“I still do the bulletin.”
She was the wife of a retired small-town pastor. We stood next to the booth sponsored by her church, watching as volunteers served hot dogs to children and firefighters at the summer festival. “Our new preacher is good, but he isn’t married. I’ll do the bulletin until he gets a wife,” she said.
My husband was standing close behind me. I heard a muffled sound of laughter as he turned and walked away. The young preacher wasn’t even married, but his future wife already had a job.
“Oh,” I said. “That is kind of you.”
Unlike my husband, I can keep a straight face. It is a ministry survival skill. Part of me wanted to laugh with him, but the other part was just bemused. Never mind who this pastor’s future wife would be; never mind that she might have a career of her own; never mind that she might hate administrative tasks. It was assumed her high calling was to serve alongside her husband; her high privilege was to do what the church needed her to do.
She would become the pastor’s wife. This meant, among other things, that she would do the bulletin.
My daughter chose that moment to interrupt, tugging on my sleeve. She wanted a hot dog and needed me to hold her winnings (melted candy tangled with pencils and wristbands in a plastic firefighter hat). Fulfilling my role as mother was an acceptable excuse to leave a conversation—well, to leave almost any situation—in the world of white evangelical Christianity. So I used it.
Years have passed since I walked away from that conversation, following the short legs of my child as she ran toward her dad. I can’t remember what happened next. I can’t even remember the name of the retired pastor’s wife.
But I have never forgotten her words.”
I wrote the first draft of these words over two (maybe three?) years ago.
I wasn’t sure, at the time, what I would do with them. The Making of Biblical Womanhood had exploded my life so much that I was making major career choices in an attempt to slow things down (including leaving my position as an Associate Dean in the Graduate School at Baylor University).
The idea of taking on a new book project was terrifying. Could I ever write something like The Making of Biblical Womanhood again? Did I even want to try?
I wasn’t sure. I had accomplished more than I had dreamed possible with The Making of Biblical Womanhood. I had returned to the classroom in the History department at Baylor. I could *just* be a medieval historian again…..It was a tempting prospect. I asked a wise friend for advice, as he had years of experience as an academic publishing trade press books. “Don’t be pressured into writing more,” he told me. “Only write if you have something more you want to say.”
His words hit home.
Because I knew I had something more to say.
The Making of Biblical Womanhood tells a powerful story about the Western Church. A story about the impact of patriarchy on women throughout Christian history; a story about how historical continuity doesn’t equal historical sameness; how limitations on women in the church are rooted in human power plays rather than the kingdom of God; how the existence of patriarchy in the Bible doesn’t make it God-ordained.
But it is only a partial story.
It doesn’t tell the story of what happened to women’s ordination in the West–including in the early church and early medieval world. It only hints at what happened to women’s leadership during the Central Middle Ages. It doesn’t tell why ordination became such a hot button issue in the late twentieth century. It only tells a small part of how the growing emphasis on being a wife and mother as the primary calling for Christian women impacted women called to lead as preachers and pastors. It doesn’t tell the stories of white evangelical women who survived the hardening of patriarchy on their ministry; it doesn’t tell about the hope I have found in the Black church.
When I first wrote about that retired pastor’s wife from so long ago, I didn’t know I was penning the introduction to Becoming the Pastor’s Wife: How Marriage Replaced Ordination as a Woman’s Path to Ministry.
What I knew was that the history of women in ministry was incomplete without telling the story of women like me, too.
What I knew was that, as both a historian and an evangelical woman, I had more to say.
So I said it.
Becoming the Pastor’s Wife is the product not only of my experiences as a pastor’s wife for more than 25 years, but also of 2 years of research, 150 pastor’s wife books, and 5 archival trips. Like The Making of Biblical Womanhood, it sweeps Western history from the early church through the modern church, focusing especially on the Southern Baptist world. It is a mostly white story, reflecting the whiteness of the evangelical church. But it also shows how the Black church intersects with and nuances the pastor’s wife story, too.
To put it even more clearly, Becoming the Pastor’s Wife finishes the story I started with The Making of Biblical Womanhood. It tells about the strength and persistence of women who not only served as pastors and preachers but also as the wives of pastors and preachers. It tells about women you have never heard of before–from a powerful medieval abbess to a Baptist pastor’s wife who served faithfully even while caught in the worst that Christian patriarchy offers women. It assess the impact, for better and for worse, of the rise of the pastor’s wife role on women pastors. And, drawing evidence from the SBC and Canadian Baptist archives, it connects the dots even more powerfully than did The Making of Biblical Womanhood between a hierarchical gender theology and violence against women.
Becoming the Pastor’s Wife tells a difficult history.
But it offers hope for a better future, too.
You can find Becoming the Pastor’s Wife at these links, or anywhere books are available:
Baker Book House: https://bakerbookhouse.com/products/598817?utm_source=meta&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=bz_becomingpastorswife_bethallisonbarr_meta
*Excerpt from Becoming the Pastor’s Wife used with permission by Brazos Press.
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