I am not a pastor's wife, and I have never wanted to be one. Yet I couldn't help but be struck by some of the overlap from simply spending my life in Evangelical circles. I found myself nodding along with descriptions of expectations--clean house, well-behaved kids, SAHM, etc. And yet I can't begin to imagine how much worse it is for pastor's wives.

If we want to support women and build a better world for them, we should understand the history of how we got here. This book does a fantastic job describing just that, exposing the problems as well as the incredible legacy women of the Church have left. This is such an important book, and I wish all Christians--but especially those in ministry--would read it.

Thanks to Brazos for offering me an ARC via NetGalley.

I love how Beth Allison Barr weaves her own experiences with historical context in considering the role of the pastor’s wife. In this follow up to The Making of Biblical Womanhood Dr. Barr does a wonderful job exploring women’s roles in the church and how the pastor’s wife role is not only unbiblical, but has been used to undermine women’s authority. A fascinating and accessible read for anyone who wants to learn more about the history of women working in the church

It’s an interesting experience reading a history book about a period of time and a movement that you’ve been a part of. Such was my experience reading about pastors wives and women in ministry, particularly in the Southern Baptist Convention. For a decade I was an SBC pastor wife before the system chewed us up and spit us out and we left for my physical and mental health.

Barr’s writing is both accessible for everyday readers and deeply researched and cited for her academic audience. It weaves personal story and experience with historical sources in a way that kept me turning pages.

I voluntarily read a gifted copy of this book. All opinions are my own.

Wow! What a challenging book. Challenging my preconceived notions about what I knew about church history and the history of women in the church specifically. One of my favorite parts was the discussion of Abbess Milburga in the 7th century. I was totally unaware of "double monasteries" composed of both men and women. Milburga's ministry and shepherding of such a monastic house was eye opening! There are so many other fascinating stories in the book, and an excellent discussion of the ways church organization and the development of ordination, sacramentalism, and hierarchy in the 13-15th century church pushed out women leaders. Barr also traces the changing face of women in ministry through the Reformation until the present with a special emphasis on her own SBC and changes in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Another area she explores that was almost unknown to me is the role of the pastor's wife in the black church. As a pastor's wife herself she has unique insight into the issues she discusses. This is an excellent introduction to discussions about the role of women in church leadership and how the role of pastor's wife has offered leadership opportunities to women but how that has come at the cost of their independent leadership.

My husband and I are a clergy couple, each with a distinct and separate call to ministry. Although we have served different churches for most of my 28 years in ministry, I have often encountered the “two-for-one” mindset (see Chapter 5) and the lingering expectations placed on pastors' wives. Becoming the Pastor’s Wife sheds light on how, in many traditions, opportunities for women’s ordination were diminished and replaced by the role of the pastor’s wife.

Beth Allison Barr, a scholar well-versed in church history and women’s history, writes in an engaging and accessible way that brings these stories to life. She highlights the significant contributions of women leaders from the earliest days of the church to the present, with a particular focus on the Southern Baptist Convention. This book is a must-read for anyone seeking to understand the decline of women’s ordination in evangelical churches and the broader implications for women in ministry today.

I found the book fascinating. The author obviously did a lot of research and was able to pull together stories of women from over the ages: queens, saints, and abbesses from history and missionaries and pastor's wives from more modern times. She interwove their stories to highlight both similarities and stark contrasts.

The comparison of two pastors' wives in chapter 8 was especially eye opening. One wife who apparently had a good and kind husband rose to prominence and used her platform to advocate for wives to submit to their husbands and for women to not be ordained. The other wife, who had a cruel and abusive husband, had no platform to advocate for herself or her children (partly as a result of this view of women). "The greatest difference between Maria Acacia and Joyce Rogers stemmed from their greatest similarity: they were pastors’ wives in a culture that privileged male authority and increasingly emphasized female submission. But the way they experienced that culture was different."

As I reflect back, I think one of the greatest strengths of the book could also be its greatest weakness, and that is that it tends to be more descriptive that prescriptive. It tells a lot of stories of a lot of women. For many of the more modern women the stories say, "This is problematic, can't we do better?" And for many of the more medieval women the stories say, "It used to be different, and we can change."

This can be a strength. Stories are powerful, and letting the stories speak for themselves allows different traditions and denominations to take the critique and find their own solutions and ways to address it. While a lot of the examples were from the SBC, the author didn't offer much in the way of SBC specific application, which could allow her critique to reach a wider audience.

On the other hand, I sometimes found myself frustrated by a lack of straight-forward critique and possible applications. The author finds the current state of women in ministry, where many women are only allowed to minster because of their marital status as a pastor's wife, problematic for a number of reasons. But she doesn't seem to have a definite vision of the way forward. Again, this may allow for different congregations to find different ways forward, but I wonder if it will also make it easier for some congregations to make a few small changes in the name of broadening women's ministry, without actually addressing the core problem.

I also wish the author would have done more to address the women in the church today who are gifted and trained, but not married to a pastor. That was perhaps beyond the scope of the book, though.

Change is need. The church need to see and treat women differently. I hope many people will read this book and start working on change.

Becoming the Pastor's Wife is a compelling account of the factors that have contributed to the diminishing of women's autonomy and leadership authority in the church. The history is thoroughly researched and comes alive with stories from "real life". Some of those stories are incredibly painful to hear, especially in light of the current political environment in the U.S., in which there is an attempt to limit women's influence even more. The book is very well-written and brings to light factual evidence of women's contributions and leadership throughout church history. It strongly contradicts statements by people like Al Mohler who claim that women have not held significant leadership roles in the 2000-year history of Christianity. An important work contributing to the long-hidden history of the role of women in advancing the cause of Christ. It should be noted that this is an important read for anyone in Christian ministry or interested in women's role in the Church. It goes far beyond the realm of the pastor's wife experience, although certainly, that is an audience that needs to hear this message!

In Becoming the Pastor’s Wife, historian Beth Allison Barr delivers a powerful critique of the role long assigned to pastors' wives—a position that, while often celebrated in theory, has functioned as a means of binding women to unpaid labor and excluding them from true leadership in the church. Building on her work in The Making of Biblical Womanhood, Barr traces how this role has evolved over time, arguing that it has consistently served to reinforce patriarchal structures within Christian communities.

Barr exposes the unrealistic expectations placed on pastors' wives: offering emotional support, organizing church life, and often functioning as unofficial staff—all without formal authority or compensation. While they are central to the life of many churches, they remain locked out of the “real” work of ministry, reserved for men in the boys’ club of church leadership.

Blending historical research with personal stories, Barr demonstrates how this role has perpetuated gender inequality and calls for a reimagining of women’s place in ministry. Becoming the Pastor’s Wife is a timely and necessary book that challenges the church to recognize and value women’s leadership in its own right, rather than as an unpaid extension of their husbands’ ministries.

A worthy sequel to The Making of Biblical Womanhood, this book will be freeing for so many people. A must-read for anyone in ministry and beyond.

Barr gives us a little history, but mostly concentrates on the SBC. I felt like that was her goal, which is fine, but I was left wondering about Lutherans and Methodists. Still, it was interesting to connect the dots from early church leaders to leading only through a pastor husband, at least in the SBC. I hope enough SBC members read the book and make some changes.

intriguing storytelling and meticulously researched

Becoming the Pastor’s Wife contains fascinating historical research and biblical history that unveils how the roles of women in ministry have shifted.
Assuming this information does not apply to you or is boring to read would be a mistake.
The Church is in desperate need of the truths laid out on these pages.

Becoming the Pastor’s Wife by Beth Allison Barr, lives up to its subtitle: "how marriage replaced ordination as a woman’s path to ministry." The book takes readers along a timeline through eras of the first century (New Testament), medieval, Reformation, and contemporary times. The quest is to answer the question of women’s leadership roles in the church - whether it comes from an inner calling by God or from marriage to a male church leader. It reads like an intriguing who-done-it and historical documentary all rolled up together.

Follow the work of Barr and her companion researchers as they sift through the archives of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) to answer the question. Perhaps not as dramatic as The DaVinci Code or the National Treasure movies, the reader discovers key dates, turning points, and the stories over the centuries that brought the evangelical world to its present state concerning the role of women in leadership. The stories from the archives for the SBC matter to all evangelicals since all are influenced by each other’s work. We sing each other's songs. We read each other's books. We are swayed by each other’s initiatives, teachings, and practices. Barr presents a compelling argument for a return to a biblical practice of women in leadership proceeding from giftedness and calling by God rather than through marriage to a male pastor.
Becoming the Pastor’s Wife is a significant and encouraging contribution to bringing the evangelical world in line with biblical practice.

I can’t remember the last time a book made me want to set something on fire.

I can understand (though not condone) the adherence to an ancient idea because: Tradition.

<<insert singing/dancing Jewish Patriarch>>

But the systematic, ON FUCKING PURPOSE way women’s spiritual authority was stripped away makes me feel more than a little stabby.

Y’all count your blessings I’m a Proverbs 31 woman and not a Judges 4 woman.

BAB is, as per usual, stunning in her research, writing, and call for repentance.

Will people listen? Or are they too preoccupied covering up church sex abuse scandals?

Baker Academic eARC
Barr is an author that I love to learn about church history from, and this book was fascinating. I am in a phase of examining my beliefs, and I liked the deep look here into a very specific part of the church - pastor's wives. This book was informative and also compelling. I had no idea about how women were slowly pushed out of the pulpit, and in the SBC specifically. This book gave me a lot to think about, and I am grateful for the books she writes that encourages women in the church.

Very well written book. Dr Barr uses her background in medieval history to help the reader understand that the pastor's wife role of today has not always existed and is not Biblical. I am glad I found her first book and have thoroughly enjoyed reading this one as well.

When I was in university, I wanted to become a pastor's wife. I loved taking theology classes and leading Bible and book studies, and the best way to continue that- in my church context- was to marry a pastor. At the time, I didn't see the problem with that. Thankfully, Beth Allison Barr does.

In this book, Barr discusses the role of women in the early Christian church and in the medieval church to argue against the premise that women have never held ministry roles within the church (Chapters 1-4). She then looks at the modern evangelical church: the expectations for pastor's wives and how women's leadership roles in the evangelical American church have been relegated to unordained, unpaid positions. She often focuses on the Southern Baptist Convention, since it is the most influential organization within the American evangelical movement. There is also some discussion on how the role of pastor's wife differs between white and Black evangelical churches.

Barr doesn't come at this topic from a purely academic perspective. As of the writing of this book, she has been a pastor's wife for 25 years, and her lived experience helps illustrate many of her points. During one of her husband's interviews, she had to "stand on the stage and introduce herself to the male deacons... assuring them that writing a dissertation would not hinder her ministry". She has "loved being a pastor's wife", but she understands how the role of a pastor's wife limits women's opportunities for independence.

I debated whether to give this book a three- or four-star rating. The book was thoroughly researched and Barr's personal stories added a lot to it. The chapters on church history were overviews. She clearly showed that women were ministry leaders in the past, but I would have liked more depth. I recognize, however, that making those sections longer would have bogged down some readers, and Barr has already written a book on the history of women in the church (The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth). The chapters on modern church history felt a little repetitive and wandering. I appreciated all of her points- and I'm sure that they'll validate many women's experiences- but at times I struggled to keep going.

I would recommend this book to women who wonder if there is a different path to ministry than being a pastor's wife. I would also recommend this book to pastor's wives who feel like the role they have "married into" isn't right for them. I think the people who would benefit the most from this book are complementarian church leaders, particularly elders and deacons, who determine which roles women can fill (and be paid for) within their church. Unfortunately, I don't think staunch complementarians will read it.

My family recently changed churches. The priest's wife was the one to greet us and follow up with us, telling us about different ministries and inviting us to church events. I was pleased to learn that she is on staff at the church in her own right, and not just fulfilling the unwritten expectations of a pastor's wife.

Thanks to Baker Publishing Group for providing me an advance copy of this book through Netgalley. All opinions are my own.

Dr. Beth Allison Barr’s new book, Becoming the Pastor’s Wife, is engaging and eye-opening. Her own experience as a pastor’s wife, her knowledge of scripture, and her extensive historical research combine to offer a powerful message about the way in which women have been allowed to answer God’s call to ministry since the early house churches. As Dr. Barr discusses in chapter 4
"To be sure, the pastor’s wife role is a Protestant development – nothing like it really existed before – and the peculiar version of the pastor’s wife role in modern evangelicalism is a mid-twentieth-century creation. Yet when medieval church leaders began requiring celibacy for priests, they ended up writing women out of sacramental power . . . and creating the building blocks that would one day be repurposed into an argumentative edifice that insists women’s leadership always belongs under male authority."

Becoming the Pastor's Wife is another wonderfully written book by historian Beth Allison Barr. After reading her book, The Making of Biblical Womanhood, I did not think anything could surpass the content of that book. However, Dr. Barr presented us with an in-depth analysis of the history of women in leadership, as well as how this correlate to women in the church today. During the 19th-21st century history, we find that this is really when women's roles in the church get devalued and compromised. During this era, we see how women are being relegated to inferior roles, such as just assisting their "pastor" spouse or volunteering in typical complementarian roles designated for women in the church. Dr. Barr does a great deal of research showing how complementarians have elevated the role of a "pastor" to include only men, even though historically Jesus is shown elevating women into various roles in his own ministry. The duty of a "pastor's wife" is somewhat assumed by what the church has defined as her "role", but what if the pastor’s wife has a job outside of the church? Also, if one desires to be a pastor, what rules are listed that state the spouse is designed to be his unpaid assistant or helper within that role?

Becoming the Pastor's Wife had a lot of eye-opening information in it, showing the depth of research that was done to create a thorough understanding of the historical context of this "role" within the church. The research is explained in a very easy to read manner, with comprehensible understanding of the backgrounds and key figures who have promoted this view of being in a role as a "pastor's wife". Dr. Barr did an amazing job-sharing many facts, details, and evidence supporting her research.

I highly recommend this book, as it is not only engaging, but will give you much insight into various ideologies and views regarding women in the church, both historically and in society today. Thank you to Brazos Press and NetGalley for the Advanced Review copy. All opinions are my own.

Available on 3/18, thanks to Brazos Press for an advanced copy through NetGalley.

As a Medieval History professor, Beth Allison Barr brings context to issues around women’s roles in the church. In this follow up to the fantastic The Making of Biblical Womanhood she shares her experiences as an SBC pastors wife, including when her husband lost his job for pushing to bring a female co-teacher for their youth ministry.

As someone who spent my entire adult life as a woman in ministry and for the past two decades was also a pastors wife, all within complementarian (male headship) churches, this hit very close to home and I’m still processing. It’s pretty southern Baptist focused (understandably), and slightly repetitive.

It made me angry, hopeful that it doesn’t have to be this way, and very very thankful for a life and ministry that is not currently dependent on my (sweet, wonderful) husband or his role at our church.

Beth Allison Barr argues that the stereotypical “pastor’s wife” role is an unbiblical expectation that has been elevated because women have been restricted from other ministry roles that they have historically held.

She successfully demonstrates that the pastor’s wife/two-for-one assumption that plagues many churches does has no basis in history or Scripture (this also pushes back more generally on the demeaning of singleness as lesser than marriage). I wholeheartedly agree with her there and was absolutely horrified at some of the atrocious statements made about/for pastor’s wives (I also don’t understand why a pastor’s wife would need to be packing his suitcase as traveling is not a necessary part of a pastor’s job?), and heinous things occur when leadership becomes about power instead of caring for the flock (Ezekiel 34, anyone?). To those who have experienced damage from the two-for-one idea or from abuse of power: that was wrong.

Barr is also successful in demonstrating that women have historically held numerous ministry roles independent of their husbands (she is unsuccessful when it comes to some of those particular roles, which I will get to later).

So why two stars? This book felt harder to follow and less cohesive than The Making of Biblical Womanhood; I think the two-pronged nature of her thesis (pastor’s wife role is unbiblical + women historically ministered independently) contributed to this. However, it also had many of the same problems as her previous book, namely, being sloppy with terms. Ecclesiological differences also make many arguments fall flat.

1. Barr is again sloppy with terms.
I had high hopes that Barr would use terms more clearly in this book than she did in The Making of Biblical Womanhood. She spends a while on what ordination means, after all, which was a very helpful discussion, especially as ordination is absent from my church tradition. But, she did not give the same devotion and clarity to terms like authority, leadership, preaching, prophecy, and deacon. What this leads to is a number of times where Barr will give clear examples of women praying or prophesying in the congregation, or serving as deacons, followed by a conclusion that women were therefore preaching or in leadership or authoritative positions. Not only that, but “preaching” is used very widely: yes, if Mary Magdalene is “preaching,” then all women not only can preach but should preach, and if Katharina Zell is preaching when she prints books, then I myself am en route to being a preacher. Because of this, I never know if when Barr says preaching she actually means what complementarians consider preaching (authoritative preaching from the pulpit to the congregation in the Sunday gathering), in order to know how valid her argument is. Similarly, she seems to view deacon as a position of authority, but does not specify what she means by deacon—does she mean it like Roman Catholics? Like Baptists who have a pastor-deacon church structure? Or like myself, seeing it as a formalized service role? It appears to be the latter, from the in one place she gives a few synonymous words which do focus on the serving aspect—how this implies “authority” I do not know—but Barr uses examples of female deacons to “prove” an egalitarian argument.
Additionally, there’s a lot of possibly, probably, and perhaps. She often cites other scholars in these places, but doesn’t usually give their arguments. For example, “We have good reason to assume” that women hosting house churches were also leading and teaching, but she doesn’t share any of those reasons.
Barr could have a very effective argument for women functioning as the modern equivalent of a teaching pastor, but I really can’t tell, because terms are conflated and arguments are not given. What I can tell is that despite a chapter titled “when women were priests,” the firmest evidence we’re given is that women prayed and prophesied in the orans position, which is something that reading 1 Corinthians 11 should also tell us.

2. Barr has a significantly different ecclesiology than me.
This means that while her critiques may ring true in many other circles, the whole way she looks at church and ministry highlights other problems in the American church with the pastor’s wife role and questions about women in ministry. There is a reason that a pastor’s wife is in a different position than the wife of a man in any other profession: If you’re a medieval historian, no, no one cares if your spouse loves medieval history, unless they’re in your class. But a pastor’s wife is, generally speaking, a member of the same community in which he works. And when it comes to the church, that isn’t just a place where you show up to listen to someone talk, but, biblically speaking, is where “one anothers” (such as those in Romans 12:9-21, Ephesians 4:25-32) are happening. Note that these “one anothers” are not about teaching Sunday school, running the nursery, playing piano, or even formally discipling others. So, while there is no biblical role for a pastor’s wife, there is a biblical expectation that a pastor’s wife (assuming she is a believer) will be involved in some degree of informal ministry in the church, just like every other church member, and value of that ministry has nothing to do with how much someone is paid. Barr, however, assumes that ordination, payment, and power are necessary for ministry to be valuable.
Another way ecclesiastical differences make Barr’s arguments fall flat for me is that at root, the complementarian debate is about authoritative preaching from the pulpit to the congregation in the Sunday gathering (and marriage, but that’s not so much what this book is about). Yes, many complementarians are more restrictive than that, and in those cases, much of her historical evidence will carry some important weight. But even so, the clear examples we have of women preaching and assuming leadership are not of a local church, but are as itinerant preachers or as abbesses (of which the best modern parallel is perhaps a parachurch ministry), and so while some complementarians still take issue with this, I and others do not, or at least view it as a grey area.
This brings us to one final, necessary comment: church history is valuable, but subject to Scripture: if you don’t buy the egalitarian biblical work, then the history Barr presents—especially as we get further away from the early church—will not be persuasive. Barr does show that aspects of our gender roles/gender ideas are due to cultural shifts such as the industrial revolution. Women are for sure doing more in the Bible and out of it than homemaking and putting on the tea, and there is definite need for strong critique when that’s the only avenue open to women. Becoming the Pastor’s Wife just isn’t that critique.

(The tagline of the pastor’s wife “replacing” women’s ordination is also unsuccessfully argued, but her thesis is that women should be engaging in ministry independently, so I’m chalking that one up to the publisher and not Barr.)