Becoming the Pastor's Wife: How Marriage Replaced Ordination as a Woman's Path to Ministry

...and on becoming a grown ass woman

You know what was nice? Reading an advanced copy of Beth Allison Barr’s upcoming book, Becoming the Pastor’s Wife: How Marriage Replaced Ordination as a Woman’s Path to Ministry, now having escaped from complementarianism and being untethered from its unbiblical nonsense. It was nice reading Barr’s engaging church history—about the taking of women’s authorization from service to the church while setting up a faux-important, unpaid path to glory as the pastor’s wife—and thinking about my pastor, a capable and godly woman. And while thinking about the lack of a “role” of pastor’s spouse that her husband has at our church. Because he has his own vocation, and frankly, she doesn’t need him to help her do hers. She’s a grown ass woman.

Where else is this a thing except in the Crazytown of complementarianism? As Barr says in her book:

How usual is it for some of the duties of a husband’s paid job, for which he has been trained, to be separated out and reserved for his unpaid wife, regardless of her individual calling, gifts, and vocation?

Look, there’s a part of me that wants to be sympathetic to those reasonable people in complementarian churches that we hope this book reaches. But let’s get real. How many are going to read Barr with a good faith reading? I say this as an author who once wrote from the inside, just trying to make a case for women’s agency as fellow disciples within the bounds of the confessions of my former denomination and was called “the great whore of Babylon” for it. If only that were all that happened!

Barr does aim for those women who are stuck in the system to see that they really are free, that it is a farce, that in complementarianism we are abdicating our responsibility that comes with freedom. She encourages us to take another look at how our history is being told, how the church’s history is being told, and how we read our Scriptures. And man, I hope it is read in good faith. Because I have seen how lack of courage keeps women paralyzed. Facing our freedom means facing the commitments we make in our choices. We are all grown ass women and is time to stop allowing the church of all places to infantilize us and others.

I promise, Barr isn’t speaking this frankly, but she is laying it on the table with both her scholarship and life experience as a pastor’s wife. I love how she takes us through church history, making women visible in their authoritative ministry positions, while asking and answering many glaring questions that the evangelical church has been ignoring for too long, like:

· Do we even see preaching as the primary authoritative medium in the early church?

· Do we have evidence of women priests in church history?

· When did ordination become a thing? Did this practice originate in the Christian church? Was it attached to a function, or did it describe a status? When did that change? Who did that benefit?

· Did women ever serve the Eucharist? When did that end?

· Why is the word translated in our English Bibles as “pastor” only mentioned three times in Scripture and yet we make a pastor the most important figure in the church? And was there one pastor per church? What other authoritative vocations do we see in Scripture? Were they all exercised by the same person? Were they all men?

· What was the vocation of an abbess and what authority came with it?

· And, as her first chapter is titled, where is Peter’s wife? Why don’t we know her name and her important ministry as his wife?

I’m sure there will be numerous reviews outlining the research and work Barr has done in this book, tracing the influence of the Southern Baptist Convention on the role of the pastor’s wife and in constructing a delicate male authority, the history of women’s authority in the church, her expertise on the medieval church, the very interesting section “’From Priest’s Whore to Pastor’s Wife,’” the added layer of the Whiteness in “biblical womanhood,” and some tracking of that movement to current evangelicalism. Barr has a great way of presenting her research like a story, with all the receipts. Sometimes, though, we can have all the evidence in front of us and we just don’t want to see the case it is making. Barr’s book stands out because her style guides the reader to think critically. To look at the way we use our language. To not only think about intentions, that may sometimes have been good, but at impact. To challenge our ingrained ways of thinking and let ourselves look at Scripture again, look at history again, with our “biblical womanhood” glasses off.

Not only that, though. Barr’s heart shows in her writing. She wants women to step into the freedom that we have in Christ. The whole church is harmed by these false cages we put men and women in. She informs and she encourages. And her book will no doubt become another bestseller for her. But here is my question: will you take the step into this freedom? (This isn’t a question only for complementarians.) Because it is also a responsibility. This question is heavy on my mind as I’ve returned to school and am learning to be a therapist. Change is hard. It costs. It disrupts. We resist it because we think we are secure, and the anxiety that comes with increased awareness and the weight of our choices is real. Remember: inaction is also a choice. I was just reading about the inability for many of us to distinguish between a neurotically dependent attachment to another and a life-affirming relationship, and you know what? That reminded me to write something to share about Beth’s book! It comes out next month and is available for preorder now.