying now is that there is never a time and there never should have been a time where women were able to do this. So it's, it's the more and more I think about it, it's just astonishing to me that people don't realize how historically, how much of an aberration this is in church history.
Kristin T. Lee (21:07.454)
That's really concerning. Yeah.
Beth Allison Barr (21:09.591)
Yes, it is. It is. It should concern even people not in the Southern Baptist Convention because they ripple out and influence.
Kristin T. Lee (21:21.194)
Very sobering. As I was reading your book and listening to you talk, you know, I clearly like your interpretation of scripture and your reading of church history because to me the quality of women and the necessity of women in church leadership is self-evident just because of the way I was raised and also due to my life experiences.
But I acknowledge that there's others who prefer the SBC's interpretation of scripture or their reading of church history, even if to us they're incorrect. So how do we reconcile those kinds of disagreements, right? Like, is there even a role for scripture and tradition, or do we just listen to our own inner moral convictions and the Holy Spirit?
Beth Allison Barr (22:06.134)
Yeah.
So I'm gonna return to the whole counter narrative thread. And in fact, this isn't from me. There's a New Testament scholar who I think has done a really great job in communicating how...
both patriarchy and this more egalitarian impulse coexist in the biblical text. And her name is Susan Hyland. And she's written a book on women in the earliest Christianity, as well as my favorite one is Finding Phoebe. And where she takes this really sort of balanced approach and she's like, look, we cannot say, know, Paul's not egalitarian. He's not, he's never been egalitarian. But Paul lives in a world where women
did serve in these very significant influential leadership roles in the church and that there are all these women with a great deal of wealth and who are able to exercise significant influence and authority and Paul says go for it.
you know, that's the way we spread the gospel, go for it. You can serve and go and do in these ways. But then he also turns around and perpetuates, you know, in a different way, the household codes where he says, wives, you know, submit to their husbands. And so you can't write those out. You can't say that they aren't, I mean, some of the passages you can make an argument for that maybe they.
Beth Allison Barr (23:36.211)
maybe they are interpolations, so you can't, you there is a lot of, there is some of that. But for the most part, these things are both there. And so I think what we've got to do with on both sides of this issue is say, look, we have to stop only looking at one perspective.
We really have to be faithful to the Bible. And to be faithful to the Bible is for people who are on the complementarian side to be like, yeah, I don't know what to do with Deborah. You know, it's like really hard. I mean, what do you do with it? John Piper said he didn't even know what to do with Deborah because here we have a woman in the Old Testament who is serving not just as a judge, but as a seated judge. The only other seated judge we have in the Bible is Moses. And so if you think about this and then she also goes out on battle and
fights.
You know, she's this warrior leader. And it's like, what is, and nobody seems weirded out by it. You know, everybody and you know, even her commander is like, you know, I'm not going to fight unless you go with me. You have to go out there with me. This is normal. And so it's like, what do you do with Deborah? You can't write Deborah out. And so you're to have to sit back and say, well, maybe even if my conviction today is that women shouldn't hold these positions.
I have to recognize that that has not always been the position of the church and that that is not the only position we see in the Bible. It's not a zero-sum game.
Beth Allison Barr (25:09.483)
And I think for egalitarians too, we need to recognize that there are problematic passages in the Bible that have caused real harm to women. And you can't only look at the sunny side of the street. You have to bring it all in there. But at that same time, I think when you are like,
there are women serving in these types of leadership roles.
then I think it does make it more difficult to try to claim that women can never serve in these types of leadership roles. I'll be honest about that. you can, I understand where people coming from a complementarian patriarchal from the Bible, I understand where they're coming from. And I can see that in the text.
Scott Rice (25:47.118)
Hmm.
Beth Allison Barr (26:06.837)
but they are not seeing the whole story. They're only telling the part of the story that they want to tell. And that is not faithful scholarship.
Scott Rice (26:17.89)
Beth, I mean, just admittedly, I love this approach that sees there to be both narratives and counter narratives and a whole handful of different voices in the Bible. even like, if you look back at the language you've used around the Bible so far in this interview, Being faithful to this, taking it seriously. I don't know if you said that or if I just literally read that from the book and it's coming through in my memory there. I think it's fantastic. I think this kind of,
honesty with the text that there are these voices, there's different voices, some are saying supporting and elevating women in roles of ministry, and there are others where the voice of patriarchy comes through. I think we have to be honest about seeing both of those things. So I wonder if, you might say like, thinking about the Bible, what's, if we were kind of taking your book forward, and we'll have some more questions around this, but like taking this book forward and greater support for women in ministry,
What's the most we can do with the Bible? Where do you think, like, we're invited to see the Bible differently in the goals of this work? But then also, are there limits, right? Like, I just know that, like, we're talking about an issue that has to do with all aspects of church life, the good parts, the bad parts. You know, are there ways we also have to be thinking, hey, it's not just getting our interpretation right?
Beth Allison Barr (27:41.399)
Right. So, you know, I think one of the things as a historian, I think one of the ways we have used the Bible badly is that we have tried to create, we have tried to understand the way we do church and fit it into the way, into the biblical world. And those are just two very different things.
You know, I think everybody wants to be the first century church and nobody can ever be the first century church again, because we are not in the first century. We said we are not that culture. We are not that. We don't even use that same language. And so like and even like the terms that we use, I think one of the even like can women be pastors? That's actually anachronistic phrase. You know, trying. There are not pastors in the Bible.
I saw somebody put this on social media. They were like, yeah, there are no female pastors in the Bible. There are no male pastors in the Bible either. And I was like, yes, that's absolutely right. And so I think we understand, you the Bible is a, it provides, it's...
I always loved, I always read my kids the Jesus storybook Bible. I always loved that with them. And I remember the way it explained the Bible was God reaching down to us and telling us how, how God has always been reaching back to reclaim that relationship with humanity. And I think if we look at the Bible from that perspective, instead of us being like, we have to do, we have to recreate the biblical world. like, no,
Kristin T. Lee (29:15.434)
Mm-hmm.
Beth Allison Barr (29:27.225)
we need to learn how to have a relationship with a God who has always come back to us despite all of the horrible things that we do all the time and is still come and seeking that relationship with us and we have to think how can we faithfully move forward in a relationship with God in the world in which we live today and that is a very different world historically and very different you know it's just instead of I think a
of what we try to do is we try to recreate the golden ages of the past. We could comment a lot about how some of that's going on right now. Usually it's a past that never actually existed.
And I think that the Christian world, think the North American church, especially the evangelical world in many ways, has been trying to do that. We want to be the first, we want to be the great commission. We want to be the ones, know, we want to be the ones that when Jesus ascended into the heaven and went and spoke and said, go out into the world, he was speaking to us directly. Now I want to say, I do believe that God was speaking to the church, but in some ways we want to put ourselves back there and say, that's
us exactly the way it is and we have to become that first century church in the modern world and this is why you get all this debate about like you know like it matters that there's only 12 male apostles although there actually are a lot of female apostles who go along with Jesus too but it's like this is when that matters because it's like oh well Jesus only appointed 12 men so therefore we have to follow that pattern exactly and so I
I think that's where when we have this, when we try to take the world of the Bible and fit our modern world into it, instead of using the Bible as God speaking through how he has always been reaching out to us and how God is offering us this plant, a way to restore this relationship, this South
Beth Allison Barr (31:40.553)
salvation narrative and that the world isn't supposed to be this way that that God's dream for us was much bigger than what we have and That our what we should be striving for is for that better dream Instead of what the world looked like behind us And and so I you know, I and to me that's being faithful to scripture I mean, I think that's what the Bible is always pointing us to is to be better to be better
than who we are.
Scott Rice (32:12.014)
One of the core arguments in the book is that, one of the core lines in the book is that women in evangelical churches, right, especially pastors' wives, this is the key line, are given great responsibility, but little authority. I was at a dinner party the other day and I was talking about your book with someone. I said that line, a great responsibility, but very little. They hadn't even read the book and they said authority. They just, they knew it. Which is like, that
Beth Allison Barr (32:38.199)
Yeah.
Scott Rice (32:39.894)
is disheartening, but also speaks to a very true reality. Okay, but here's the question, two questions, getting into some of the practical parts. What happens when that dynamic goes unchecked, right, of women having great responsibility, but very little authority? And then what do you think healthier power sharing could look like?
Beth Allison Barr (32:47.083)
Yeah.
Beth Allison Barr (33:00.565)
So, you know, just to kind of bring it back to the book because I've kind of been big picture, what I really found that I found that, so, you where this book was born, this book was born when I was thinking about what I hadn't been able to talk about in the making of biblical womanhood and that was women's ordination. And I was also thinking there's a lot of people who were wanting me to write on the pastor's wife and I was like, I'm not gonna write a memoir here, that's boring to me. don't really, you know, that's,
I don't want to do that. And I was reading one of my Baylor colleagues books, her name's Elizabeth Flowers, Betsy Flowers. I quote her a lot in the book and her book is Into the Pulpit, Southern Baptist Women in Power in the Post-World War II Era. And she has this section in there where she talks about how the rise of the conservative resurgence, the fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention, which starts in the 1970s and we're still seeing the fruits of it today. What she found was that the loudest
voices speaking against women's ordination and female pastors were pastors' wives.
And that was fascinating to me. And I was like, Whoa, what's the story here? And so that's where this book was born. It was like, I was trying to figure out, was like, is there a connection here between in the Southern Baptist world and in the evangelical world and this rise of this pastor's wife narrative, which is this very potentially influential position in the church where women can often do many of the things that they're denied the ability to do. They can preach, they can teach, they can
you know, they can be some of the most they can speak in to to church ministry etc all of these things that they can do but the catch is that they don't have an official position and that all of their power all of their influence is dependent upon their husband's job and and so
Beth Allison Barr (34:59.827)
And what I also found is that in churches that have this very prominent pastor's wife role, many times the congregants don't realize that their church doesn't support women in independent ministry because they see the pastor's wife. They're like, women can do whatever they want in our church. Look at my pastor's wife. And what they don't realize, though, is that that pastor's wife authority is, you know, it's just a facade.
Kristin T. Lee (35:19.455)
Huh.
Beth Allison Barr (35:29.587)
Because if her husband, it's not, I teach the theory of precarity a lot when we talk about women's history and feminist theory and so forth. that precarity that some people, their ability to control their life and to make choice in their life doesn't depend on them. It depends on circumstances outside of them or somebody else. And the pastor's wife authority is very precarious. It depends completely up on the job of her husband and what she
she's allowed to do. And this is a shift in church history.
Whereas, you know, throughout most of the church, women actually didn't move into these dependent ministry positions. They moved into independent ones at a lesser rate than men, but still positions in which they were able to make the choices about their ministry and they were able to have the authority and the job rested on them, not on somebody else. And so in some, you know, the pastor's wife had kind of used the metaphor of Dorothy Patterson's hats, who's a major
figure in the Southern Baptist world who taught some of the, started the, the pastor's wife classes that have spilled out into the broader evangelical world. You know, if you go to small Bible churches, non-denominational places, they often have pastor's wife courses and pastor's wife, you know, sort of, this all kind of came out of the Southern Baptist convention. And I said that, and Dorothy Patterson, who did a whole lot of preaching in her life, but she always
wore a hat and said that she was covered by her husband's authority.
Scott Rice (37:10.638)
Mm.
Beth Allison Barr (37:11.151)
And the pastor's wife, I think, kind of functions that the pastor's wife is this covers the absence of women in these independent leadership positions. And what we don't and we don't really realize until too late, like with the Southern Baptist Convention now, where we have all of these women in the Southern Baptist world who have been powerful figures and have been major players, teachers, Bible study creators, et cetera, et cetera. But then now that
facade is crumbling because they have absolutely no power to stop this, you know, this unrelenting move in the Southern Baptist Convention to push women out of all official ministry positions.
And so I think that, you know, that precarity of their place is really coming through. So you asked what were the problems for this. mean, one of the problems is that what we end up with is the expectation is that women, instead of getting compensated for their work, instead of being able to do work that they are trained for or skilled for, the expectation is that women will do whatever is needed and that they won't expect payment for it.
or they will do it at a volunteer level. And this is how we end up with in evangelical churches today, where something like 80 % of women in doing official ministry roles, as in like the staff regards them as ministry roles in the church, they are unpaid and volunteer status, as opposed to men who are, it's almost the reverse.
of what men are doing. And so it's just, you know, and it creates, so it's created and you think about that in the church too. You think about, and you're like, well.
Beth Allison Barr (39:08.279)
just do what God calls you to do. You don't need the title. Sure, that sounds good. I can keep doing what God calls me to do. But what it also means is that I don't have any power to help make decisions if there's problems. I don't have the same level of authority as another pastor to speak into that and say, this is a problem that we need to deal with. You do not have that same level of authority. And you also don't have, you know,
your position can disappear really fast if you do things, if you step out of bounds, and so you lose it.
extraordinarily fast. And I think this has helped create things like the sex abuse crisis that we are seeing in much, of the evangelical world, because most of the decisions about whether or not to believe survivors are being made by men who identify with, yeah, I can see how you may have slipped up here. you know, let's, you shouldn't have done that, but let's all get together and move forward. And it's silencing the voice
of these victims. So anyway, I could continue, but there's some.
Kristin T. Lee (40:23.08)
Yes, I actually want to push in a little bit more in that last point that you were making because that's one of the key things in the book is that when we do have these dynamics of disempowering women, it creates opportunities for abuse, unfortunately. So can you give us an example in the book or not of that happening and why it happens?
Beth Allison Barr (40:36.215)
Yes.
Beth Allison Barr (40:44.021)
Yeah, yeah, no, I tell a really haunting story in the book that still will haunt me the rest of my life. It's not one I ever expected to find. found it accidentally. I tell the story that, you know, it was, I was in the Nashville archives and I was looking at something completely different. Well, I was looking, I was following an ordination case.
And I ran across a set of letters that were accusations made towards a prominent Baptist pastor that were clearly, that seemed to be clergy sex abuse.
and this pastor was still operating in a pastoral role. And this person who was speaking out for the survivor was asking for there to be somebody to look into this. And I followed the story all the way to Canada and the story got worse because I found out that not only were there multiple, that this was not the first time this pastor had been accused of something like that. I didn't talk
that much about that part of it in the book. But I also found out that his wife, and you I have a heart for pastor's wives, I am a pastor's wife, I know how difficult the position can be, and so when I found out, and the way I know this man committed clergy sex abuse is because he confessed to it. He said he did it. so of course my first thought was, what about his wife?
Scott Rice (42:06.776)
Mm.
Beth Allison Barr (42:15.697)
what was she doing? So I just started asking questions and what I found is that not only was this man committing sex abuse to other women, but he had been domestically abusing his wife throughout their entire marriage. And it's this, and you know, and what was so terrible is that people knew it.
but nobody knew how to help her. And she wasn't ever able to, she was never able to get out of that situation until she was in her 70s. And she finally divorced him after an episode landed her in the hospital and she almost died. And it just really speaks out how when...
the power and the authority is all resting on the personality. And when the church, all of the power and the authority and the success of the church is resting on the shoulders of a man, what happens to the people in his life who are living a very different story?
you know, who's going to believe them if you come forward and are like, hey, you know, this pastor that built this mega church here that you're all flourishing in and love. Well, he actually, you know, he's hitting his kids and his wife at home and people, you know, who.
who's going to believe that? If a woman speaks out about that, what's going to happen to her in that situation? I think our world has taught us that people don't like whistleblowers. They don't like survivors. They don't like people who challenge what they think. They're like, wow, no, he's a really good guy.
Beth Allison Barr (44:08.595)
I still remember the response of the Southern Baptist Convention president when he found out that this man had committed clergy sex abuse and decided to leave him in his position of pastoral authority. And he said, well, you know, we all have problems and we have to be a redemptive community. and so I think it just shows how, you know, I I contrast in the book, the wife of Adrian Rogers.
Joyce Rogers, who was a very powerful figure in the Baptist world as well. And even though her husband had theology that I would vehemently disagree with, he seems to have been a really good man. He seems to have really loved his wife and his family. He loved his church. He seems to have been a really good man. And so when it works, it works fine. But what happens when it doesn't work?
And is it a good theology? Do we judge a theology based upon the best? Or do we judge it based upon how it impacts people who have lesser power and the people that it hurts? And the thing is, when complementarian theology goes bad, it goes very bad.
And so where are the ways that we can reach out and help those women who are trapped in those types of situations? And since I wrote this book, I had no idea the floodgates I was going to open up for people coming out with domestic abuse stories as pastors lives. And it's just, you know, it's it's
it's worse than I thought it was. Let's just put it that way. And so I think this is something that the church, know, complementarian churches, and actually even
Beth Allison Barr (46:07.191)
It's not just complimentary churches. It's churches that are built on mega personalities where everybody is like protecting that personality and they don't want to hear, know, so you can think, you know, celebrity pastors. doesn't, this goes badly too. But we've got to figure out, you know, how do we keep checks and balances on people so that first of all can help them. You know, I think about like this story I tell in the book. I'm like, what if somebody had intervened with this man?
very early on, the very first time that it came like this, maybe their story could have been different. And so we've got to figure out how to listen and hear women and provide intervention that is actually helpful.
Scott Rice (47:01.87)
But those are incredibly powerful stories. The way the whole book leads to that very, very powerful story is, in a way, brings this kind of the importance, the gravity of this book, right, to a head. We talked a little bit earlier about reading. This is part of a series on scripture and tradition. We've talked a little bit about paying attention to the diversity of voices and different narratives within the Bible.
But I wonder if there's something else that we might be even missing here, which is also like thinking about the power of the stories you just told about what happened in the church, thinking about the sex abuse crisis and not wanting this to continue to happen. How can we read scripture, paying attention to different voices, but also like, how do we have these stories with us as we are reading the Bible? What could that look like?
Beth Allison Barr (47:56.245)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, a scholar who really opened my eyes up to this is Will Gaffney. And I think in her womanist mid-Dresh, especially and also her, her Daughters of Miriam, which is her book, teach quite a bit actually. But one of the things that she really helps
me to see was the violence against women in what we would consider to be the Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible, by actually seeing these women, like the David and Bathsheba story, when we tell that story as a story of adultery.
what we are doing, which has been the prominent narrative of that story. I mean, that's the narrative I heard from pastors all the way up. That's the way it was taught. And when we hear that story like that, what it does is it leads us to interpret.
Example, you things like that happened in our church as adultery, etc. If we read that story as David raping another man's wife, you know, she had no power. This is the king. Her husband was gone. There was no one to protect her. She was in the privacy of her home. He took her away and he raped her. If we told that story accurately,
you know, who is to say that they are above doing the same thing David did? You know, I mean, it's like it would help us. think if we taught these stories more realistically, even the story of Abram and Sarah, you know, this is the one that always gets me the story of Haggai and how, you know, she is this enslaved woman who is raped and then beaten.
Beth Allison Barr (49:56.597)
for actually doing what they wanted her to do, which is to get pregnant with the child and thrown out. And yet what we see is God sees this person who nobody else in her world saw.
and comes to her and gives her the same promise that he gives to Abram and Sarah. You know, it's just absolutely remarkable. The way we teach that story, though, the way I was always taught it was this is why the Muslim world is so bad. I don't, you know, I mean, that really is. And it's like, whoa, whoa, no, actually, what that story is, is God sees this violence against against people who have no protectors and God intervenes for them.
And if we are doing what if we're wearing our WWJD bracelets, what would Jesus do? You intervene for these. look for these. know, it would change us to see and to see the reality of this actually happening in the people of God and thinking about that. If they did this, we can too. And why are we saying our pastor couldn't have done this when we have these strong when we know
Kristin T. Lee (50:52.735)
Hmm.
Beth Allison Barr (51:14.805)
that this is a common way that women are treated. And so I think it would just help us approach it more realistically. mean, Protestants love heroes. We have our own saints, and our pastors in many ways have become our saints. And we don't want to see the wrong that they can do too. And that's dangerous for them as well as for their potential victims.
Kristin T. Lee (51:41.428)
So true. This book, and just hearing you talk now too, is just so powerful for me as a woman. But I also want our audience to know that this book is not just for women to read, right? And not just for women in ministry or married to a pastor. So can you explain why it is so important for all people and not just women to read this book and even for people who aren't in ministry or married into ministry? Like, why do people need to read it?
Beth Allison Barr (52:08.501)
Yeah, absolutely. So I mean, I think what this book does is it tells the history of church leadership from a very different perspective that people have not often heard before, as well as, and so you think about the story of women's ordination is actually not just the story of women, it's the story of what is ordination.
And how do we define what ordination is? And you know what? Almost no denomination defines ordination in the same way. And no denominations in the past. And even in the Catholic Church, we think about the medieval Catholic Church as a you know, the solid block of a thousand years. I mean, it's the Catholic, the medieval Christianity was just as diverse as modern Protestantism in wild ways that I just don't think we even imagine.
And even like, you we think about this, people are like, well, women couldn't be priests in the medieval world. And I'm like, well, do you actually know that that was always contested? That that was never fully decided and agreed upon in the medieval world? And that there were always women who were able to move into those priestly roles, those types of priestly roles that never actually went away. And so when we think about that, mean, so that's not just a story of women, that's
the story of this idea that we thought was for men. What does it mean if
men have actually not been the only the sole arbiters of the ones who serve in these spiritual leadership roles. I mean that changes the whole story of what we have been taught about masculine Christianity as well. And so I think it takes people into the story from a perspective that they may not have seen it from before and helps them think through what is it actually when I think about ordination
Beth Allison Barr (54:03.979)
when I think about pastoral leadership, when I think about what women and men are doing in the church, why do I think that way? Where does my context for this come from? And is it really actually coming from the biblical world? Or is it coming from my modern perspective?
Scott Rice (54:27.724)
Beth, thank you for writing a book and telling a history that is so unfamiliar to so many of us, but is so important. And then also for being willing to go into our theological questions about what the Bible is. There is so much that's at stake here and so much for us to think about. But please know how grateful we are for you in doing this work. There'll be a link to it in the show notes. Thanks for being a guest at Theology Lab.
Beth Allison Barr (54:47.799)
you
Beth Allison Barr (54:53.377)
Thanks for having me. After two very busy days, I think my voice is starting to go out on me.
Kristin T. Lee (54:54.836)
Thank
Kristin T. Lee (54:59.09)
Scott Rice (55:01.39)
That will wrap up our recording. know, this was so good, thank you. The only thing that would have made it better is if you said you were at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, if we could have had like a sign of the seminary behind you or something and like that would have
Kristin T. Lee (55:12.796)
You
Beth Allison Barr (55:13.535)
Well, got it today. You know, was in the belly. I hate to say the belly of the beast. There's so many faithful Christians and this
