Married into ministry

“Can you imagine if, when SBC [Southern Baptist Convention] women expressed a call to ministry, they weren’t told it was probably a call to marry a minister?”

With this pointed question, Beth Allison Barr, the controversial author of The Making of Biblical Womanhood (2021), is back. Her new book, Becoming the Pastor’s Wife (Brazos, 256 pp.), traces the contemporary evangelical ideal of the pastor’s wife. But, being a medieval historian, Barr takes us back to a time outside most Protestants’ comfort zone: the medieval world of pre-Reformation saints, populated by female spiritual leaders such as Hildegard von Bingen and Milburga who, Barr argues, weren’t the exception but the rule. Were these Christian women “pastors” in the current sense? No. Barr dismisses that anachronism, noting these women wielded substantively more influence than our contemporary idea of “pastor.”

Becoming the Pastor’s Wife Beth Allison Barr

Readers of Barr’s earlier book will remember her criticisms of complementarianism and its legacy. This book offers more of the same. Barr still opposes “the patriarchy” and complementarian views about women. That being said, while Becoming the Pastor’s Wife may articulate a perspective many evangelicals disagree with, it also offers historical examples of female faith leadership they may be unfamiliar with. Moreover, she makes some salient points about absurd expectations many pastors’ wives must carry. Should a pastor’s wife really take classes about how to pack her husband’s suitcase? Should she be automatically expected to play the piano, organize church childcare, or be defined mainly by her husband’s vocation? Should the hiring of her husband also guarantee significant unpaid church labor from her? Does his call to the pastorate always mean she’s called to pastor’s wifehood and all the extrabiblical duties it has come to entail?

Barr, a longtime pastor’s wife herself, studied 150 books written for pastors’ wives, and lists each title in a chronological index at the back. Her analysis will challenge any Christian subsumed in a church subculture where the roles of women are rigidly defined.

But readers will notice gaps in her argument. While it’s fair for Barr to recognize a diversity of opinions about women’s roles exists within orthodoxy, most Protestants won’t be persuaded by examples from the Middle Ages. I kept waiting for her substantive treatment of 1 Timothy 2:12, a verse complementarians say prohibits female ordination. Barr mentions the complementarian view and labels it wrong. But why is it wrong, exactly? What is her specific hermeneutic? She uncovers helpful historical examples of female theological authority. But a straightforward interpretation of this passage never appears.