Great read. Dr. Barr is back with another well-researched book that draws you into the stories. I’ve been going slowly, just wanting to take it in, but here we are at the end. It is fairly academic, which one would expect from an historian, but that only adds to the value of this book. Dr. Barr provides historical, biblical, and experiential evidence for her premise: women’s ordination has been replaced as a ministry by becoming a pastor’s wife, and wrongly so. The stories will draw you in, and the history you’ll learn will make for a great reading experience. Take your time, soak it all up.

Have women always been simply “the helper”? Is this the picture found in the Bible and throughout Church History? Or is there evidence for a deeper, more robust, and authoritative role for women in the Church? Once again I am amazed with and thankful for the work that Beth Allison Barr has put into her writing. Through her artful exploration of the history of pastor’s wives and their ministries, Barr reveals the hypocrisy within Evangelicalism today toward all women and their place in the church.

As with “biblical womanhood,” so with the role of the “pastor’s wife”: expectations and ideologies have as much, if not more, to do with culture than with anything made known in the witness of Scripture. Yet such would also be true of the many imagined alternatives.

Beth Allison Barr’s Becoming the Pastor’s Wife: How Marriage Replaced Ordination as a Woman’s Path to Ministry is very much akin to her previous The Making of Biblical Womanhood.

Barr did a fantastic job at demonstrating how what passes for “biblical womanhood” in conservative Evangelical circles was highly culturally constructed and difficult to sustain on a textual basis; she brings the same critical eye to the role of the “pastor’s wife,” particularly as it is expressed in the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) churches, and does quite well at marshaling significant evidence for her assertions. The author well pointed out how little we know about Peter’s wife, and how the expectations of wives of ministers in the SBC and many other conservative Evangelical spaces do not come from the pages of Scripture.

Likewise, Barr did very well at exploring how Christian men seeking to justify patriarchy worked diligently to suppress the place and contributions of women in the heritage of the Christian faith when exploring “biblical womanhood,” and she again does well at tearing down many of the patriarchal arguments related to the “pastor’s wife.” She is able to demonstrate how many women were ordained to various forms of ministry throughout Christian history, and even specifically within Southern Baptist history, very much to the contrary of the claims being made by many of those advocating a far more patriarchal position in the Southern Baptist Convention.

In all these things the author provides important contributions and counterweights to long-standing and not great arguments regarding the role and work of women in Christian faith and ministry. Just as “biblical womanhood” in the end is uncomfortably aligned with a particular conservative ideological view of women from a very specific time period in the past couple of centuries, so also it goes with the role of the “pastor’s wife.” The author compellingly bears witness to how the “conservative resurgence” in the SBC helped to perpetuate the expectations for pastor’s wives as unpaid ministers, and as a way to channel women who desired to go into a kind of ministry to find ministry work without upsetting the patriarchal status quo. Likewise, she is able to bear witness to how much of a burden is being placed on the women who have come to love men who feel called to ministry in these spaces, since these expectations will be placed upon them regardless of how skilled or called they feel to jointly participate in that ministry work.

The author is herself a pastor’s wife, and bears no ill will toward pastors’ wives. She has actively worked in the ministry with her husband and does not regret any of it. She instead challenges how the SBC and many related organizations have cultivated the expectations that come with the role of the “pastor’s wife,” and does very well at showing how they do not align with what is made known in Scripture.

But then there is the matter of the subheading and the argument regarding how marriage replaced ordination as a woman’s path to ministry. And, as with the previous conversation regarding biblical womanhood, the author herself goes well beyond what is written regarding her desire for a more egalitarian framework for ministry.

The author makes much of the evidence for women in ministry throughout the ages. It is important to acknowledge the existence of evidence for women as very active in service and ministry in the Christian faith.

But this is where many challenges arise. The author is within the world of the Southern Baptist Convention and its practice of having a pastor over a congregation. In the New Testament, a plurality of men called elders served as bishops/overseers and pastors/shepherds (e.g. Acts 20:17-35, Philippians 1:1, 1 Timothy 3:1-8, 1 Peter 5:1-4). There would be apostles and evangelists as well going out and proclaiming the message of Jesus (e.g. Ephesians 4:11-16). The modern role of the “pastor” seems to be a conflation of some of what elders and evangelists would be doing in the New Testament times, and the confusion this kind of conflation engenders is on full display in this work.

The author would be entirely correct if we replaced “pastor” and “pastor’s wife” with “evangelist” and “evangelist’s wife”: the New Testament provides no witness expecting the evangelist’s wife to maintain any kind of particular role or function. The presence of 1 Timothy 3:11, which can be equally argued to apply to deacon’s wives as much as deaconesses, and the expectation of the bishop/elder to be married in 1 Timothy 3:2 might well give credence to the expectation the elder’s wife would at least be a faithful Christian, and thus to be active in ministry and service inasmuch as any faithful Christian is expected to be active in ministry and service. In practice, it would be hard to imagine male shepherds as able to prove fully effective in their work without any contributions to that end from their wives.

Likewise, the matter of ordination also suffers from this kind of challenge: it has a lot of meanings and applications depending on contexts and groups. If “ordaining” is understood as a commission to a task or responsibility, there’s a lot of ordaining going on in the New Testament, of women as well as men; but if we understand “ordaining” as appointing to a particular office of responsibility, the number of examples become far more restricted in the explicit witness of the New Testament, and becomes predominantly male.

The author is pretty responsible with the way she handles the evidence in the New Testament: there’s a frank confession the New Testament world is patriarchal, and she generally does well at not overstating the evidence. But there are still a lot of ways in which she does assume possibilities we cannot have any more or less confidence in than its opposite. For example, yes, Junia is an apostle. But exactly what that means is left unstated. The author would like to assume Junia’s role and standing as apostle is independent of Andronicus, which is possible, but perhaps not; perhaps their apostleship was entirely mutual. Yes, Prisc(ill)a is mentioned before Aquila at times, and therefore might have been more prominent in speaking and teaching; but Aquila is still mentioned, still present, and still active in that ministry. Maybe a lot of women were actively involved in preaching and teaching with men present. But also maybe not. We cannot know; we can only speculate.

But when it comes to later evidence, the selection of evidence is very much motivated without a lot of critical reflection on the various intersecting matters of power involved. It’s as if there is the desire to point out all the ways in which women might have been granted power just to validate women as having power.

This is very much present in terms of Milburga, an Anglo-Saxon abbess ordained as such and who maintains a prominent position of power and authority in religious matters in late first millennium England. The author makes much of her and her authority, but then does not make much at all of the reasons behind why she would have that kind of authority: she’s the daughter of the king. She’s not some peasant who has been elevated to high standing. How much Milburga’s power might be a reflection of how Anglo-Saxon royal houses sought to exercise their authority in various domains is left unaddressed. Since Barr remains a member of a Southern Baptist church in good standing, I imagine that means she does not believe the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church truly reflects what God intended in Christ. If her egalitarian sympathies go beyond mere gender dynamics to also incorporate matters of class and social standing, I would hope she would find as much concerning and problematic regarding Milburga’s authority and standing and what it meant and represented relating to how Christendom was co-opted by the powers that be in order to reinforce hierarchical social structures as as she finds beneficial to use in her quest for egalitarianism in Christian gender dynamics.

Perhaps the most concerning aspect of the book involves one of its admittedly darkest chapters: how the Southern Baptist Convention authorities covered up the adultery and abuse of a male pastor to the active harm of his wife. This should be the kind of behavior everywhere reviled and condemned. The author is absolutely right, and concerningly so, regarding how the forces of the conservative resurgence in the SBC have themselves participated in sexual harassment and abuse and/or have been willing to cover up the sexual harassment and abuse of fellow pastors in order to advance their institutional agendas and power. But she wants to presume this is a patriarchy problem, as if we have to tear down patriarchy in order for there to be justice for such women. This is dangerous for two reasons: one, it presumes there would not be such abuse and cover-up in egalitarian contexts, and human sinfulness and misguided expressions of loyalty should sharply warn us against any such naive high-mindedness. And secondly, the last thing anyone should want is for concern regarding sexual harassment and abuse to be made thus partisan. However unintentionally, Barr has thus given a great gift to the Christian patriarchalists: they can point to her book and use it to make the argument concern regarding sexual harassment and abuse is a Trojan horse to justify a fully egalitarian position. In truth, if the patriarchalists took their own ideology sufficiently seriously, they themselves would be on the front lines regarding care and concern regarding sexual harassment and abuse in the name of protecting women.

I want to be very clear: the story Barr told regarding sexual abuse and its coverup was terrible and awful, and all involved should be ashamed of themselves. The Lord Jesus will judge justly. But this kind of story is too terrible to be made fodder for the culture war.

And that’s the challenge in the end: from beginning to end, the goal is to right the wrongs of power dynamics. It’s understandable when patriarchially minded people have justified men having far more power and standing than was truly given them by God in Christ. But Matthew 20:25-28, Ephesians 5:21 should remind us regarding how all such power plays are ultimately demonic: in Christ we all should be about the divestment of power, to mutually submit ourselves to one another out of reverence to Christ. Yes, that means men need to sit in that and ask themselves why they might feel uncomfortable submitting to a sister in Christ out of reverence to Christ.

But it also means that there should remain fundamental discomfort with making it all about power dynamics. All Christians should be active in ministry and service (Ephesians 4:11-16). We all should be serving one another. Yes, there is a long heritage of patriarchy in Christianity, and it has led to many abuses which need to be called and and reckoned with. Yes, one such way patriarchal systems thus worked involves the expectations imposed upon “pastor’s wives,” and that involved plenty of complicit women as much as men.

The distortions involved in the system of “pastor’s wives” as developed in conservative Evangelicalism writ large, and especially within the SBC, have thus been well documented and noted. That’s an important contribution. But does it automatically follow that the solution should be the kind of full egalitarianism the author would advance? It’s far more questionable than the author would seem to allow. In the end, her argument would cut both ways: just as so much of the “pastor’s wife” role is really culturally conditioned, so the current push for full egalitarianism is also culturally conditioned. There are many valid concerns and critiques of how the New Testament has been interpreted for generations regarding the role and work of women; yet the arguments set forth by the critics themselves come with valid concerns and critiques. For too long, not enough was made regarding Romans 16:1-16, and much more was of 1 Timothy 2:8-15; but would it be any better to make so much of Romans 16:1-16 as to dismiss or try to suppress or make little to nothing of 1 Timothy 2:8-15?

Patriarchy masquerading as complementarianism and egalitarianism are locked into significant argument in our current religious culture war. Each side is better able to critique their opponent than to construct an unassailable argument for their own position. In this environment, we must confess and lament the abuses and distortions of the past in the heritage of Christianity. We should appreciate every contribution which helps to expose how culture got baptized and justified, and the various reasons why, how it has “worked,” and how it hasn’t. And we do well to try to learn from such things and do what we can to best reckon with the whole witness of the evidence from the New Testament and best apply them in our current cultural moment and context.

But the likelihood either side has fully and appropriately captured the fullness of what God has made known in Christ through the Spirit should be significantly doubted. It would be great if charity were to become the hallmarks of these conversations as opposed to the partisan denunciations and condemnations which currently mark the spirit of the dispute. Neither side looks to be able to fully “win,” and it’s hard to see, at least from my perspective, how either side is really looking to find any kind of patience or toleration of the other.

Can there be space for those who wish to confess and lament the abuses of patriarchy, who want to honor and value the contributions of women in their work of service and ministry, but uphold qualified men as appointed to the office of the eldership and to maintain male evangelists before the full congregation in mutually agreed upon ways in order to honor 1 Timothy 2:8-15, 3:1-8? Can we expect such men to uphold the witness of the apostles regarding the equal value of men and women before God, and thus to effectively shepherd both their fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, or must we be castigated as supporting patriarchy by maintaining such expectations? Can those who wish to promote full egalitarianism accept and tolerate people who do not feel they can go as far as they do in their convictions without castigating them as if they are no different from the full-bore patriarchalists?

I can’t answer those last questions. But I don’t think it would be healthy for the discourse, or the state of this particular “culture war,” if there is no space left in the middle ground.

Becoming the Pastor’s Wife is another powerful, incisive work from Beth Allison Barr—equal parts historical excavation and personal witness. Having had the privilege of being one of her students at Baylor, I continue to be amazed by the clarity, compassion, and courage she brings to every project. This book is no exception.

In The Making of Biblical Womanhood, Barr challenged the cultural roots of complementarian theology. Here, she goes deeper into the lived experience of women in ministry, tracing the historical role of the pastor’s wife—not just as a supportive figure behind the scenes, but as someone doing real, often unacknowledged pastoral labor. Through historical research, theological reflection, and personal narrative, she makes the case that the church has long depended on women’s leadership while refusing to fully recognize it.

What struck me most was how Barr highlights the tension so many women feel: called to serve, teach, lead—but constrained by expectations that frame their work as secondary or unofficial. Her writing is honest, vulnerable, and grounded in love for the church even as she critiques the structures that marginalize women within it.

This book is for anyone who’s ever questioned why women’s work in the church is so often invisible—or why titles and authority are so selectively assigned. It’s also a profound encouragement to those who’ve been quietly doing the work all along.

Beth Allison Barr continues to be one of the voices I trust most in these conversations, and this book only deepens that trust. If you care about church history, gender, and justice, Becoming the Pastor’s Wife is essential reading.

4 stars - Great!

A fascinating - and at times infuriating - exploration of the history of women's ordination and leadership in the Church. Recommend listening to the author's podcast miniseries All the Buried Women as well.

This was so frustrating to read, but it’s an important book. I appreciate how Barr’s work points to historical evidence of women’s leadership roles and ordination prior to the 20th century. I felt so angry hearing (audiobook) about the process of the ordination of women giving way to the modern conservative evangelical idea of the role of the pastor’s wife as women became more restricted in ministry in white evangelicalism (amidst the backdrop of systemically covered up abuse scandals perpetrated by male pastors).

Every time I read something like this, I feel angry that people have to write whole books basically just to argue that women are people, too.

Barr directs her history expertise towards the role of the pastor's wife, and how it was shaped into what it is today. This book wasn't as impactful for me as Barr's first (The Making of Biblical Womanhood), but was still informative and helpful in aiding my own reflection upon evangelicalism today and the position of women within the church.

I cannot help but be impressed with Beth Allison Barr. Her research, attention to detail, and critical analysis are remarkable in bringing to light the history and current status of women's leadership roles in the evangelical church. With an easy to read, eye-opening clarity, Barr shines light on a system that has confined women in ministry. Becoming the Pastor's Wife is all too relevant for us today - a book much needed in our evangelical cloisters. I highly recommend anything Barr writes. Her scholarship cannot be denied.

I received this book from Netgalley. All opinions are my own.

Blending personal experience with church history, this book explores how the role of pastor’s wife emerged as women lost formal leadership opportunities. It shows how marriage became a path to ministry—one that offered influence, but also reinforced gender hierarchies and erased the long history of women’s ordination in the church.

I’m obviously not a pastor’s wife, but I am an ordained woman working full time as an appointed pastor. When another pastor at my church (a man, at that 👏🏻) asked if I’d heard of this book and if I’d be interested in reading it with a few other staff members for a book club, it was an immediate yes.

I’m part of a denomination (The Wesleyan Church) that has historically affirmed women in ministry—but that doesn’t mean I haven’t faced adversity. The first time I preached at the church I worked at after graduating from college, a respected couple in our congregation—who had faithfully served under me on the greeting team—stood up and walked out during my sermon introduction. They never came back.

I was a worship pastor at the time, and one of my faithful drummers (and good friend 🥲) married a woman who didn’t believe women could be pastors. They tried attending the church for a while (he had grown up there, after all), but eventually she told him she couldn’t be part of a church with a woman in a pastoral role. (Ironically, it was her, the woman/wife, telling—LEADING—him that they couldn’t go lol 😆)

I was ordained during covid over zoom (because I lived in the U.S. and my district office was in Canada), so at my church we streamed the ordination on the main screen while I stood on stage with members of our congregation watching. Afterward, at the little lunch we held, a board member/elder made a comment about how I’d probably give up my ordination once I got married. I was confused and said, “No, this is for life.” She responded, “Oh, well there was a lady who used to preach here when she was single, but she gave up her ordination when she got married.” I kindly explained that a woman’s call to Ministry is a call of her own—not dependent on her husband’s calling—and that a woman can be called to serve and lead in the church even if her husband is not called to (capital-M) Ministry. (of course, everyone’s called to lowercase-m ministry 😉)

While Beth Allison Barr’s story is more about the expectations placed on pastor’s wives (a type of woman expected to Minister without the title or the pay), our experiences still echo one another. Both shine a light on the disconnect between what Scripture actually teaches about women in church leadership and what the Church has come to practice. So how did that unraveling happen? I’m so glad you asked. Beth will passionately and articulately show you.

Thank you @brazospress for the eARC ❤️

Perfect for you if you like:
Women in church history
Empowering women in ministry
Southern US evangelical culture

Similar to:
Tell Her Story by Nijay K. Gupta (if you’re looking for historical evidence)
A Biblical Argument for Women in Ministry Leadership by Ken Schenck (if you're looking for theological evidence)
Losing Our Religion by Russell Moore (if you want the tea on the Southern Baptist Convention)

I was really excited to read this book, I had enjoyed the first one by this author and looked forward to this next installment in her history of women in the church, especially the Baptist church. One of my best friends is a pastors wife and I grew up as a pastors kid, not the same as being a pastors wife myself, but it did give me insights that some may not have. I am not a member of an SBC church, but many of the issues that they deal with are seen in evangelical and specifically Baptist churches all over north America, including those of the the role of the pastor's wife.

I really enjoyed how Beth lays out the history of women in the church, and how the role of the pastors wife existing how it does now is a really modern concept. The stories she shared were interesting and in some cases heartbreaking. I am thankful that I grew up in a house where I was not told I was less because I was a girl, and had a father who encouraged me in whatever ways I wanted to use my gifts, but I know that was not the case in many other pastors families, especially in my Baptist denomination which tends to be more conservative. This is a good book that I hope will begin conversations around this role and if there is a better way.

I received an advanced copy of this book from Netgalley. All opinions are my own.

This was a well written and interesting read. It explores the topic well and did good research. It can be a difficult read, but it is a topic that needs to be spoken about.

When I started this book, I was intrigued by the history and Barr's personal experience in her decades as a pastor's wife. And then I found myself facing the prospect of becoming a pastor's wife myself. Understandably, this impacted how the rest of the book landed for me. But I'm incredibly grateful for Barr's research and writing. Having a better understanding of how we got to where we are with all the baggage and expectations and weight around the role of "the pastor's wife" has been incredibly helpful. I so appreciate the way Barr demonstrates the historicity of women's ordination and the way in which it was quashed. I also appreciate the explicitness with which she condemns the millstone that has been hung around the neck of so very many women who are married to pastors. In drawing attention to the way that ordained women and pastor's wives today seem to so frequently feel at odds with each other, she reinforced my desire to support the ordained women around me and to ensure that if and when I do become the pastor's wife, I continue to do so vocally and explicitly.

The title immediately caught my attention—and I was really intrigued by the premise. I’ve found the historical research and the stories Beth shares to be fascinating. She does a great job tracing how women have gradually been pushed out of formal ministry roles, and how being “the pastor’s wife” has become one of the few remaining avenues for women to be involved in church leadership.

That said, I was really hoping for more depth from a biblical perspective. I wanted her to lay a stronger foundation by spending more time exploring what Scripture says about women’s roles in ministry—then dive into how church history and tradition have shaped things. Her arguments from history were strong and well-researched, but the biblical reasoning felt a little weak to me. I found myself more interested in wrestling with the question, “What does God actually want for women in ministry?” rather than just looking at how things have played out over time.

There were also moments where the tone of the book felt a little disgruntled—like her own tough experiences as a pastor’s wife were bleeding into the writing. I felt sad for her, but at the same time, it made parts of the book feel a bit off-putting or even a little ranty. Still, I absolutely respect the work she’s done. Her scholarship is solid, and the stories she included were super interesting.

Even though I’m not fully convinced by her position, this book has definitely sparked a desire in me to keep learning and asking questions. What is the role God has for women in ministry? I’m still digging into that—and this book has added some helpful pieces to the puzzle.

Barr is a good writer. However, unlike her first book, which I read through in a day, I wasn't as engaged in this title, possibly because the focus was narrower. While how pastor's wives are viewed does impact Christian women generally, it didn't seem as directly relevant to me as did her first book. I did like how Barr intertwined personal stories and thoughts with good academic research. I especially loved learning about Milburga. I hope Barr does continue to shine light on forgotten Christian women throughout history.

This book details how women used to have the ability to serve to their full capacity in the evangelical church and then lost it. She mainly focuses on the SBC and shows how women were slowly diminished in the denomination and left with only being able to serve through their husbands. Coming from a denomination in which I was taught men and women are "separate but equal" meaning we are equal in worth but women cannot do certain roles I grew up feeling less than. This book helped show me how women were truly considered equal once upon a time. I hope we can get back to that someday and stop limiting Christians who want to serve.

Another excellent book from Barr, this time considering the role of the pastor’s wife in the 21st century Evangelical church, how we ended up with this role, and what the Bible actually says about pastors’ wives (spoiler: not much). Barr’s tone is conversational, her research is well-conducted, and she makes the entire conversation approachable and accessible. I appreciate how she continues to call out the foibles and folly’s of the evangelical church from within, refusing to abandon the baby with the very, very dirty bath water. Hopefully she will continue to help Christian’s rethink and shift how we treat women, particularly women in leadership and leadership-adjacent spaces in the church.

The book is thought provoking and nicely written. Barr asks some good questions like: Where do we find the role of the pastor’s wife in the Bible? What about women that want to be ministers as a career/calling- what do we call them? What is central to ministry- prophecy and prayer? I may
not agree with everything that was written but it
was thought provoking.
Thank you to Net Galley for allowing me to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

"Given the amount of emphasis placed on 'biblical' womanhood in complementarian spaces (what women did or didn't do in the biblical text dictates what women should or shouldn't do in the modern church), it strikes me as odd that a role with such tenuous biblical evidence has become the primary role highlighted for women."

"Becoming the Pastor's Wife" is a well-researched and accessibly-written book about the emergence of Pastor's Wife as an informal but expected ministry role. As I understood it, Barr's thesis is that (1) this is a role that didn't exist in NT times, (2) nor in Medieval Christianity; (3) rather, we see evidence that women served in both formal and informal positions of ministry, not as a function of marriage to a minister but as a function of the Spirit's calling. (4) The role began to emerge in the American church as other paths for women to serve in ministry were shut down by changes in church polity over the last 50 years, driven partly by culture war and partly by US tax policy. (5) The consequences of those changes, which she argues amount to devaluing women and their contributes to the Church, include unwillingness to listen when women report clergy misconduct.

Her argument doesn't respond to any particular ecclesiology or specific form of ordination, and that may frustrate some readers. Instead, she is primarily concerned with showing that "Pastor's Wife" is a culturally defined role that emerges from marriage to a minister and includes an unwritten, unspoken expectation of devotion to service to the minister and his church. This is different from the expectation that every Christian will use their spiritual gifts to contribute to the Church; it is a set of obligations that constitute a unique call to ministry, parallel to a man's call to pastoral ministry. In most evangelical churches, for a woman to formally participate in ministry in a church setting, the most straightforward path is marriage to a minister.

I think Barr makes her case well! I wish the writing were a bit less repetitive, but I'm grateful for this work. It demonstrates critical engagement with a difficult question, making accessible evidence from Barr's field that wouldn't be accessible to most.

Meticulously researched, with dozens of pages of endnotes to prove it, Barr’s Becoming the Pastor’s Wife centers women’s stories in history, from medieval women’s ordination to the modern rise of the “two for the price of one” pastor’s wife. Barr’s main argument is that by making women’s ministry dependent to a man (through marriage to a pastor), we have limited women’s independent ministry roles (such as ordained pastor): “Because the pastor’s wife role provides an acceptable way in complementarian theology for women to serve in ministry, it has been weaponized to condemn women’s ordination and exclude women from pastoral positions.” Barr boldly calls out the SBC’s obsession with limiting women’s leadership, while simultaneously dragging their feet on addressing clergy sexual abuse: “The SBC thought it was more important to vilify women preaching the gospel than to protect the sexual victims of male pastors.” This book will appeal to anyone looking to forge a path for women’s equality in the Church by looking back at what history can teach us. Because women have always been pastors.

There are too many motherless "single-parent" (little c) churches.

This well-researched book has left me hopeful for the needed changes that must come to the Church with regard to women in ministry. Those who attend churches where the female voice is silenced in pastoral/shepherding/teaching/preaching roles are being raised in what I think of as a "single-parent home" (with the mother being the absent parental figure, in this case).