Becoming the Pastor's Wife: How Marriage Replaced Ordination as a Woman's Path to Ministry

by Beth Allison Barr

Publisher:

Brazos Press

, 2025

Overview

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

”A blistering critique of the narrowing options for female leadership in the evangelical church. . . . A powerful indictment of an unequal system."--Publishers Weekly

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 academic expertise 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.

"Barr’s work belongs with that sweet spot of scholars whose primary research is exceptional and whose writing is accessible to a mass audience (think Elaine Pagels or N. T. Wright)--she’s just that good."--The Presbyterian Outlook

"You will find new heroines to admire in the pages of Becoming the Pastor’s Wife."--The Banner

From the Back Cover

"Timely, necessary, and undeniable"

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. This book draws on that experience and Barr’s academic expertise to trace the history of an important leadership role for conservative Protestant women: the pastor’s wife.

Barr demonstrates how the rise of this role intersects with the decline of women’s independent leadership in the church, and she charts a better path forward.

"Becoming the Pastor’s Wife is clear, empowering, and unflinching in its critique of the role of the pastor’s wife. Barr illuminates how churches have taken this role, which is not discussed in the Bible, and made it a cornerstone of church culture. She examines the myriad of ways women have led in the church and ministered to the congregation throughout the Bible and history. Barr offers us a new vision for women’s active participation in the congregation and a new paradigm for women in ministry. Her work is timely, necessary, and undeniable."
--Kellie Carter Jackson, chair of Africana studies, Wellesley College; author of We Refuse: A Forceful History of Black Resistance

“With her signature exhaustive research and passionate yet nuanced arguments, Barr has given us the book that the church has desperately needed. Becoming the Pastor’s Wife offers illuminating historical background and compelling biblical context for the role we’ve created for pastors’ wives within our churches, and it provides a Christ-centered road map of freedom and flourishing waiting on the other side."
--Sarah Bessey, editor of the New York Times bestseller A Rhythm of Prayer; author of Field Notes for the Wilderness: Practices for an Evolving Faith

Contents

Contents
Introduction
1. Where Is Peter’s Wife?
2. When Women Were Priests
3. The Not-So-Hidden History of Medieval Women’s Ordination
4. The Rise of the Pastor’s Wife
5. Two for the Price of One
6. The Best Pastor’s Wife
7. The (SBC) Road Less Traveled
8. The Cost of Dorothy’s Hats
9. Together for the Gospel
Chronological List of Pastor’s Wife Books

Product Details

• Title: Becoming the Pastor's Wife: How Marriage Replaced Ordination as a Woman's Path to Ministry
• Author: Beth Allison Barr
• Publisher: Brazos Press
• Print Publication Date: 2025
• Logos Release Date: 2024
• Pages: 256
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Ebook
• ISBNs: 9781493447848, 9781587435898, 1587435896, 149344784X
• Resource ID: LLS:9781493447848
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2025-12-19T17:18:40Z

About Beth Allison Barr

Beth Allison Barr (PhD, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) is James Vardaman Professor of History at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, where she specializes in medieval history, women's history, and church history. She recently served as president of the Conference on Faith and History (2018-2021). Barr is a regular contributor to The Anxious Bench, the popular Patheos website on religious history, and has written for Christianity Today, the Washington Post, Religion News Service, The Dallas Morning News, Sojourners, and Baptist News Global. Her work has been featured by NPR and The New Yorker. She is also a Baptist pastor's wife and the mom of two great kids.