Last call for Becoming the Pastor's Wife Launch Team!
and my new favorite review before I return to substack posts about the SBC, why the ECPA award I just won gives me hope for evangelical world, and my favorite medieval history podcasts
My heart catches every time I see a new review posted on Net Galley or Goodreads for Becoming the Pastor’s Wife. You would think I would be inured to it by now. But I’m not.
Today, I saw a new review on NetGalley. I wanted to share it with you because the reviewer nailed some of the most critical points I hoped to get across. It made my heart soar that maybe, just maybe, Becoming the Pastor’s Wife really will finish what I started with The Making of Biblical Womanhood.
Becoming the Pastor's Wife" by Dr. Beth Allison Barr
5⭐️/5⭐️
What a tremendous gift Dr. Barr has given us in writing "Becoming the Pastor's Wife." This is a must-read for any believer who wants to understand the history behind the SBC's restrictions on the ordination of women. How and why did the SBC end up here? And can the SBC change for the better?
As a historian, Dr. Barr first takes us to the first-century church. The reader is confronted by how women have been forgotten or re-imagined in modern, white American evangelicalism.
Dr. Barr writes, "I think we have worked so hard to promote biblical women as we imagine them to be that we have forgotten how to see biblical women as they are."
"We have taken a position never mentioned directly in Scripture and turned it into the highest ministry calling for contemporary evangelical women, allowing it to supplant other ministry roles."
Then, Dr. Barr takes us on a journey through medieval history to the modern day, exploring how women's ordination changed and the development of the role of the pastor's wife in white, American evangelicalism and the SBC.
The pastor's wife isn't a role based on spiritual gifting or calling, or leadership. Instead, it is a role in response to capitalism, focused on upholding patriarchy and the subjugation of women. Dr. Barr writes, ". . . the modern conservative movement that glorifies housework, childcare, and family management was born of the growing international trade and consumption of domestic goods in early modern Europe."
"Becoming the Pastor's Wife" explores how the emphasis on the role of the pastor's wife in the SBC "cost" women the freedom to independently preach and minister according to their spiritual gifting and calling. But the costs extend far beyond preaching, teaching, and ministry.
"For more than five decades, conservative evangelical theology has been teaching an increasingly restrictive gender hierarchy that privileges male power and authority while subordinating and marginalizing women. The sex abuse scandals that are currently plaguing the SBC are not anomalous; rather, they are the product of a systemic culture teaching that women are worth less than men. Such a culture teaches men it is okay to 'forgive and forget' when a man admits to causing harm to a woman and her family..."
Dr. Barr ends with a sprinkling of hope: "History shows me how women like me became the pastor's wife. History shows me how the pastor's wife role has been used to push women out of ordained ministry. But history also shows me that it doesn't have to be this way. History has taught me that women, including the wives of pastors, can change the church."
I strongly recommend this book. Everyone needs to read this.
I’d love for you to join the launch team if you haven’t already. We have more than 200 signed up so it should be a lively community! We have room for a few more before we close it for good on Friday. Also, if you order more than one copy (for a friend or family member), you can still take advantage of the preorder gifts. We mailed the first round of t-shirts and magnets out today and you can still get them until March 18.
Thank you for your support! My next post will either be more grim as it engages with the current state of the U.S. or it will be super fun as I share with you my favorite history podcasts (including a sneak peak at our forthcoming podcast All the Buried Women).
Congrats on 100,000! Glad you've gotten some substantive and validating early reviews on the new one too. May these help to buoy your spirits in these crazy times!
That's a wonderful review.