Even those who reject Barr’s arguments for women’s ordination can find food for thought in ‘Becoming the Pastor’s Wife’ as we consider the necessary work female ministry leaders do.
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How did we come to our current cultural understanding of the role of a pastor’s wife? Is it a ministry position? It is a biblical role? Or have our expectations of a pastor’s wife morphed over time to fill the vacuum left in churches and denominations that deny women’s ordination?
In Becoming the Pastor’s Wife: How Marriage Replaced Ordination as a Woman’s Path to Ministry, Beth Allison Barr—professor of history at Baylor University—explores these questions. Along the way, she meanders through centuries of church history and anecdotal evidence from the Baptist experience. Her book is meant to be a “history of how Christian women gained a new and important role.” But it’s also “the history of how this gain came at a cost for some women” (xxi).
