👒 The cost of Dorothy's hats + the role of a pastor's wife

Beth Allison Barr's powerful new book on female leadership in the church

I have read a lot of books in my time about what it means to be a Christian woman (hello purity culture), but when Beth Allison Barr’s The Making of Biblical Womanhood came out in 2021, it was a significant turning point for me. If I could give a book a giant hug, this one would be the first in line! I learned so much from Dr. Barr’s research and perspective, and felt even more empowered as a person of faith after reading her words. Beth Allison Barr is a professor and historian at Baylor University in Texas (her PhD is in Medieval History) so she KNOWS HER STUFF when it comes to history and theology. In addition to teaching, Dr. Barr spends a great deal of her time researching women and religion. And on top of all of that educational brilliancy, she is a mother of two kids and the wife of a pastor.

Dr. Barr has a new book that just came out this spring called Becoming the Pastor’s Wife, which gives a glimpse into her 25-year experience as a pastor’s wife.

In her book, Dr. Barr gives a real-life perspective on the reasons she loves being married to a pastor, but also takes the time to point out how the change in the role of a pastor’s wife over time has affected women in both positive and negative ways.

Dr. Barr provides a deep dive into the historical context of female ordination and the way that pastor’s wives have functioned in the church. It is clear how the shift in the latter has changed things for women trying to pursue a path to ministry, providing opportunities for influence but without any real leadership attached. Beyond that, there are hurdles like expectations for unpaid labor, deeply rooted systems of inequality and a lack of options for women in ministry beyond marrying a church staff member, and it hasn’t always been that way.

Women have gained leadership roles over the years, but under the guise of volunteer work or marrying into the ministry and assuming that responsibility, which strengthens the unhealthy gender hierarchy that exists. With her background as a historian, Dr. Barr gives readers a background of the beginnings of this role and provides examples of ordained women throughout history who were not shackled by the present-day marriage pipeline to ministry.

Are you a pastor’s wife? Friend or foe of a pastor’s wife? Someone who has ever felt sidelined in your role in ministry because you are a woman? If you fall into either of these categories (I think that covers most of us), then this book is for you. I think Dr. Barr’s perspective will offer a sense of freedom and hope to readers, as well as validate a lot of concerns that might’ve come to the surface over the years.

This book invites you to consider what leadership roles for women in the church could actually look like, as well as presents you with the opportunity to advocate for that in your own church circles. If you’re interested in adding Becoming the Pastor’s Wife to your TBR list, you can get your copy at Baker Book House for 30% off + free shipping, or from Amazon.

I cannot say enough good things about Dr. Barr and this book, and I hope you get a chance to read it soon. I’ve included an excerpt from Chapter 8 of Becoming the Pastor’s Wife, as a treat.

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The Cost of Dorothy’s Hats

I stood in the atrium of our recently built $2 million church building. It was in the early days after my husband was fired. My sleeveless shirt was gauzy blue. I remember because the tears I fought to suppress came anyway, sliding down my face to stain my shirt. The shirt hung loose on me; for the first (and only) time in my life, I had lost my appetite. The stress of what was happening to us, my disbelief that the people who knew us so well would let this happen to us, had overwhelmed my body. I stopped eating; I stopped sleeping; I stopped laughing. That Sunday morning, I followed one of the elders out of the worship service on a whim—a last- ditch effort to plead for my husband’s job.

Sympathy showed in his face as we stood in the morning light that flooded through the tall windows and pooled on the polished concrete floor. He was my friend, but in that moment it wasn’t my friend listening to my story. It was a male church elder, authorized by a particular interpretation of 1 Timothy 2–3. I watched when he walked away to stand by another elder. I could tell he was conveying my words. Only a few feet separated us, but I wasn’t invited to join them. Their posture, backs turned away and heads bent, signaled a closed space almost as clearly as if they had shut an office door.

This didn’t surprise me.

As a pastor’s wife in a conservative evangelical church, I had served like a leader for fourteen years. I had been interviewed like a leader before my husband was offered the job, I had conformed to leadership expectations, and I was perceived as a leader by the church congregation.

But I wasn’t one.

I reflected pastoral authority but carried none of my own. I was a glorified volunteer who invested several hours a week in ministry work yet was not included in any official leadership role. At best, my efforts that morning would be received as that of a suffering wife, perhaps helping to soften the blow of the sudden job loss on our family. They wouldn’t be received as that of a leader with wisdom about the implications this decision had for the community. I had played a significant role for fourteen years teaching and guiding a subset of the congregation, yet my voice was excluded from a conversation about the fate of that ministry.

The worst part wasn’t the realization that my last- ditch effort would fail (which it did).

The worst part wasn’t my growing concern with a theology and ecclesiology that concentrated church governance in a very small group of men.

The worst part wasn’t understanding, perhaps for the first time in my experience as a pastor’s wife, how contingent my role was— that all the influence I had wielded, authority in ministry I had carried, had come only as an extension of my husband’s job.

I didn’t understand the worst part until later, after I had time to reflect, and even then, I didn’t fully know the worst of it.

I do now.

The worst part is knowing, historically, how I had come to be in that atrium; knowing how women like me had become ministry leaders without ministerial authority; knowing how the disappearance of women’s independent leadership and the rise of a dependent ministry role tied to marriage had little to do with the Bible; knowing how removing women from leadership positions equal to those of men and tying their authority to subordinate positions increased women’s vulnerability.

You see, during a research trip to the Southern Baptist Historical Library and Archives in Nashville— exactly one week before the 2023 annual Southern Baptist convention in New Orleans—I began to uncover a story hauntingly familiar to the sex abuse crisis plaguing the SBC. A story connecting the dots between a gender theology that rejects women’s independent pastoral authority and a culture that privileges male clergy over clergy abuse victims. A story that shows the precarity of the pastor’s wife role.

It took me eight months to piece together the story, with the assistance of the SBC archives in Nashville, the Canadian Baptists of Ontario and Quebec at their main office in Toronto, and the archives in the neighboring town of Hamilton, as well as conversations with former church members at Dufferin Street Baptist Church in Toronto.

The story I uncovered reinforced for me how lucky I am in my personal experience as a pastor’s wife.

I may have been powerless in that atrium seven years ago, but I have never been powerless in my marriage. I am married to a kind and generous man who loves Jesus, has integrity, and believes fully in the dignity and equality of women. He majored in social work and became a pastor because he felt called to help people— not because he wanted to build a social media platform and preach before thousands of people. Neither money nor power motivate him. He isn’t perfect, but he is a man after God’s own heart; he loves me and our children deeply.

I am lucky.

Not all pastors’ wives are.

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You can follow Beth Allison Barr on Instagram or subscribe to more of her writing via her Substack at Marginalia with Beth Allison Barr.

If you’re hooked after that chapter sneak peak, here are a couple of ways you can order your copy of the book today!