Theology in the Raw - Becoming the Pastor's Wife: Dr. Beth Allison Barr

Episode Date: March 24, 2025

Dr. Barr is the James Vardaman professor of history at Baylor University in Waco, TX, and is the author of several books including her recently released Becoming the Pastor's Wife: How Marriage Replaced Ordination as a Woman's Path to Ministry, which forms the backdrop of our conversation. Register for the Exiles and Babylon conference: theologyintheraw.com -- If you've enjoyed this content, please subscribe to my channel! Support Theology in the Raw through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theologyintheraw Or you can support me directly through Venmo: @Preston-Sprinkle-1 Visit my personal website: https://www.prestonsprinkle.com For questions about faith, sexuality & gender: https://www.centerforfaith.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey friends, the exiles and Babylon conference is just a few days away, folks, April 3 to 5th, Minneapolis, Minnesota. All the info is at theology in the raw.com. If you want to attend, still room to sign up. If you can't make it out to Minneapolis, and you can also watch live online. But if you do what I got, you got to register like yesterday. So the old draw.com, all the information is there. Beth, Alison bars, my guest today. Beth is a James Vardeman Professor of History at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, author of several books, including the recently released,

Becoming the Pastor's Wife, How Marriage Replaced Ordination as a Woman's Path to Ministry. Really, really, really loved this conversation. Beth is always a delight to talk to you. So please welcome back to the show, the one and only Dr. Beth Allison Barr. Beth Allison Barr, good to see you again. It's been a couple of years, I think. Yeah, good to see you.

Yeah. So I just got to do, because I don't know. I just, I got to jump into this. This is your new book, becoming the pastor's wife. And I have to say, I got a bit of a funny story. So we get sent a lot of books from, you know, authors and publicists and everything. So they're always like lying around the house and sometimes given my line of work, the books are, you know, they're, they're more adult content, not in the non-Christian way, know, non-Christian way, whatever. But, you know, sometimes I'm, my kids are older now, so it doesn't matter. But before I was like, Oh God, I had to take this one downstairs, you know, but this book was sitting around and people who are just listening, can't see it, but it's got to, I mean, it's got a picture of this like 1950s, like leave it to beaver

wife. Uh, you have the background look like a, is it a Catholic saint? Yes, it is. It's in the deep. Yeah. It's Catherine and Alexandria. Oh, I was going to assume that's probably a specific like medieval thing. But the title becoming the pastor's wife. And I remember my wife saw this and she's like, Oh no, no, this is not. She was like, I could feel the triggers going off because of the image, the title. And I had to reassure her. I'm like, no, no, this is Beth. Allison bar wrote this. I'm pretty sure she's not going to be advocating for what you think this book is advocating for. And she's like, and she's like, I dunno, I'm like, can you get that

book off my couch? I'm like, no serious. This is, you would probably really like this. But anyway, we had a fun time discussing that. And even now it's coming down. I'm like, I don't know. I'm like, can you get that book off my couch? I'm like, no, I'm serious. This is, you would probably really like this book. Anyway, we had a fun time discussing that. And even now it's coming down. I'm like, Hey, I'm going to, I'm going to do a podcast about this book. She's like, are you serious? I'm like, no, I'm serious. It's not what you think. I'll send her a signed copy and she can, she can be surprised. Yeah. I wanted her to do this podcast, but she has other stuff to do. Anyway, let's jump in. What led you to write this book? Yeah. Well, in a nutshell, after I wrote The Making of Biblical Womanhood, with its surprise

success that freaked everyone out, including me, when they came back and said, do you have something else to write? I was like, no way. I was like, I'm going back to medieval sermons or it's nice and safe and quiet. And then I had a conversation with Scott McKnight and Scott was like, Beth, don't let anyone pressure you into writing anything else. And he said, but if there's something you left unsaid, he said, now's the time for you to say it. And I thought about it. And the one thing I'd really left unsaid was the piece on women's ordination. I just hadn't really had time to talk about that

in the making of biblical womanhood. And so while I'm kind of thinking about this, I was also teaching a grad seminar. I think it was my women and religion grad seminar. And one of the books I was reading to prep for it was by one of my colleagues at Baylor, Elizabeth Flowers. She has this really fantastic book called Into the Pulpit, Southern Baptist Women in Power in the post-World War II era. I was reading about the rise of the conservative resurgence, the fundamentalist takeover of the SBC

that starts in the late 70s. And I was, and one of the, and she was talking about sort of the precursors leading up to that and into the early 80s. And one, and I noticed that the women that she was highlighting who were on the vanguard of this conservative resurgence, we always hear about the men,

but there were women who were on the vanguard of the conservative resurgence. You know, we always hear about the men, but there were women who were on the vanguard of the conservative resurgence too, who were fighting specifically against women's ordination. And these women were all pastors' wives. That trick, you know, something in my brain connected. And I was like, that's really fascinating. I actually called Betsy and I was like, Betsy. And she was like, no one's ever talked about this, Beth. She was like, I think there's something

there too. And I was like, okay, I know that I, I'm a pastor's wife. I know this world. And I know I, you know, I was like, let me see if something's there. And that's where this book began. That's right. You are a pastor's wife. I mean, you're also a professor and a scholar and, you know, best-selling author, but you're not a traditional pastor's wife, but you're a pastor's wife. You would be surprised how traditional I actually am in many ways, you know? But yeah, I mean, and I do talk about this in the book that I'm actually happy my ministry gifts actually fit some of the stereotypes of a pastor's wife role. Like I much prefer to be behind the scenes. I much prefer to kind of be like,

okay, what needs to be done? Let's go do it. I'm not traditional in the sense I'm not good at, I don't want to teach children. Please don't really make me teach children. I can sit in the room and maybe help if you need another adult. And please never ask me to play the piano. But, you know, aside from that, I sort of, I'm a, let's do what needs to be done to get this going. And so, the role of pastor'sife, I guess, wasn't as jarring on my gifting as a woman. And so it was a slower revelation to me how absolutely weird the role is. Anyway, it was fascinating doing this research. I'll tell you, I'm still, I'm planning to actually do a couple of academic articles based on, I have this huge database. I mean, I've read 150 pastors wife books. Oh, that's great. Wow. You tackled this as a scholar. I mean, you did a ton of research.

Totally. Totally. Yeah, yeah, totally. This book is, I mean, I have in the back, I have an appendix where I list all of the books in chronological order from 1923 to 2023 that we used for this. So people can go back and check it. Pete So, I have so many questions. I don't even know where to start. Jennifer Yeah, let me let you start. Pete Okay. So, and a lot of this is just my perception of this, the pastor's wife world. So, I would love to know if it's accurate or not. Is it true, or is it pretty widespread in the church that when a church hires a male pastor, it's sort of assumed that his wife will do all these things, and it's like an unpaid position. It's like they're getting to two-for-one. It's expected that she leads the women's

ministries, it's expected she's going to have a certain personality, it's expected she's going to be present at this and that and this and that. Is that pretty widespread? And what do you think about that? So, yes and no. Let me just put that one out there for you. One of my chapters is called Two for the Price of One, which every woman who's a pastor's wife is like, yes, that's exactly right. And there is, since in the 20th century, especially beginning in the mid to latter part of the 20th century, we begin to see these assumptions that the pastor's wife labor comes alongside her husband's job, that this is an expected component within more, I would say, sort of the broader evangelical and evangelical adjacent world, there are some parallels if you think about like the Methodist Church.

I did some sprinkling like trying to read around and see what's going on. If you think about like further back 19th century UK role, women who are married to these village parish priests. There sort of are these expectations, but in some ways it's actually a class-based expectation. Like women in the higher classes go and take food to the poor and go and visit and those sort of things. And so that was something the pastor's wife did, but it was sort of more of a class expectation because she would be in the gentry class who was, her husband was often appointed by the

local Lord or whoever had control over that parish, et cetera. You can just think all your Jane Austen movies and all of the parish, all the priests within that. So just think about that. But in the US, in the mid-20th century, we really began to see this expectation pick up with the pastor's wife role. And in some ways, it parallels broader cultural shifts in the US.

This goes right along with that post-World War II shift. Let's get women out of jobs to get men back into jobs. And so, let's talk about what women do to support their husbands because that helps normalize society. You know, the pastor's wife role kind of is part of that, this broader cultural trend. It just followed the cultural trend. Okay, yeah. Yeah. But what makes it different, what makes it different is that the pastor's wife role begins to be perceived as a separate calling by God.

And it begins to be seen as a specific, not just a specific ministry calling, but the highest ministry calling for women. And so when we start thinking about moving into the 70s, especially the 80s and the 90s, is where you really begin to see this vocational calling that if you are called to ministry, you are called to marry a minister. It's especially prominent in evangelical spaces. I would say also a lot that are connected with the more conservative part of the US, which is often the Southern States and over to the West.

So you think about your background in California, that's actually part of this broader shift. A little bit up into the Midwest. Again, just anecdotally, I mean, I talk about this all the time on the podcast. I hope people aren't sick of it, but I mean, I was raised in a conservative environment, Masters and John McArthur, and it had some pros and cons of that experience, like any journey. But that was, I remember, especially in the undergrad, I could think of specifically, I'm not going to name anybody, but I could think of several girls, college students, females that were like, I'm going to marry a pastor and I want a pastor that

is like John MacArthur, that preaches like him and is a strong leader. And I feel, I don't know if they use the language calling, but it's very clear like, oh yeah, so and so, yeah, she's going to be a pastor's wife. And it was very much just this like, hi, not marry a godly man or whatever, but like, I want to serve my pastor and I want to come along, you know, like, help him preach well and do, like, do whatever I can to serve him in his ministry, which I don't, I'm not saying that negatively or whatever, but it's just, it confirms what you're saying. Yeah. It's this sort of thing, because on the one hand, it's like, well, yeah, we want to support our

spouses. That's nothing wrong with supporting your spouses. What's happened with the pastor's wife role is that it has become not just an expectation. I mean, it's become an expectation, but it literally has become part of the pastor position. So, for a man to be hired into a role involves the interview as well as the labor of his wife. And so, if a woman is not willing to be the type of pastoral support that the church expects, that can cost her husband the job. And this becomes sort of this, and it's not an unspoken thing either. The thing is, is that this is written in Christian literature to women. This is something, as I said, I read 150 of these, this genre. It is also something that began to be taught in seminaries. The six flagship SBC seminaries, you know, especially in the 90s, by the 90s and early

2000s, southwestern, southern, southeastern, all had the Seminary Institute for Ministers' Wives, or something, the Institute for Ministers' Wives. And it was training women up for this on how to use their labor to support their husband's job. I had a question about the stated and unstated. Like, as I've talked to some pastors' wives, it was almost this unstated expectation, which I feel like it's almost worse.

Like, on a church level, like, if a church says, all right, we're on the hunt, we're hiring a pastor, and all right, this pastor's great, how's your marriage? Good, okay, cool, yeah, okay, you're hired. And then if it's like all these unstated expectations of the wife, I feel like that's almost worse than a church saying, hey, the way we run things here is we expect the pastor's wife to check off these boxes. Does yours do that? At least it's up front, you know? You can say, well, okay, that maybe that's not the church for me if my wife doesn't

check off those boxes. But it's almost worse, I think, having it unstated. Don't you think? So, I think it's both here. By stated, what I mean is that in this pastor's wife literature, it is really clear. It is really clear that this is what women are called to do. And so, a couple of times in the book, I kind of just walk through, like one of the books that's always taught at the SBC seminaries is Gloria Furman's book.

I think it's 2008. Also, I used Gail McDonald's book, High Calling, High Privilege, and Dorothy Patterson's book, of course, Handbook for Ministers' Wives. You can, you know, all of these, they state really clearly. You can also think about Doug Wilson's wife. I read Nancy Wilson's pastor's wife book for this. And they state very clearly that this is your job. In fact, Dorothy Patterson says you really shouldn't have any other job. She's like, if you have to do it to make financial ends meet, that's okay, I guess. But really, it is best for you to be this unpaid support staff because if your husband needs you on the fly, if the church needs you on the fly, you can't be like, okay, I can come when my

job's over. You need to be available at all times for anything that's needed. And that's the message that's given. Churches, yes, who also feed into this expectation. They often don't explain what those parameters are. What do we mean that you should be available at a drop of a hat? What does it mean? Often things you see as women get shocked by how much their appearance is judged. Really horrific things about, especially women's weight. And you can think about pastor's wives whose husbands get into these roles when they're in their

twenties and then they start having kids and all of that sort of stuff. And these women who felt like their bodies were being shamed. And in fact, one pastor's wife book says that your weight is a sign of your spiritual health. And so, if your weight is not, you know, undercon...which I suspect in the 80s and 90s meant sort of our very thin image of a woman, that that is a sign of you not having a good spiritual devotional life with God. So, I think those unexpected...and nobody really knowing, like if you don't show up for an event and then suddenly you've caused this huge thing where everybody at church is wondering if y'all are getting divorced because you didn't show up for this one event because

you're tired, you know, those types of unexpected things. I think so churches don't state them, but the pastor's wife literature and what's taught in these courses says, this is what you are supposed to do. So it's in the ethos, yeah, for sure in the ethos. But churches aren't, yeah, when I say unstated, I mean, they don't like when they're hiring a pastor, it would be better if they had, here are the specific things we expect your wife to be doing. So that at least at that point, before he gets hired, he can say, yeah, that's not going to happen. You know, you haven't met my wife, you know, she doesn't have

these specific gifts or desires or calling. So... I tell a story in one of the beginning of one of the chapters. I think it's, I can't remember, it's two for the price of one maybe of the beginning of one of the chapters, um, I think it's I can't remember. It's two for the price of one. Maybe is the beginning of it, but I tell a story it's a friend of mine a good friend of mine, um who also has her phd and She told a hiring committee her husband was a finalist for a job and they asked her what she thought She was going to be doing and she was like i'm pregnant with our second kid. I have a full-time job. I'm defending my dissertation soon and she's like, you know, I'll be a faithful church member. And they were horrified by that. And they actually told her husband, they didn't give him the job.

And they said, you are our number one candidate until we talk to your wife, because they didn't see her as being, you know, so I mean, at least they figured that out before they got to the church, got offered at the church. But nonetheless, really shocking if you think about it. Where do they find this in Scripture or do they? Yeah, I would love to know. Do you have a chapter on like, what are the best exegetical? Yes. So, I mean, this book, like the Making a Biblical Womanhood, walks through 2000 years of church, like the Making a Biblical Womanhood, walks through 2000 years of church, well, Making a Biblical Womanhood went back further, but this one walks through 2000 years of church history. So, my first chapter is Where's Peter's Wife? And that's

exactly what this is. It's exactly, you know, it's like, because this is the irony of the pastor's wife role. And I'm not arguing it's a bad role. I see the value of it. I've been doing this role for over 25 years. But at the same time, it is a culturally constructed role that has no correlation in Scripture. I mean, there just isn't. It's just not there. People can try, you know, and one of the amusing things, I suppose, about reading all of these pastors wife books is seeing how people try to use different scripture passages to support the pastor's wife role. And they were inconsistent because there is no clear model within the Bible. And the one, you know, Dorothy Patterson, I suppose, is the most blatant about,

I would say, her scriptural distortion. She actually has this whole section on Priscilla and Aquila, where she argues that Priscilla is the quintessential pastor's wife role who's supporting the ministry of her husband. And I don't... It almost seems the opposite, actually. That's actually what I suggest. I would say, I actually might think the Bible would be more supportive of thinking about Aquila as the first pastor's husband. You think about it from what the text actually shows.

So it's simply not there. That doesn't mean it's not a role we should have. It just is highly ironic that people who insist on biblical literarism, I can't say that word, yeah, whatever, it can't come out of my mouth, but who insist on that, then are insisting on a ministry role that they advertise, advocate as the highest ministry calling for women, which isn't a biblical role at all. So, yeah, no, that's my first chapter. Pete Just for the audience, in case they didn't catch what we were kind of alluding to with Priscilla and Aquila, they're mentioned six times in the New Testament, four times her names mentioned first, which is really, that's really abnormal

in a first century context unless one, she has a higher social and economic status, or she was the more influential partner. Either way, and whatever they're mentioned together, they're both the subject of the verbs. When they took Apollos aside, they explained him the Word of God more accurately. When Paul praises him in Romans 16, everything is very much mutual, which again, in a first-century context, that's really pretty striking. So anyway, that's why we're... You can speculate why she's mentioned first, why not all the time, or why for the times, but either way, clearly it's not that she is like supporting him and his ministry role or whatever it is. It is a dual role that they're playing. Yeah. And I'll give you an Easter egg in the book. So we got it out of most of the copies,

but some of the copies somewhere, the way my brain works, I conflated acts 18 with Romans 16 and say act 16. Oh no. Is that in the first print? So wait, the second print will fix that. Yeah, it will have it. We got it actually out of some of the copies. It was one of those things the day after it went to print. I saw it and I sent it to my editor was like, oh my gosh.

We had this whole conversation about the sentence right above it. And so it know, anyway, I was like, well, there's my Easter egg. Those mistakes are so obvious that it's like, to me, it's like, that's not a big deal. It's more like, you know, it's like, clearly, this is just a, you know, well, you know, your brain reads over it so many times, you don't see it. And when I did see it, I was like, I knew exactly what I did. I conflated because I had just been talking about Acts 18. And then I went to Junia in Romans 16 and I can play with it. So anyway, it's kind of funny. I thought you would find that funny. I thought it was super busy and quite stressful last few weeks. Deadlines were piling up, the stresses of life were caving in, and these things can

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in my mind. Yeah, so there's a few married couples. Priscilla and Aquila are by far the most influential. Gosh, they set up house churches in at least two different cities, ministered in three or four. I mean, they were Paul's co-workers. I mean, dynamic duel. No evidence that she is playing some kind of pastor's wife role that we're talking about today. Junius and Andronicus, we have one verse on them in Romans 16, 7. They did something so outlandish that it landed them in prison, which for a woman of the first century was extremely rare. And they're both called apostles. Yep. Absolutely.

I think there's another, is there another, Mary, I thought there was three in the New Testament married? Well, there's Sapphira. Oh, Ananias and Sapphira. Yeah, there's, and I actually almost talked about them. I cut out a section on Safira just because, well, part of it was also length. I tend to write way too much anyway. So part of it was length, but they were the other couple. And I think Nijay Gupta had a statement that really struck me when I was reading his Tell Her Story, in which he argues, where he just simply says, he says, look, this is a negative story.

They're both doing bad things. But it's fascinating that it is both husband and wife who are brought in and who answer and are held responsible for the charges. Independently. Independently. Right. This isn't sort of like she's not held responsible because of her husband or she's not given a pass because she's under her husband's authority. She is brought in and seen as an equal partner of

this crime within the church. And so that also, again, this emphasis on women's independent leadership for better or for worse that the early church recognized. So she was in an early draft and got cut just simply, you know, I also had to cut Tabitha. Yeah, it was just too much. Oh, Tabitha too. You have lots of stories of, yeah, Lydia Tabitha, get the impression that they're probably wealthy widows or... Yeah, I mean, that's not, you know, perhaps. Well, even if they were married, their husbands already mentioned, which that would, again, show some level of, she's not supporting her husband in his ministry. And so, all the three married couples that we've mentioned, including

Ananias and Sapphira, there is zero evidence that he's doing some kind of ministry and she's simply supporting him in his ministry. So I'm curious, in all your study, did you look at the archaeology of the catacombs, like the Priscilla catacombs and the catacombs in Naples that show all... I talk about the Priscilla catacombs in this book too. Oh, you know, I just dabbled, I mean, a bit, but I'm, cause that deals more with like the history or reception of Priscilla. I didn't know that she was like widely hailed like after her death.

I mean that that, her reputation. Yeah, I mean the Priscilla catacombs probably aren't from her, they're actually, but her name was so popular. Here later, it's a third and fourth century. You know, there was a tradition that maybe Priscilla and Aquila were buried in there, that becomes an early medieval tradition. But if you ever have a chance, you should go. They're amazing. They have more images

of women on the walls in the Priscilla catacombs than I think any other place. Is this in Ephesus or Rome? This is in Rome. This is in Rome. You can just go, yeah, I mean, I took 15 high schoolers to it. And I was on my son's senior trip in Italy and I talked about the trip a little bit. It was actually hysterical taking them on it.

But so I took all these high schoolers on that trip with me because I wanted, I wanted to see, um, those women on the walls. And, um, next time I go back, I'm going to send them my letter, my archive letter so I can get a private tour. Man, I was in Rome a few years ago and, uh, it was a quick, we just were running our running around super fast, but yeah, that would be fascinating to see. You should do it. Yeah, I want to go to Naples too,

because Naples has these two women on the, and I've had people send me pictures of them and I've used them in my teaching, but they have the, the gospels are around their head and there's tongues of fire coming out. And they're clearly, the symbolism with them is clearly the symbolism of bishops. And it's just really fascinating. I know Sandra Glahn and Lynn Kohick have been doing a lot of work with all this stuff, right?

Yes. I got some pictures from them. They were over there not too long ago. Yeah, for the visual museum. So yeah. Is that what they're doing? They're producing yeah, for the visual museum. So, yeah. Is that what they're doing? They're producing something. Yeah, what is that? So, they're doing an online website. It's all free. You can download all of the images and use them, and it's images of women serving in leadership roles throughout church history. And they're just, you know, one of the things I say at the end of either my first or second chapter, I can't remember, but it's just like the evidence of women in church leadership is everywhere. We just have to look. And literally, in Rome, you just got to look on the walls. You got

to look, you know, in the medieval world, you just got to look at the images. You know, we see women holding crojers, which is a sign of a bishop. You know, I have a whole chapter on a medieval woman who essentially functioned as a bishop in the early medieval world and was ordained by the Archbishop of Canterbury. For all of those people who say, not women ordained, I'm like, actually, there's a lot of women ordained. First thousand years of Christian history, we have clear evidence of it. So anyway, it's all over the walls. It's all over the art of our buildings. Have you happened to read Sister Prudence Allen's book, The Concept of Women?

So I think a long time ago I did. She came out with a condensed version, because it's a three volume, I mean, massive, like 1500 pages. But she came out with a fairly recent condensed version of it. Yeah, I'm trying to remember when I read it, but yeah, but I haven't read it recently. So she, and I don't know if it was her or, so right now I'm just at her section on Plato and Aristotle, we can just finish Aristotle. So maybe it's not her, it's somebody else. Because the biggest question is like, where did the kind of suppression of women's ministry start in the early church? I know you're getting all giddy. But I think she or somebody said it was the kind of the resurrection of the belief that women were ontologically inferior, which you have lots of statements throughout church history along those lines, where before that

was sort of resurrected, which that's actually very Aristotelian, you know, you had, like, yeah, you had women occupying all kinds of levels of church ministry. But anyway, yeah. Yeah, that's exactly right. I would say that is certainly part of it. I mean, in some ways, that idea never goes away. There's always arguments that women's bodies are inferior to men. But at the same time, there are still... We have clear evidence of women still serving in all types of leadership roles. We also know that Roman women, this is something we don't think about as much, but Roman women were also serving at the altar.

Megan Deluzio has that great book called A Place at the Altar about non-Christian pagan women in Roman religion who are serving in these very high positions including, you know, this is something that Niger also drew to my attention too, thinking about the Vestal Virgins. You know, they're actually the highest religious authority in Rome. And so, I mean, there's limitations, but at the same time, you know, we always focus on the limitations instead of focusing on the fact that all of these religious figures to some extent have limitations on them, but yet women are still serving in these roles.

The body is part of it. We begin to see that. I would argue more it's the evolution of sacramental theology. With that, the evolution of a clear definition of ordination that becomes tied to sacramental theology. And that doesn't happen until the central Middle Ages. That's one of the things. Gary Macy, I don't know if you've read Gary Macy's book, The Hidden History of Women's

Ordination. He's with Oxford University Press. He's a great medievalist. And, you know, it's a book that all medievalists know. We've been reading, you know, we're like, and it's a great medievalist. And, you know, it's a book that all medievalists know. We've been reading, you know, Lear Light and it's, yeah, yeah. I mean, a stellar book. And in it, he just walks through the evolution of what happens with what he calls this presbycentric explosion that really takes place in the central Middle Ages. And this also coincides with the emphasis on clerical celibacy, which, you know,

trying to differentiate the clergy from the lay people. And this also re-emphasizes the problems of female bodies, because if you gotta keep, if in order to have sacramental power, you have to be a celibate priest, then that makes women's bodies especially dangerous. But that is not clearly articulated. It's an evolution until the Central Middle Ages. William Witt, Icons of Christ is an excellent book. It traces a lot of this. If I remember correctly, he says, yeah, he deals a lot with the sacramental arguments, 12 apostles, all

male, you can almost draw a straight line there, and then also mediating the sacraments. He was a male Christ, he needed a male person mediating the sacraments. The male body of Christ, yeah. I mean, the male priest to handle the male body of Christ, yeah. And it has to be a male body. Does a modern... We're going back to your other book, Beth, but hey, it's still... Well, this is in this one too. Oh, it is? Okay. I actually do the ordination piece a lot better in this one. Okay.

So, yeah. So, this know, as I said, in the making of biblical womanhood, it was just, I just skated the surface of it. But this one, I did a deep dive on it. And so, my medieval skills as a medieval church historian, I think are on better display in this book. Okay, okay, cool. Okay, so we're not off topic. I was like, bring it back. Okay. You're good. What's the relationship between modern Protestant, for lack of a better term, is complementarian approaches in relation to its Sacramento roots? Are they completely different or are they,

is the modern Protestant growing out of the Sacramento? So you know, this is actually what William Witt does that's so brilliant. Although his book is very dense, but what he does in it that's so brilliant is he really emphasizes how the Catholic reasons for preventing women, for barring women from the priesthood are vastly different from modern Protestant differences. And the reason is because the Catholic one really emphasizes it's the body. It's the problem of the female body, which is also why there's loopholes in Catholic theology because women can overcome their bodies and move into positions of leadership. But in Protestantism, it's not the body. It is a divine mandate that men and women are called to separate roles.

And that one of these roles, despite all of the language that that's an equal calling, they're not when you, you know, it's a hierarchical thing. And that is a modern, that really is a modern development. You know, there's hints of it in the past. You can find it in various, you know, you can find everything in Augustine, actually, at some point, if you look hard enough, you can find something for them to support. He did so much. But you find a lot of hints of it in the past, but it's very much a post-Reformation development. And in this book, I actually, you know, I have my chapter, The Rise of the Pastor's Wife, in which I talk about the pastor's wife role, the seeds of it are in the Reformation,

where for, because marriage is a symbol of Protestant resistance, of evangelical resistance. And to be a priest in the Reformation era, to be a Protestant priest in the Reformation era was to be married. So the pastor's wife became a symbol of resistance. I mean, it's actually a heroic role. When at first it was a dangerous role. A lot of women were killed in this role because they dared marry a pastor. And so, this is, but it's also the first time in history where marriage becomes connected to the clerical role in a substantial way. You know, I always, Leonard Sweet in his book on the pastor's wife, which is one of the, there's him and Margaret Watts, both have these treatments, these books on the history of the pastor's

wife role. And Leonard Sweet starts off his book with this very annoying statement where the pastor's wife role has always been a part of the church. And I say in the book, I wrote in the margins of that the first time I saw first time I saw it, I said, there's a difference between being married to a pastor and being a pastor's wife. And really up through the Reformation era, being married to a minister did not automatically sign you up for the job.

It didn't. It's not until the Reformation that that becomes sort of begins to be this automatic that if you are married to a pastor, you're married to his job in some degree. But there's still more options for women. There's some women who serve as pastors, ministers with their husbands. There's some women, you know, like I tell one of my favorite stories that Margaret Watts tells is about this woman in Scotland who got mad at her husband because he sided on a different side of a religious dispute from her. And so she stopped going to his church and every Sunday morning he would help her

on her horse and she would ride across the town to a different church that supported her views. And that, you know, yeah, and she was the pastor's wife. Is that funny? So shameful. I know, it's still funny. And her pastor husband would just, I mean, he must have been a very gentle soul. He would just help her get on her horse and let her ride off to the other side of town to attend services. Martin Luther's wife. Wasn't she kind of a spunky, I know she's brewed some beer and yeah. Jennifer 16

So, one of my very good friends, actually you're going to like this book. One of my very good friends at Baylor is a Luther scholar. He's a Reformation scholar, David Whitford. And he has a book coming out on Luther and masculinity, which is just really, and so I actually got him to give me some early stuff of that. So I quote him in my section on Catherine, on Cathy, Katerina, people call her all sorts of different things, Von Bora. But yeah, she was. She, while, you know, people often assume, like I remember one of the first pastor's

wife's role books I was given, it was one of Ruth Tucker's books. I don't talk about Ruth Tucker in the book very much just because she had such a tragic life. I don't know. But she desperately tried to find historical justification for what she was expected to do. And she transforms Katie Luther into this pastor's wife who takes care of the house and does the food and all of this sort of thing. And while Katie did do some of those things, she was a theologically trained woman who went head to head with Luther and his friends.

So there's aspects of her life that you can make look like the pastor's wife, but there's aspects of her life that just don't fit into it at all, except for the fact that when Luther died, she lost all of her influence, which was the tragic part of the pastor's wife role. And I connect that the final chapter of this book actually follows a clergy sex abuse case that I found in the archives that I tell through the lens of the pastor's wife. It's a hard chapter. Can you get into that one a little? I mean, do you mind talking about it? Yeah, no, no, no. I don't mind. So, yeah, no, it's... I tell people the making of biblical womanhood was a story I knew. I'd been teaching it since 2008 at Baylor. It was my research.

I didn't really have to do a lot of research for it. I knew that story. Becoming the pastor's wife is a story I didn't know. I told you the origin of it. And it's all based on primary source and new secondary source reading research that I, you know, except for the medieval chapters, I knew a lot of what was going on in those. So when I was in the archives in Nashville looking at—and in the Southern Baptist Archives in Nashville, there's a collection called the Minister's Wives Conference, because since 1958—and I talk about this conference, this amazing conference—in 1958, a whole bunch of pastors—well, early 1950s, they get together and they're like, we need help. We need a place where we can get together and where we can talk about what's going on with this role, where we can provide advice for this. So, I was looking

through their conference papers, and in the midst of it, I ran across this ordination crisis about these two women who got ordained in the early 80s, who were pastors' wives, and it caused this whole huge stink. And so, I got more documents, you know, more boxes. I asked for more boxes to try to find more about this story. And I tell this story also in the book, Kathy Hoppe and Sarah Woodley. And I was in the Jimmy Draper files, and Jimmy Draper was president of the Southern Baptist Convention between 1982 and 1984. He presided over the 1984 resolution that said women can't be pastors because of the Sinevieve, and he supported that.

And so, I'm in his files reading about this ordination crisis with these two women, these two ordained pastor's wives. And I run across a series of letters that were completely unconnected to any of it. And it was this man who wrote in who said the Southern Baptist Mission Board, it was actually International Mission Board, the Foreign Language Department, has hired a man who's committed clergy sex abuse and who's confessed to it. And he said, and you need to know this, and I recommend that you not allow him to serve as an ordained pastor in the Southern Reptile Church. And this is the week before the 2023 SBC that I find this in the archives.

So it's, you know, and that's the eve of the SBC about to kick out these two churches, Rick Warren's church and Linda Barnes Popham for having women, ordaining women, as well as the first round of the law amendment, which if the SBC had passed it in 2024, it would have barred women from any pastoral role in the Southern Baptist Church, which is the harshest restriction, I would argue, in Western history on women in ministry, except for maybe in some pocket areas, you know, the largest sort of big. So it's the week before that, that I'm in the archives and I run across this case of potential clergy sex abuse.

And what really caught my attention about it is at first Jimmy Draper responds, he's like, oh my gosh, that's terrible. Let me see if I can figure stuff out. So he reaches out to William Tanner, who's the head of the home, I guess it's the home mission board, it's the North American mission board. So it is under that. And William Tanner is like,

well, let's reach out to the guy who hired him. And so they reach out to Oscar Romo, who was the head of the foreign language division. Oscar Romo writes back and says, yeah, we knew this, but he hasn't done anything since then and it's all good. He said it happened a long time ago in Toronto. Then Jimmy Draper writes back and says, okay, that's great. One of them uses, it's in there and he's like, we have to be a redemptive community and they

close the case on it. I couldn't let that case, I couldn't find anything else in the archives, the SPC archives about this. I found a whole lot about the man. I tell the whole story about the man and his wife through the lens of his wife. But I went to Toronto. It took me eight months to put the story together. I went to Toronto and I pretty much found everything, including interviews with people who are at the church where this happened. And as I said, it's this callous attitude towards not investigating a sexual predator,

a known sexual predator who's confessed, at the same time that they are also beginning this very hard turn pushing women out of all leadership roles in the Southern Baptist Convention. Though the juxtaposition of those two things just were so bright. And so that's my final chapter of this book, as I tell that story and how it connects. So, I think you might have answered my question. I was asking what's the relationship between the rest of the book and bringing in sexual abuse. It's to show the juxtaposition of the two. Yeah, that's exactly right. And that the same time, you know, that these attitudes go together

of not listening to women. And when you don't have women in leadership roles, in respected leadership roles, and this is harmful. I mean, this is why the Southern Baptist Church is in the position that it's in right now. They haven't been listening to women for a really, really long time. And so I do think these things, and really I tell this story through the lens of the pastor's wife and it's a lot, her life was very challenging living with this man. And so, I tell some of that story, sort of the precarity of the pastor's wife role, which happens when we

create a ministry position that is so highly regarded, but yet has no independent authority and has no independent sort of like, what do you do if a pastor's wife is in trouble? What do you do if the wife in a church, her husband's abusive? How does she get help when all of the men who are in leaders in that church are supporting her husband? How does she get help when if she tells somebody about her husband, it's going to cost the bread winning component? And like this pastor's wife, you know, she had six kids. What do you do? What happens when you have created a role for women in ministry that is completely dependent on the good behavior of men?

You're just, oh man, yeah, that's that you're creating structures that are not inevitably will go bad. I mean, there could be all good people involved, but if there are a few bad apples, the structures are going to not be able to call that. That's exactly right. That's dangerous. It's extremely dangerous. And it's much more common than I think people realize. Pete Everything you're saying, you know, I just,

I keep picturing like, complementarian churches, but would this apply to either one? I mean, a pastor's wife and a pastor's wife? Dr. Sarah Hickman Yes, that's, yes. But yeah, the structures, I mean, this is the thing, this pastor's wife role, and I also state this in the book, you know, my final chapter is called The Cost of Dorothy's Hats, where I, that's what I called, you know, thinking about this role. And it was symbolic because of course, Dorothy Patterson's hats, you know, emphasize this. I mean, she was a powerful woman, powerful minister's wife, powerful leader in the church, but her hats

indicated that she's always under the authority of her husband and under the authority of other men. And so, what this minister's wife role does, in some ways, it masks the absence of women in independent ministry roles. And I cite research on this too, at the end of chapter seven, you know, that in that churches in which women serve in these pastor's wife's role that are unpaid, but yet still highly visible and influential, that ordinary people in the congregation don't actually realize that their church doesn't support women in ministry. Because they're like, our pastor's wife does all of this. So, a pastor's wife role covers the absence of women in these independent

ministry roles. And it also indicates that a woman's authority is always dependent. It's always a mediated role. And it works out fine. I've been married to a great man for over 25 years. I have not had a... I've had weird stories as a pastor's wife. We all do. Weird things people say to you and stuff.

But I have a good man as my husband, but not all pastors' wives do. And what we've done is we've created a position that silences their voices and makes it where these women who are in these very vulnerable positions can't get help, which is, you know, again, I think about Lucy Pepia, I just love where she says, where does your theology lead? I think about Lucy Peppia, I just love where she says, where does your theology lead? And that's, you know, where does your theology lead? Pete Slauson Lucy is great. Oh, man, she's… Lucy Peppia I love her, yeah. Pete Slauson She's awesome. Just an awesome person. I don't know her well.

Lucy Peppia Oh, yeah. Pete Slauson I'm actually going to be out in Nottingham this summer, and I'm hoping to see her in person. Lucy Peppia Yeah, I love her. Pete Slauson But she's just a gracious and wise and just a godly woman. Well, you know what, where I get worried is you take the whole problem of like narcissism and church leadership and it seems like there's something about the traditional pastor role that seems to attract narcissistic leaders. I mean, narcissism is, you know, there's people

that struggle with this, it's widespread or whatever, but there's something about like church, the way we created church that it seems to be. And I'm not sure if the data brings us out. Maybe you would know. I mean, it's like a higher percentage of narcissistic leaders. I don't know if What's-his-face, who did the book, who wrote the book on that, has data on it. I haven't know if What's-his-face, who wrote the book on that, has data on it. I haven't read it. Steve Church? No.

When Narcissism Comes to Church? Oh yeah, Chuck wrote. Chuck, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I wish he was. When Narcissism, maybe? You can guess. I haven't read it. Anyway, the point is, man, when you combine a narcissistic male pastor with the strange and unique pressures of a

pastor's wife, that if she's in an unhealthy emotional, physical, or sexual relationship with her narcissistic husband when she can't blow the whistle, I mean, there's just so many things that, you know, like this will bring down the ministry, bring down him and everything, and then you add the whole dynamic of being in a narcissistic relationship. I just, my heart just sinks when I think about somebody in that position. That's exactly right. You know, and we talked to, so I have a podcast with the Bible for Normal people that's actually coming out. It starts this week on women in the Southern Baptist Archives. It's called All the Buried Women. And it stems from some of the

research in this book. And we interviewed a man named David Pooler, who's actually also one of my colleagues at Baylor. But I didn't know him until an article in Christianity Today that actually publicized his research on, and he does research on the, on post-traumatic stress syndrome within the victims of clergy sex abuse. And it's, I mean, it's really hard, heavy, heavy research. But one of the things that he talks about in that research is how churches, especially evangelical churches, in which like the Baptist world, which doesn't have an ecclesiastical hierarchy, so to speak, and it doesn't work

always in the ecclesiastical hierarchies, you know, the Catholic Church is clear on that, the Anglican Church, you know, we've seen that. So it's not a magic bullet, but the Baptist Church doesn't have an ecclesiastical hierarchy. And so, it is a place where these types of personalities that are more magnetic, more charismatic, and also more self-focused, and even the whole nature of it where, you know, I've talked about this before, that in the evangelical church, you know, our focus in the church service is actually that the pulpit and the pastor. And I mean, that's not a biblical concept either. I teach preaching and sermons in the medieval. This is a new development in church history. This is a new development in church history. It magnifies the importance of these people when it's an unhealthy personality.

Then you combine it with a structure that has only men at the table who are the only ones who are able to speak into this guy, who all support him, etc. I mean, women just don't have a chance within these structures. Complementarian churches, and with the pastor's wife role too, I mean, this is the problem in egalitarian churches also, is because they still have these same structures. So, you know, you can't just say we ordain women and that fixes the problem without changing the structure. I've talked to several women in egalitarian denominations and they're like, don't think because this is on paper that we don't deal with the same kind of male domination. Yeah. Absolutely. So, it's a hard problem, but I think the burden is on the church to cure these women.

Have you seen any changes with the whole two-for-one? Because I never even thought about this until a few years ago, when someone talked about, oh yeah, the wife, it's just like, yeah, it's two-for-one. You get all this free labor, you're paying the pastor, he gets a salary. Are people, and now I just look at it like, it just seems so clear to me, you know, like this is problematic. It's one thing if they say, hey, we got $80,000, I hire a senior pastor. Hey, we would love it if the wife could also volunteer, restore it. If it was a little more out in the open and then let her and them make the decision. Like, hey, is this something, you know, because there's people that volunteer their time at church,

whatever. But like, but when it's just this unwritten expectation that she has a job description she didn't sign up for, might not even be gifted for, and is it going to get paid for while her husband is? It's just weird. Anyway, there's my rant. Are people waking up to that and what changes are they making? Yes, I think so. I mean, actually, that's one of my hopes for this book is that it draws attention to what... Because I think some people just, they don't realize, I mean, they grew up in this water. I grew up in that water where this is what, you know, pastor's wives do. And you don't... And it takes a while for you to dismantle it and be like, wait a minute, what? We actually expect her to do this labor even though she's not paid for it? That's how I opened the book is a story about this really

sweet old, this lady who was a retired pastor's wife telling me how she was going to keep doing the bulletin until the new pastor got married. Because he was not married yet, he doesn't have a wife. She's such a sweet woman, but it was such a, you know, this like, of course that's what she's going to do, because that's what pastors' wives do. And so I think churches are beginning to see it, but at the same time, in these more conservative spaces, you know, think about the trad wife movement. I mean, this is like the pastor's wife role on Overdrive carried out more. What is that? The trad wife?

It's an Instagram phenomenon. This is what I argue. I know a little bit about it. My daughters have told me about it. Like, wait, what? It's what happened when you get biblical womanhood, the stay at home mom who is fully supports her husband's leadership in really over the top sort of ways. And even, you know, kind of becomes the pioneer woman and baking, making her own flour and making all the clothes and, you know clothes and growing your vegetables and all of this sort of stuff. I mean, this over the top stuff that you can picture,

you can take pictures of it and post it on Instagram and it makes it looks like this beautiful sort of life. And these influencers, these women make a whole lot of money off of doing this image, which we all know the reality behind it is, Instagram is not real life. But nonetheless, they have promoted this model of this stay at home, fully domestic mom that really is on steroids sort of thing. And it is so I mean, that's what the trad wife role is. And the pastor's wife role is, I think,

is part of that same sort of idea. The pastor's wife role models for women how they should also act in their homes. Here we have this highly gifted, visible woman, but yet she is only a support staff to her husband. And that's the way you should also be in your home. So, anyway, if that's part... I mean, it's this whole landscape. Pete So, you say some churches though are now starting to either not require

free labor from the pastor's wife or they're paying them for, you know, the work they're doing? Jennifer Some. I mean, you know, mainline churches are much better at recognizing this now. I think some, you know, I've heard stories from some people who the pastor's wife doesn't even go to the same church as her husband, mostly to kind of escape this thing, you know, to be like, that's his job. I'm going to go to church and be faithful, but that's his job. It's not my job. That seems a little unhealthy to me. I don't know. I don't want to just say categorically. I don't know. I'm not going to, you know, I can see the response to it because I've lived in this space for so long. And, you know, it's... I mean, sorry, real quick, I don't mean unhealthy in

their marriage necessarily. It seems like it's probably a really unhealthy church situation. And she's surviving. It could be, you know, it, who knows? I don't know. But, so I think some churches are more attuned to it. I think when the pastor is more outspoken about it, that is certainly very helpful in helping to protect women from doing these types of things. Most of these places, it's a male pastor. And we don't have these expectations for women's husbands, for female pastors. People kept asking me, they were like, well, are you going to talk about the husband's role? I have a footnote and I'm like, men are not expected to do these things. It's just not there.

They're expected to have their own jobs. When somebody's like, oh, he couldn't be here because he has a work thing, nobody's like, oh. Yeah. Yeah. You know? I mean, it's totally different. So I would say yes and no. Some places it's getting better, and some places it's not. We still have the SBC seminaries with the Seminary Wives Institute, and I've been looking at their curriculum and their book lists that they put out, and they are still teaching this two-for-one model.

Again, I guess, and we could wrap it up, but I don't know, just throughout this whole conversation, I just want to make it clear. Like if somebody, to take this whatever, this traditional pastor's wife role and all these, if the woman deep down genuinely wants to do that, I want to volunteer my time, I love going to women's

breakfast. I would love to, if that is her desire and gifting what she wants to do, I'm not demeaning that at all. Whatever. You tried wife, whatever. But it's this unwritten expectation that she fits into a box that she might not fit into and then not get paid for it. I think that's what the problem is. Yeah. You know, and I read, there's a lot of sadness in these pastor's wife's books. I'll just say that these women who, and that's why they write so many of them, they're trying to help other women in these positions because it's a hard position. And it's very hard to figure out how to navigate it. And so, and there's, and a lot of these women are exhausted and defeated and feeling like the problem,

because, you know, some of these books tell them if they're exhausted and defeated, it's because they haven't surrendered completely to Jesus. You know, so it's your fault, because you haven't given over to the role. Did you read Josh Harris's wife's book? That's so bad. I forgot her name. Yes, I did. So, I actually, yeah. So, I caused up a stir because she sent it to me.

I didn't talk about it in this book because I focused so much on the SBC, but she actually sent it to me and I wrote an endorsement for it. I read the whole thing and I was like, people gotta read this. Yeah, my wife read it. I felt like I read it through my wife telling me, like summarizing as she went. I was like, people have to read this. I was like, I don't care what you think about Shannon or Josh. Shannon, Shannon, yes.

Yeah, Shannon. But anyway, it caused, I actually got, people got really mad at me for, because they said, well, she's left the faith. And I was like, you know, just the fact that you say that emphasizes why you need to read this book. Yes. No, it was, yeah. It's horrific.

It was triggering. It was hard for my wife to read because it was so like, we came from similar environments. And we never, I've never been a full-time paid pastor ever. So she's, we'd never had, had to deal with any of that, but we've been adjacent to a lot of it and seeing friends go through that. And yeah, it was, it was, yeah, it was a tough, but good eye-opening read for my wife. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and it fits in this narrative of this broader, evangelical world that is connected to the Southern Baptist Convention with these similar types of ideas about what

women should do. And Shannon's story is just, it's really hard. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's a sober ending to our conversation, but Beth, I will hold up your book one more time. The cover is brilliant. Becoming the pastor's wife, how marriage replaced ordination as a woman's path to ministry. Beth, thank you so much for being a guest again on Theology of the Round. I really appreciate the conversation and just love talking with you. We should being a guest again, out the Hey, so I'm launching a new season on the podcast, the doctor and the nurse. World renowned brain coach, Dr. Daniel Lehmann joins me as a co-host as we dive deep into the mind and the brain of everything high performance. I've been fascinated for years as I've worked with top athletes, high powered CEOs, Hollywood

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