'More women are acknowledging the calling God has put on their lives'
 

Historian Beth Allison Barr's two most recent books have charted factors which have impacted women's roles in the church in the US, including ordination. 

The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth (2021) was a USA Today bestseller. In her latest book, Becoming the Pastor’s Wife (2025), Beth draws on both her own experience as a pastor's wife and her expertise as a historian to trace the history of the role, showing how it both helped and hurt women in conservative Protestant traditions in the US.

The correspondence she now receives suggests the landscape is changing for the better, she tells Alex Baker 

 
 
Can you talk us through what led you to writing Becoming the Pastor’s Wife?

Well, it is clearly a book born in writing The Making of Biblical Womanhood. (In this book Barr argues that biblical womanhood - the belief that God designed women to be submissive wives, virtuous mothers, and joyful homemakers, isn't biblical, but arose from a series of clearly definable historical moments. By contrast women in the early church held significant leadership roles, actively participating as equals in ministry and authority, she writes.)

In the aftermath people were coming to me all the time saying, ‘I had no idea about this’. Even scholars were saying, ‘I had no idea about what was going on in the mediaeval church and the Reformation.’ It made me realise how much of this history was simply not being told. My initial response to this aftermath was: ‘I'm going back to mediaeval sermons. I'm never writing anything like this again. This has just been so crazy and I'm an introvert.’

But I had a conversation with one of my friends, Scott McKnight (American New Testament scholar, historian, theologian). He said, ‘Beth, you don't ever have to do this again. But you have a moment here where people are listening. Is there anything else you want to say?’

And I thought about that. In one of my graduate seminars we are reading Into the Pulpit, Southern Baptist Women in Power in the post-World War II era by Elizabeth Flowers. It's a really great book. There's a section in it where she's talking about the Baptist battles of the 1970s in the US, which lead to the fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention. In the 70s, the loudest voices were decrying women's ordination.

And the evils of women being pastors were pastor's wives. I'm a pastor's wife. One of the things I didn't really get to talk about in The Making of Biblical Womanhood was the history of women's ordination. What happened to that? I touched on it but I just didn't have time. And so reading that section in her book, things clicked in my brain. What is the connection? Between the role, the history of the pastor's wife and the pushing of women out of pastoral spaces in the evangelical North America - and that's where Becoming the Pastor's Wife was born.

 
What are the key ideas in Becoming the Pastor's Wife? How did the story then develop?
 
The Making of Biblical Womanhood was a story I knew, and had been teaching for a long time.
Becoming the Pastor's Wife is a story I didn't know. It was a story that I really began with the question, what is the connection here? Is there a connection here? How do these two things intersect?

It was fascinating. Just learning more about the history of women's ordination and how it was not as extraordinary as we think it was. There were a lot of women serving in these types of leadership roles and exercising authority over men and being supported by men in the church. Really all the way through the Reformation and even through the early modern era.

It is in the 19th century where we begin to see things really shift towards men. And this is connected to the legal changes in which women's roles as wives are becoming much more legally subordinate in a very, I would say, harsher way. More than it has ever been in history before.

British history is full of this with women. Women technically weren't even able to have custody over their children. They weren't the legal guardians of their children. We think about that as being a classical thing, but it was actually going on in 19th century Britain.

And so what I learned about the pastor's wife role, is that it became part of this story of this hard turn against women in leadership, including leadership in the church. Of course women have always been married to ministers, but I would say that's not the role of the pastor's wife. It’s the idea that your ministry, your marriage, has made you a part of your husband's job. And it's not something that's really applied to men who are married to female pastors. They are not automatically subsumed under the job details in the way women are.

Women becoming a part of their husband's jobs is an evolution from the late 19th century, but it really starts picking up speed in the post-World War II era. And it picks up theological speed in the 1970s. Here is where we really begin to see this argument that not only are women who are married to pastors supposed to be domestic and be the hostess of the church, et cetera, but they are actually called by God to this role, and this role is to support their husband's ministry in whatever way that is needed.

We start to see the beginnings of this language in the 1970s, and then by the time we get to the 80s and 90s, it is moving in full force into this literature.



As for the intentions behind it, I'm not exactly sure, but the pastor's wife role was a very useful tool for helping to spread this idea that women are called by God to be behind male leadership. The pastor wife becomes a visible representation of complementarian theology, which begins to be articulated a little bit in the late 70s, but we don't get the full force of it until the 1980s. You can think about the Danvers Statement, which was published in Christianity Today in 1989, which said the biblical model is for women to follow male leadership and that female ordination, especially women in pastoral roles, is against biblical teachings. That cohesive theology really doesn't crystallise until the 80s.
 
You could think about the pastor's wife who is perhaps the most visible woman in the congregation. So then she, as modelling this and teaching this, is helping to disseminate it among the congregations. I therefore found the pastor’s wife role became a really useful tool for spreading complementarian theology. It was something I hadn't really thought about in the same way before.

And this thinking has continued. There is a post-2010 study I cite in the book, which surveyed all sort of denominations around women’s ordination. It found many did not support women in ministry, women as pastors. When they asked congregants how they felt about women not being able to be in leadership roles, the response was: 'Of course women are in leadership roles, look at the pastor's wife.'

The pastor's wife role literally hid the absence of women being able to serve in independent leadership roles. Which is why my subtitle is How Marriage Replaced Ordination as a Woman's Path to Ministry, and so the way you move into ministry in evangelical spaces - I would say conservative - is through marrying a minister.
 

'The pastor's wife role literally hid the absence of women being able to serve in independent leadership roles'

Your Amazon bio speaks about being an academic by training, and a pastor’s wife by calling. Given all your lived experience and research, what is your understanding of what it means to be a pastor's wife?

Yes. I think this is another reason I was able to write this book, because I am not arguing against the pastor's wife role. I think there can be a lot of usefulness for it, for a minister spouse who feels called and wants to do it in this way.

I don't want to be a pastor. I don't feel called to be ordained.nI like to teach. I like to help in the background, to fill in, where there's a need somewhere. That's my personality. And so I sort of fit the personality type that works in the traditional pastor's wife role.

Not all women who are married to pastors feel called to do this type of work. Sure, if a woman wants to do it and she feels called to do - like me - let her do it.

But if you have a pastor whose spouse has no calling, does not want to do that, does not want be at the church 24-7, she should not be expected to do those things.

And I think that's where we've hit it - where we actually judge a pastor, a minister, by his wife's behaviour. That is fundamentally wrong in the sense of her involvement, activity, etc.

The pastor's wife role should be whatever God has called you to be. And that's my general answer. I wish we lived in a church where we just let God call people instead of trying to decide who can be called. And it seems to me the church would be a much better place if we just let God call.
 
 

'it seems to me the church would be a much better place if we just let God call'

How much opposition has there been to your work? And have you noticed a difference in reaction to Biblical Womanhood, published in 2021, to Becoming the Pastor’s Wife, published in 2025? Do you detect a change in attitude and understanding to the role of women in Christian leadership?
 
It's been a very interesting difference. The Making of Biblical Womanhood caught everyone by surprise, caught me by surprise. It got so much attention early on and became the USA Today bestseller immediately. It began to be reviewed by everyone, including the people who had the most to lose by the success of the book.

I received really, really hostile reviews by the Gospel Coalition, Desiring God, the Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, all of that. We're talking about even the Gospel Coalition in Australia, the Gospel Coalition in Canada, people all over, everyone was trying to find something they could fault in it. Usually, what it came down to is that I didn't believe the Bible. Of course, I do believe the Bible, but that was the argument, or a personal sort of attack. It was pretty vicious. Which is one of the reasons why I felt, I'm never ever doing this again.

Becoming the Pastor's Wife has been very different. I think what happened with the Making of Biblical Womanhood, despite all of the attacks against it, was that it began to be reviewed by academic journals who said, yes, she's right, this is actually all sound history.

I think over time people began to accept that even if they didn't like it, I’d got a lot of things right. By the time I got to Becoming the Pastor's Wife, there was much more acknowledgement that I know what I'm talking about, even though I'm a mediaeval historian talking about these evangelical spaces, etc.

Becoming the Pastor's Wife hit The New York Times, but it still hasn't had the overwhelming response of Biblical Womanhood. It's been much quieter. With Biblical Womanhood, most of the people who reviewed it were men who reviewed with hostility, mostly men in leadership. Most of the people who've reviewed Becoming the Pastor's Wife are women, which I find really interesting because I think people see it as a woman's book, when it is a pastor's wife book.

The reviews in Gospel Coalition and even World Magazine have been surprisingly good. I think there's this recognition, even in conservative spaces, that the expectations placed on women married to ministers and pastors are unreasonable and unbiblical. And so that to me has been very encouraging to see, to see conservative women who really reacted strongly to the Making of Biblical Womanhood, are actually being receptive of Becoming the Pastor's Wife. That has been very encouraging.
 

'There's recognition that expectations placed on women married to ministers are unreasonable and unbiblical'

 
 
Ultimately are you hopeful that more women will take up church leadership positions they feel called to?
 
Absolutely. And, in fact, I know this is happening. Some of my favourite messages I get are from women telling me after reading my books that they acknowledge the calling that God had put on their lives. Previously they thought that was wrong because of this theology that said women can't do this.

I do think there are more women realising that God does call them to serve in these places and that churches need them. We need to have that balance of male and female voices. We need to have women who have leadership ability and can hold its own against male leadership within churches. Having women at the table won't solve all the problems, but it certainly helps provide a different perspective and brings in more diversity.

We know when we have more women sitting in leadership spaces it tends to bring in other diverse voices as well.

I am very encouraged that I think more women perhaps are beginning to do this. I think the problem is: are churches going to accept women's leadership? Are congregations going to hire women in these leadership positions? And I think that's the next battle we have to face.
 
 
What are your reflections on Project Violet (the three and a half year research project investigating women’s experience of ministry in the Baptist Union of Great Britain)?

I think it's a fantastic project. I'm very curious about what the project has found about the obstacles that women in the UK face for moving into leadership in Baptist spaces. I would say in the US, outside of the Southern Baptist world and independent Baptists, we have become much more accepting of women's leadership. The problem though is not women going to seminary and or having their calling affirmed - it's women moving on and actually getting hired in Baptist spaces in the US.

Even in churches that give lip service to women. They say, yes, of course God calls women - just not here. How do we move churches who have already theologically moved to saying we accept women in ministry to actually hiring women in the ministry? That is something that hasn't been solved yet.

And it's not just Baptists in the US. It's the same problem we have in all other denominations. I think Methodists have gone the furthest in doing this, but even then they have the tradition where women are much more likely to take smaller churches that pay less than men, which means that they end up at - I hate to do hierarchy - but they end up at less influential churches. This means their influence in the denomination is always overshadowed by male pastors at much larger powerful churches. I'm not exactly sure how to change that dynamic.

So I'm very curious to see what the Baptist Union of Great Britain has found about this, and what their solutions are and to help move women into these spaces.


Images | Beth Allison Barr at Greenbelt 2025 | Alex Baker 
 

Beth Allison Barr is James Vardaman Endowed Chair of History at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, where she specialises in medieval history, women’s history, and church history.

She is the author of the USA Today bestseller The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth (2021)

Her latest book is Becoming the Pastor’s Wife - How Marriage Replaced Ordination as a Woman's Path to Ministry (2025)

This conversation took place at Greenbelt 2025

Alex Baker is a former sub-editor and movie reviewer of The Baptist Times who now works as a photographer, videographer and designer www.alexbakerphotography.com 

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