Beth Allison Barr > Quotes

“Instead of being a point of pride for Christians, shouldn't the historical continuity of a practice that has caused women to fare much worse than men for thousands of years caused concern? Shouldn't Christians, who are called to be different from the world, treat women differently?

What if patriarchy isn't divinely ordained but is a result of human sin?”
― Beth Allison Barr, The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth

“In a world that didn’t accept the word of a woman as a valid witness, Jesus chose women as witnesses for his resurrection. In a world that gave husbands power over the very lives of their wives, Paul told husbands to do the opposite—to give up their lives for their wives. In a world that saw women as biologically deformed men, monstrous even, Paul declared that men were just like women in Christ.”
― Beth Allison Barr, The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth

“The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing Christians that oppression is godly. Their God ordained some people, simply because of their sex or skin color (or both), as belonging under the power of other people.”
― Beth Allison Barr, The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth

“Ironically, complementarian theology claims it is defending a plain and natural interpretation of the Bible while really defending an interpretation that has been corrupted by our sinful human drive to dominate others and build hierarchies of power and oppression.”
― Beth Allison Barr, The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth

“I knew the problem wasn’t a lack of women leading in church history. The problem was simply that women’s leadership has been forgotten, because women’s stories throughout history have been covered up, neglected, or retold to recast women as less significant than they really were.”
― Beth Allison Barr, The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth

“Patriarchy exists in the Bible because the Bible was written in a patriarchal world. Historically speaking, there is nothing surprising about biblical stories and passages riddled with patriarchal attitudes and actions. What is surprising is how many biblical passages and stories undermine, rather than support, patriarchy.”
― Beth Allison Barr, The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth

“Like racism, patriarchy is a shapeshifter—conforming to each new era, looking as if it has always belonged.”
― Beth Allison Barr, The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth

“It is in Genesis 3:16 (God speaking to the woman) where we first see hierarchy in human relationships. . . . Hierarchy was not God’s will for the first pair, but it was imposed when they chose to disregard his command and eat the forbidden fruit. . . . Adam would now be subject to his source (the ground), even as Eve was now subject to her source (Adam). This was the moment of the birth of patriarchy. As a result of their sin, the man was now the master over the woman, and the ground was now master over the man, contrary to God’s original intention in creation.34 Patriarchy wasn’t what God wanted; patriarchy was a result of human sin.”
― Beth Allison Barr, The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth

“Ironically, complementarian theology claims it is defending a plain and natural interpretation of the Bible while really defending an interpretation that has been corrupted by our sinful human drive to dominate others and build hierarchies of power and oppression. I can’t think of anything less Christlike than hierarchies like these.”
― Beth Allison Barr, The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth

“Ideas matter. Ideas that depict women as less than men influence men to treat women as less than men. Ideas that objectify women result in women being treated like objects (sex objects, mostly).”
― Beth Allison Barr, The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth

“Women have always been wives and mothers, but it wasn’t until the Protestant Reformation that being a wife and a mother became the “ideological touchstone of holiness” for women.”
― Beth Allison Barr, The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth

“Patriarchy walks hand in hand with racism, and it always has. The same biblical passages used to declare black people unequal are used to declare women unfit for leadership. Patriarchy and racism are "interlocking structures of oppression" Isn't it time we get rid of both?”
― Beth Allison Barr, The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth

“From Mary Magdalene to Waldensian women, Ursuline nuns, Moravian wives, Quaker sisters, Black women preachers, and suffragette activists, history shows us that women do not wait on the approval of men to do the work of God.”
― Beth Allison Barr, The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth

“When we differentiate women because of their sex, we objectify them and deny them their humanity.”
― Beth Allison Barr, The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth

“Patriarchy walks with structural racism and systemic oppression, and it has done so consistently throughout history.”
― Beth Allison Barr, The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth

“Once I finally came face to face with the ugliness and pervasiveness of historical patriarchy, I realized that rather than being different from the world, Christians were just like everyone else in their treatment of women. When Dobson upheld a battered woman's desire to remain with her husband, he was just one more voice in more than four thousand years of history that agreed: women's place is under the power of men.”
― Beth Allison Barr, The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth

“Glorifying the past because we like the story better isn't history; it's propaganda.”
― Beth Allison Barr, The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth

“It’s true that historical memory about female leadership empowered later women like Margery Kempe to preach, teach, and lead. But it’s also true that patriarchal beliefs about the inferiority and impurity of female bodies made it more difficult for women to exercise these spiritual gifts.”
― Beth Allison Barr, The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth

“If we look at the broad sweep of history, we find some interesting patterns regarding the size of women’s rooms. When political and social structures are less centralized and less clearly defined, women often experience greater agency; their rooms are bigger. It is no accident that the stories of the most authoritative women in Christian history stem from the fourth century through the tenth century, when the authority structures of Christianity—not to mention the political structures to which Christianity became attached—were more fluid. It is also no accident that, after the ecclesiastical hierarchy became more centralized and more powerful during the central Middle Ages, women’s ability to exercise formal authority diminished; women’s rooms became smaller. There are always exceptions, of course, but these general patterns are clear.”
― Beth Allison Barr, The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth

“Adam’s rebellion was claiming God’s authority for himself, and Eve’s rebellion was submitting to Adam in place of God.37”
― Beth Allison Barr, The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth

“So here is my question for complementarian evangelicals: What if you are wrong? What if evangelicals have been understanding Paul through the lens of modern culture instead of the way Paul intended to be understood? The evangelical church fears that recognizing women's leadership will mean bowing to cultural peer pressure. But what if the church is bowing to cultural peer pressure by denying women's leadership? What if, instead of a "plain and natural" reading, our interpretation of Paul - and subsequent exclusion of women from leadership roles - results from succumbing to the attitudes and patterns of thinking around us? Christians in the past may have used Paul to exclude women from leadership, but this doesn't mean that the subjugation of women is biblical. It just means that Christians today are repeating the same mistake of Christians in the past - modeling our treatment of women after the world around us instead of the world Jesus shows us is possible.”
― Beth Allison Barr, The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth

“The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing Christians that oppression is godly.”
― Beth Allison Barr, The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth

“Complementarianism rewards women who play by the rules.”
― Beth Allison Barr, The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth

“Historically, one of the greatest problems for women is that we do not remember our past and we do not work together to change our future. We do not stand together. But what if we did?”
― Beth Allison Barr, The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth

“Reformation theology might have removed the priest, but it replaced him with the husband.”
― Beth Allison Barr, The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth

“I use my own interpretation of Virginia Woolf’s phrase “a room of one’s own” to explain historical differences within the continuity of women’s lives.19 Women, throughout history, live within the confines of patriarchy. Bennett describes this as the patriarchal equilibrium. Regardless of how much freedom women have, they always have less than men. Yet the patriarchal equilibrium is a continuum, not a fixed standard. The boundaries of patriarchy wax and wane; the size of a woman’s room—the space where she is able to make her own choices—changes. Some women have bigger rooms, such as wealthy women with husbands and fathers among the highest social classes. Some women have smaller rooms, such as poorer women from families with little political and social influence. Historical circumstances, such as the aftermath of the Black Death in Europe, temporarily expanded women’s rooms by increasing their independence as wage earners, while other historical circumstances, such as Athenian democracy, made women’s rooms smaller.”
― Beth Allison Barr, The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth

“No, the problem in the church is not strong women, but rather weak men who feel threatened by strong women, and have tried various means, even by dubious exegesis, to prohibit them from exercising their gifts and graces in the church.”
― Beth Allison Barr, The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth

“Patriarchy looks right because it is the historical practice of the world.”
― Beth Allison Barr, The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth

“We can no longer deny a link between complementarianism and abuse.”
― Beth Allison Barr, The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth

“For example, Katherine Zell, wife of the Strasbourg reformer Matthew Zell, demanded that she be judged “not according to the standards of a woman, but according to the standards of one whom God has filled with the Holy Spirit.”
― Beth Allison Barr, The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth