Becoming the Pastor's Wife Quotes

“Is biblical authority really the reason behind the different ways we categorize women who do pastoral work? Or is something else going on—something that history shows us is connected to redefinitions of power, hierarchy, and authority working to privilege male clergy over female clergy and dependent ministry roles for women over independent ones?”
― Beth Allison Barr, Becoming the Pastor's Wife: How Marriage Replaced Ordination as a Woman's Path to Ministry

“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; it allows such a man to remain in ministry until his voluntary retirement.”
― Beth Allison Barr, Becoming the Pastor's Wife: How Marriage Replaced Ordination as a Woman's Path to Ministry

“Don't you find it interesting that at the same moment the SBC was building its male-only leadership model, it was protecting a male pastor who had confessed to clergy sexual abuse?”
― Beth Allison Barr, Becoming the Pastor's Wife: How Marriage Replaced Ordination as a Woman's Path to Ministry

“Elizabeth Flowers concludes her study of the Southern Baptist gender wars by reminding us that Baptist battles impacted Christian attitudes and practices far beyond the SBC. ‘The struggle of Southern Baptist women and the Southern Baptist struggle over women also constitute a
“story within a story” which is postwar American religion and culture.’ The SBC may have only been ‘one of many evangelical denominations and subcultures that began fighting over women in the 1970s but it was also the biggest and loudest.”
― Beth Allison Barr, Becoming the Pastor's Wife: How Marriage Replaced Ordination as a Woman's Path to Ministry

“In the 1990s, the number of books written for pastors’ wives began to increase significantly (more than two-thirds of the books we examined were published after 1989). We also find in the 1990s an increase in clearly articulated expectations of male headship and female submission (what I have characterized as submission language). By the early 2000s, it is fair to say that books published for the evangelical pastor's wife role largely support complementaian teachings.”
― Beth Allison Barr, Becoming the Pastor's Wife: How Marriage Replaced Ordination as a Woman's Path to Ministry

“Women are valued in patriarchal societies for how they relate to and support men. They are typically not valued apart from their connection to men.

Doesn't that sound like the pastor's wife role?”
― Beth Allison Barr, Becoming the Pastor's Wife: How Marriage Replaced Ordination as a Woman's Path to Ministry

“Patriarchy is a fancy word for a social system that centers some men and privileges their power,”
― Beth Allison Barr, Becoming the Pastor's Wife: How Marriage Replaced Ordination as a Woman's Path to Ministry

“The absence of Peter's wife shouldn't matter.

The problem is that we have made it matter.

We have taken a position never mentioned directly in Sacripture and turned it into the highest ministry calling for contemporary evangelical women, allowing it to supplant other ministry roles.”
― Beth Allison Barr, Becoming the Pastor's Wife: How Marriage Replaced Ordination as a Woman's Path to Ministry

“Complementarianism, for those unfamiliar with the term, is a patriarchal system born in white evangelicalism that uses the Bible to justify privileging male authority.”
― Beth Allison Barr, Becoming the Pastor's Wife: How Marriage Replaced Ordination as a Woman's Path to Ministry

“The SBC, whether it wants to or not, epitomizes evangelicalism.”
― Beth Allison Barr, Becoming the Pastor's Wife: How Marriage Replaced Ordination as a Woman's Path to Ministry

“Murphy-Geiss quotes the aphorism that ‘marriage is as much a requirement for the Protestant ministry as celibacy is for the Catholic priesthood.’ She also cites a 2008 finding that 94 percent of ‘all Protestant clergy in the United States are married, and, unlike most other professions, the pastor’s family is often involved in his/her work.’ And marriage seems to be on the rise for Protestant clergy, as a 2017 Barna Group study found that 96 percent were married.”
― Beth Allison Barr, Becoming the Pastor's Wife: How Marriage Replaced Ordination as a Woman's Path to Ministry

“Dorothy Pentecost— wife of J. Dwight Pentecost, a longtime professor of Bible exposition at Dallas Theological Seminary and pastor at Grace Bible Church in Dallas— had written a book for pastors’ wives that was recommended to me. In words reminiscent of [Mary O.] Ross’s, she explains that a pastor’s wife is the 'church hostess’ and should ‘appear as attractively dressed as possible all the time.’ But she goes further than Ross, addressing not only wardrobe but also the body— dedicating a chapter titled ‘Do Calories Count?’ to weight management. ‘Overweight is a sign of a spiritual lack,’ Pentecost contends. The ‘easiest way’ to maintain healthy weight is to ‘live constantly under the control of the Spirit.’ Her book, like Ross’s, is dated, but given the number of chapters on appearance in more recent books by pastors’ wives, this kind of advice still resonates.”
― Beth Allison Barr, Becoming the Pastor's Wife: How Marriage Replaced Ordination as a Woman's Path to Ministry

“While people have hotly debated female ordination, historians and lay leaders have overlooked the connection between the decline of female ordination and the attendant rise of the pastor’s wife role.”
― Beth Allison Barr, Becoming the Pastor's Wife: How Marriage Replaced Ordination as a Woman's Path to Ministry

“For a pastor’s wife, especially one in the American evangelical tradition, the very nature of her husband’s calling presumes her supportive and unpaid labor.”
― Beth Allison Barr, Becoming the Pastor's Wife: How Marriage Replaced Ordination as a Woman's Path to Ministry