AS AN ORDAINED female minister, I was somewhat hesitant picking up Beth Allison Barr’s Becoming the Pastor’s Wife; it sounded like a story I have gone to great lengths to leave behind. Her work indeed transported me back to my days within the complementarian Southern Baptist Church, a time when I continually received messaging that, as a woman, my status was secondary to men.
Sometimes though, revisiting the pain can help to heal and integrate the wound. Barr, a professor of history, proves to be a worthy healer. I already knew that the story we’re often told about women in church leadership (i.e., they never serve as pastors) simply isn’t true, even in Southern Baptist history. What I didn’t know was just how very untrue.
Barr begins by identifying biblical church leaders such as Prisca, Junia, and Phoebe, then explores women in medieval Christianity, highlighting, for example, the impressive leadership of Milburga, a Benedictine abbess, who Barr argues functioned “like a bishop, which is why depictions of her include a crozier.”
Barr also winds her way through Southern Baptist history, making it irrevocably clear just how many leadership roles women have played in the church, including preaching, teaching, and pastoring.
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