Becoming the Pastor's Wife
A Book Review
When I mentioned the title of Beth Allison Barr’s latest book to some friends, they initially mentioned things like, “pastor’s wife?” or “what about pastor’s husband?” As a member of clergy in an egalitarian denomination (the full participation of women in all levels of leadership) the title might feel weird. Of course, even in my denomination we have been incredibly poor at living out our doctrines and theology of equality. So my friends would be right to feel somewhat uncomfortable with a book mentioning the pastor’s wife. After all we have had “Pastor’s and Wives” weekends scheduled in recent memories. That is because my church, the Church of the Nazarene was not immune to the cultural and religious forces which Barr highlights in this wonderful book.
Becoming the Pastor’s Wife: How Marriage Replaced Ordination as a Woman’s Path to MInistry is an historical look into how becoming the wife of a pastor replaced the earlier place of women in ministry and active ordination within Christianity. Like her book The Making of Biblical Womanhood, Becoming the Pastor’s Wife relies upon Barr’s extensive experience as a historian and as the wife of a pastor within the Baptist tradition, including the Southern Baptist Church (SBC). It is the stories of women within the SBC that Barr tells her broader story. From the early women who ministered, planted churches, and went to the mission field to the turn of a denomination toward patriarchal submission, Barr tells powerful stories of faithfulness even in the face of the oppressive ideology of patriarchy.
The stories of women who lead are powerful testimonies of God’s call of women to ministry. Regardless the cultural forces that led to men teaching that women are to be silent, Barr shows the more complex and diverse history of the Church and the beliefs on leadership. She also shows how ignorance continues assumptions around what scripture and Church history testify to. Barr shows how what we remember is not the truth of the Church, but of specific teachings that are, quite frankly, anti-gospel.
As I stood there in the church that day, I was reminded again that the problem isn’t a lack of evidence for the significant roles played by women in early Christian leadership. Nor is the problem that we have simply forgotten. The problem is what we have chosen to remember instead. Instead of remembering women like Bertha, who gave directions to both her husband and a priest that resulted in the conversion of England to Roman Christianity, or instead of remembering the orans position as indicative of authoritative religious speech (prophecy, prayer, and preaching), we remember John Piper’s warning that a woman who gives directions—even traffic directions—to a man should do so in a way that does not offend his God-given responsibility to lead.
Barr asked some incredibly challenging questions in an atmosphere of demanding unquestioned loyalty to doctrines of men and of politics. These questions are relevant even in the context of egalitarian churches, because we can just as easily follow that path. I fear many see the story of the now decline of the SBC as a model for growth rather than a tale of warning. But Barr is hopeful and that is what makes her work so meaningful. There is hope as we see more and more people rejecting the ideology that males are somehow more qualified to lead or be called than the women God calls.
Barr asks us:
What if we course-corrected the pastor’s wife role? What if we recognize how much of what we perceive as a biblical role for pastors’ wives has been created by culture (especially white Southern culture)? What if we recognize that a woman married to a minister can have a calling separate from her husband, that her domestic role does not define her identity in Christ? What if we recognize that the only true “biblical” role for a woman is to do whatever God has called her to do? Can you imagine?
Even more, her call to subvert the idea of coalitions for the Gospel has strains of Rachel Held Evans' calls to reject the patriarchal ideology of the Gospel Coalition and instead created a partnership of ministry.
What if we built a new evangelical coalition that could stand together for the gospel in reality as well as in name, recognizing the full equality of women and their value as ministerial leaders? What if we welcomed the pastoral leadership of women like Milburga, supported women called to ministry like Sarah Lee, helped women like Maria Acacia, and learned from women like Weptanomah Carter? Can you imagine? I can. History shows me how women like me became the pastor’s wife.
Like her previous work, the book is an important look into how things came to be and how ahistorical our understanding of history can be.