Becoming the Pastor's Wife

How Marriage Replaced Ordination as a Woman's Path to Ministry

De: Beth Allison Barr

Narrado por: Connie Shabshab

As a pastor's wife for twenty-five years, Beth Allison Barr has lived with assumptions about what she should do and who she should be.

In Becoming the Pastor's Wife, Barr draws on that experience and her expertise as a historian to trace the history of the role of the pastor's wife, showing how it both helped and hurt women in conservative Protestant traditions. While they gained an important leadership role, it came at a deep cost: losing independent church leadership opportunities that existed throughout most of church history and strengthening a gender hierarchy that prioritized male careers.

Barr examines the connection between the decline of female ordination and the rise of the role of pastor's wife in the evangelical church, tracing its patterns in the larger history (ancient, medieval, Reformation, and modern) of Christian women's leadership. By expertly blending historical and personal narrative, she equips pastors' wives to better advocate for themselves while helping the church understand the origins of the role as well as the historical reality of ordained women.

©2025 Beth Allison Barr (P)2025 Christian Audio

History of Women in Pastoral Ministry

I love this book. I have always believed women were essential in leading the Church, but my knowledge of women's place in leading the Church was limited. In the years since my training in church history, I have learned more about women in ministry, but Dr. Barr has helped me put the final touches to my understanding of the role in the Christian Church. Paul said there was no difference between male and female, and Jesus gave the most significant message of his resurrection to women. I am thankful for her research and presentation of that research to help the modern Church realize what the Church down through the ages has known and lived, and hopefully put into practice how we allow everyone to use God's calling in their lives in the life of the Church. Thank you, Dr. Barr, for such a great gift to us!

What a powerful recap of the history of women in the church

Thank you, Beth for writing this book using your extensive expertise on this topic (and your personal experience as well). This was really eye-opening for me to recognize the roots and the history of my own upbringing even! …and how male/female hierarchy has been instituted fairly recently. Without this resource, I would’ve had a hard time rebutting anyone who says that it has “always been this way.”

Rich history of women’s struggles

I appreciate all her work to bring us the struggles our sisters have had in working and serving in evangelical spaces. Thank you for penning this and May God continue to give you the courage to add to the pile of good women being to the world !

Clear title

I enjoyed this journey through women in ministry historically, and the thesis that the pastor’s wife as an evangelical Christian woman’s current route to ministry. As a pastor’s wife outside of the SBC, it still resonated. Thank you for openings this conversation further.

Women can lead!

This is a wonderful book. Amen to women leading and teaching in the Christian church! I love how the author shows us in the Bible how women have been leading in history and how it is just in the past 30 years that scripture has been twisted by white men to suppress women. Nasty stuff!

Interesting Premise, Horrible Sources

I was very interested in this book, and parts of it were done well. However, she used sources that are so agenda-driven in their personal ministries that I cannot take this book as anything close to academic. As a woman who studies theology I would just love a fully academic look at church history. This is not that.