This Postmodern Realities episode is a conversation with JOURNAL author Anne Kennedy about her article, “Beth Allison Barr: Becoming the Leader She Knew Could Be: A Review of ‘Becoming the Pastor’s Wife: How Marriage Replaced Ordination as a Woman’s Path to Ministry’ “. This is also part of Anne’s ongoing “Theological Trends Column”. https://www.equip.org/articles/beth-allison-barr-becoming-the-leader-she-knew-could-be-a-review-of-becoming-the-pastors-wife-how-marriage-replaced-ordination-as-a-womans-path-to-ministry/
Related and recent articles and podcasts by this author:Episode 240: Be Free! The Making of Biblical Womanhood A Summary Critique review of The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women became Gospel Truth by Beth Allison BarrBe Free! The Making of Biblical Womanhood: A Summary Critique of The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth by Beth Allison BarrEpisode 440: Reimagining ‘Snow White’: How Counterfeits Reveal the TrueReimagining ‘Snow White’: How Counterfeits Reveal the TrueEpisode 426 Leaving Church, Finding A Platform: A Look at the Content of Rev KarlaLeaving Church, Finding A Platform: A Look at the Content of Rev KarlaEpisode 419: Richard Hays Changes His Mind About Sexuality and God: A Review of ‘The Wideness of God’s Mercy: Sexuality Within the Biblical Story’Richard Hays Changes His Mind About Sexuality and God: A Review of ‘The Wideness of God’s Mercy: Sexuality Within the Biblical Story’
Don’t miss an episode; please subscribe to the Postmodern Realities podcast wherever you get your favorite podcasts. Please help spread the word about Postmodern Realities by giving us a rating and review when you subscribe to the podcast. The more ratings and reviews we have, the more new listeners can discover our content.
Related and recent articles and podcasts by this author:Episode 240: Be Free! The Making of Biblical Womanhood A Summary Critique review of The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women became Gospel Truth by Beth Allison BarrBe Free! The Making of Biblical Womanhood: A Summary Critique of The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth by Beth Allison BarrEpisode 440: Reimagining ‘Snow White’: How Counterfeits Reveal the TrueReimagining ‘Snow White’: How Counterfeits Reveal the TrueEpisode 426 Leaving Church, Finding A Platform: A Look at the Content of Rev KarlaLeaving Church, Finding A Platform: A Look at the Content of Rev KarlaEpisode 419: Richard Hays Changes His Mind About Sexuality and God: A Review of ‘The Wideness of God’s Mercy: Sexuality Within the Biblical Story’Richard Hays Changes His Mind About Sexuality and God: A Review of ‘The Wideness of God’s Mercy: Sexuality Within the Biblical Story’
Don’t miss an episode; please subscribe to the Postmodern Realities podcast wherever you get your favorite podcasts. Please help spread the word about Postmodern Realities by giving us a rating and review when you subscribe to the podcast. The more ratings and reviews we have, the more new listeners can discover our content.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:20):
Hi everyone, Thank you for tuning in to the Postmodern
Realities podcast, brought to you by the Christian Research Institute
and the Christian Research Journal. I'm Melanie Cogdill, Managing editor
of the Christian Research Journal. It's June twenty twenty five
and you're listening to episode four hundred and fifty one,
which is a conversation about the newest book from doctor
(00:42):
Beth Allison Barr called Becoming the Pastor's Wife, How Marriage
Replaced ordination as a woman's path to ministry. Today's guest
is Anne Kennedy. She has an MDiv and is the
author of Nailed It, three hundred and sixty five readings
for Angry or worn Out People, and blogs about current
events and theological trends on her substack Demotivations with Anne,
(01:07):
and has written a book review of Becoming the Pastor's
Wife and her review is called Beth Allison Barr Becoming
the Leader.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
She knew she could be.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
You can read this article for free at equipped dot org.
That's equip dot RG. And it's good to have you
on the podcast again.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
It's great to be here. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
Well, as I mentioned to you, we are going to
be talking today in a spoiler filled conversation about the
news book from doctor Beth Allison Barr. And several years ago,
Anna and I talked about her first book, which was
called The Making of Biblical Womanhood, How the subjugation of
women became Gospel Truth, and that really made a big
(01:54):
splash nationwide because she was an evangelical, very much critical
for compliments Trianism, and also a member of the Southern
Baptist Association with the church that she was attending at
the time. I think she has since left that church,
but so she's now back with a brand new book.
As I noted, it's called Becoming the Pastor's Wife, How
(02:15):
marriage replaced ordination as a woman's path to ministry, which
is an extremely provocative title. Doctor Barr is also a
professor at Baylor University in Texas. So what is doctor
Barr's premise of her new book about Becoming the Pastor's
Wife and what is her main thesis in this book.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
Yes, this is a pretty brisk read, and I would
say fairly controversial given the state of evangelicalism in the
US at this point in time. The book is about
is a historical look at whether there's any evidence for
women performing ministerial and authoritative functions in the church up
(03:05):
to the Reformation and then beyond. That's kind of a
moment that she stops at for a while. And then
but in the modern era as well, and then her
her conclusion as there is a lot of evidence of
women acting as ministers, being ordained and even functioning as
(03:25):
bishops in some cases, and that it's historically anachronistic to
look back in the past and say that women did
not perform in pastor or priestly roles, and the Bible
would say would not, does not prohibit them from doing that,
(03:46):
and so the modern church should re examine the stance
that prevents women from ordained ministry, give it a rethink,
and you know, it's not It takes the history for
what it is and the Bible for what it is
and sort of join the modern era as it were,
(04:08):
and allow women full equality in the church in ministerial roles.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
That's very interesting that she's again she's kind of taking
that look at things through the historical ones that you mentioned,
because that's her expertise, is I guess history, and so
specifically since that is her expertise and her degree. Where
in history does bar claim that she has found this
(04:36):
evidence of what's called she says in the book independent leadership,
And where she's saying historically, does it show women in
more of a pastoral type of minister type of a role.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
Well, so she begins right back towards the beginning. She
references sort of briefly a New Testament era women such
as Phoebe and Priscilla and Junia, which she mentions in
her other book as well. And that's a big argument
(05:16):
about the degree to which women in the New Testament
exercised leadership. And there's been lots and lots written. I
would just say her analysis of Junia in particular, I
think is very specious. I'm not exactly sure if that's
the word I want, but she puts a lot of
(05:36):
weight on those three women, Junia in particular, And there
isn't really good consensus or scholarship on whether Junia was
a person who we would term ordained or understand it
in that way, and I think most scholars would say
that there's just not enough evidence for that, but she
(05:57):
kind of takes that as read. And of course Junia
was an apostle alongside the apostles, but she moves quickly
from the Bible to her first section is about she
spends time going to the Priscilla Catacombs in Rome and
looking at this one chapel that has figures of women,
(06:20):
a lot of women, but in particular a woman who
appears to be in liturgical garb, and she's at three
different sort of scenes in her life, and the question
is what are those scenes? And the tour guide that
went with her through the catacomb said it was a
woman on the day of her marriage, and then as
(06:43):
she became a mother, and then her death going into
heaven is kind of the traditional view of that person,
but there are some scholars who believe that that figure,
it's sort of a fresco, is a woman who's being
ordained or being consecrated by a bish and then is
at exercising authority or leadership and then is maybe maybe
(07:07):
part of the widow the order of widows and empowered
to protect or care for neglected infants. And so she
spends a good amount of time on this figure and
what it might portend, and then she kind of pulls
together different sources from that from the very early Church
(07:31):
about whether or not women, what kind of functions they
might have had. She believes that the order of widows
in particular would have been eventually it was they were
listed amongst clergy, that they probably exercised a great deal
of authority in the church is kind of where she
lands on that. And all through this she weaves through
(07:54):
her own experience, her own experience of being a pastor's wife.
She moves forward into the Middle Ages to some very
powerful figures Milburgher in particular, who was the abbess of
a double monastery, meaning both monks and nuns, who is
(08:16):
depicted sometimes with a crozier, which is the bishop's staff.
And she mentioned some other women as well, but she
really spends a lot of time on Melburger. And then
she teases out the period after the Reformation, where the
monasteries and convents were shuddered, priests began to marry, and
(08:38):
the pastor's wife kind of emerges in the rubble where
women had had positions. If an unmarried woman joined herself
to a convent, for example, she could rise up in
the ranks and become very powerful in terms of church
hierarchy and influence, and that kind of disintegrated at the
(09:00):
the Reformation and the aftermath, and so Protestants then did
not want to, you know, become nuns, and so what
were women to do? And they weren't prepared as time
went on to ordain women. The only way to gain
authority in the church was to get married to a
pastor and take up the role sort of an eclique,
(09:23):
an unordained ecclesiastical role or function within the church, unpaid
of a pastoral care ministry, sometimes even preaching and teaching
alongside a husband. And so she has a lot of
instances of that that are kind of woven through women
who wanted to be ordained but were turned away, pastors'
(09:48):
wives who functioned basically as pastors in different contexts. So
she covers an enormous amount of territory from the very
early church all the way up to the present day,
and she weaves it together quite artfully, i would say,
with her own story and tries to make a case
(10:10):
that we got it wrong.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
So this is interesting that this particular book is a
follow up to her first one, which listeners can go
We will link in the show notes where this article
is On the quip dot org website, you can listen
to the podcast that, and and I did then, and
also read the review of her first book, but you know,
it caused a lot of waves at the time. Has
this particular book been received as I guess widely as
(10:38):
the first one was.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
I have seen a few reviews in some places, but
it doesn't seem to have made quite the splash, I think,
because maybe I don't know if we're even more polarized
than we were a few years ago, or people have
kind of settled out into different ideological spaces. It is
controversial because the Southern Baptist Convention did just meet I
(11:05):
think last week or the week before, and it's a
continual conversation within the Southern Baptist Convention about the place
of women in the church. And so I think the
book I saw in different news articles was referenced here
and there, but I haven't heard a lot of people
reading it or talking about it in the same way
that I did the previous book. There is a very
(11:28):
glowing review in Christianity today, and apart from that, I
haven't come across too many different places. I don't think.
I don't know that it's making quite the splash. I
think people probably expected her to write a book like this,
and those that are her on her side are excited
(11:49):
about it, and those who aren't are probably not paying attention.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
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(12:15):
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We're just so thankful for that. And now back.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
To my conversation with Ann Kennedy. Things she keeps talking
about in this particular book is independent leadership, women in
independent leadership. What is this a term that she's coined,
and if so, what does she exactly mean by that
phrase independent leadership.
Speaker 3 (15:17):
I found this phrase so interesting and I kind of
got hung up on it. It appears I think eleven
times in the book, although she uses the word leadership
a lot, and she says that refusing to see the
position that women held in the church in ordained or
(15:42):
in authoritative functions is anachronistic if you read if she says,
if you look back at history and you don't see that,
or you see no evidence of it, you're really reading
your own perspective back into history. I would I would
say that I found the term independent leadership to be
an anachronistic term. I don't see how you can use
that and look back at history or the Bible. It
(16:05):
just seems like a very modern idea that doesn't really
correspond well with what I would see in history or
in the Bible. She would count a woman to be
an independent leader, a person who was unmarried, who did
not have to rely on her husband's authority to do
(16:26):
any work in the church. There's a few cases where
women were married to pastors but carried on and did
their own thing, and you know, maybe traveled around and
preached and without the blessing of a husband, or you know,
or they didn't seem to be a problem. So she's
(16:49):
looking through up until the Reformation, unmarried women who engaged
in the life of the church authoritatively be Hildegard of
being an Priscilla. Well, Priscilla was married, but yeah, so
that it kind of immediately breaks down. You would I
(17:11):
would never count Priscilla, the wife of Aquilla, to be
an independent leader in the church. That she had influence
over is clear in the text. She and Equila take
Apollos aside and instruct him in the way, and they
(17:32):
kind of correct him. And she's obviously a very important
person in early church history, and I think doubtless the
order of widows probably did grow into an early sort
of nascissism, and the church is replete with women whose
names we know, who wrote, who organize things, who spoke
(17:55):
authoritatively and performed did acts of ministry. I don't know
if that's not probably a very elegant way of saying it,
but obviously women were an essential part of the life
of the church, and they did important and impressive things
along the way. So it's interesting to me that she
would use this term independent leadership for an era in
(18:19):
which independence was probably not understood in the way that
we understand it now, and then bring it into the
modern era. Looking for women who act and work in
the church without the authority and blessing of somebody like
a husband. That's what she's looking for, So if you
(18:40):
are a pastor's wife and you lead a Bible study
and do the women's ministry, maybe even you preach a sermon,
you wouldn't count as an independent leader. But Melburga in
the Middle Ages, who was an abbess and was doubtless
(19:04):
under the authority of a bishop, would count as an
independent leader. So it seems very to me, very arbitrary term.
I struggled with it a lot. I don't think it's
a good measure of the sort of world in which
men and women live together the church, And I would
(19:27):
love to hear I would love for her to untangle
that a little bit more and say why she chose
that term, and what she means by it, and why
it applies, you know, to unmarried women who are under
the authority of a pastor or a bishop, but not
to a married woman, And what also is so wrong
(19:51):
with being under somebody else's authority. She kind of takes
it as a given that that's a negative, that women
being under the authority of men is bad for them,
and that they have the right to exercise or do
work in the church on their own terms. Is that
(20:14):
that's a given, that's a good obviously, And I don't
think she makes the case that it is. I think
she still has a lot of work to do on
that score.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
That is a fascinating term to me because just in general,
irregardless of gender, man or woman, the idea of independent
leadership in the church in general doesn't seem like what
the church is teaching in the epistles. I mean, you know,
there's people with different authority, even men, but it's not
you're independent from the rest of the church or I'm
(20:46):
not sure what she really means by that. So it
does a curious term. So what does she think is
the issue for women in the church and what would
she say where it went wrong for them in terms
of now she sees like there was this medieval period
where women were these you know, almost the point of
(21:07):
bishop or that's what she's arguing, and now women are
just exercising what gifts they can in a marriage, which
she doesn't think is really what the church women should
be called to in terms of leadership in the church.
Speaker 3 (21:22):
Yet I found this to be the case in the
making of Biblical womanhood as well. She says she's not
looking at the past with you know, rose colored glasses
that she doesn't seem some utopic vision in the past
that got wrecked. She wouldn't say that the past was
(21:42):
really wonderful and everything we have now is really bad.
But the way that she frames the narrative always leaves
me thinking that that's what she's thinking.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
That her.
Speaker 3 (21:56):
It seems as if she thinks there was this sort
of movement towards full equality for men and women. And again,
I would use the word equality in a modern sense
the way that people use it now, which is that
there should be no barrier for women doing any particular work,
(22:16):
that men and women are essentially the same except for
some parts of biology, and that there shouldn't be any
especially in the church and the home. A woman shouldn't
submit to her husband. They should both mutually submit to
each other in all things, so they do it. Don't
(22:38):
hold different texts and admonitions and in tension with each
other and try to harmonize them or live out the
mystery of marriage. You just sort of make this clear.
Men are completely equal to women and everything all the
time that it seems as though she thinks that that
was something that was definitely going to happen. But then
the Reformation came in the sort of unraveling of different
(23:05):
parts of social life that happened as a result of
the Reformation. There could have been again a sense of
greater equality, but then it didn't happen. It didn't work out,
and women were pushed towards marriage and if they wanted
to work and live in the church, and if they
(23:27):
wanted to work and exercise authority in the church. Even
though maybe nobody did this in a nefarious way. They
didn't try to be bad. It just happened that they
were more and more curtailed in what they could do,
and they had to depend on the authority of the
man they'd married to be able to do work. And
(23:51):
so she has a chapter there's different points at which
she would say things kind of maybe unraveled. So one
would be during the era of Melburga that who could
celebrate the Eucharist, she says, was more a localized situation.
So maybe Melburga would have celebrated the Eucharist in her
(24:13):
local context. She might not have been able to travel
around to do that. But they didn't have the same
idea of ordination in her day as they do now
in the Catholic Church. And so as things became more
about biology. She says, the idea of the Eucharist changed
(24:34):
and ordination changed, and so women were barred from eventually
barred from celebrating the Eucharist. And similarly, there had been
a lot of women at the time of the Reformation
who you know, Catholic priests were not as celibate as
(24:54):
they should have been, or a lot of people with
mistresses in the church. And after the Reformation, many of
those priests married those women, but it was still a
sort of a second class thing, and that didn't help
in the sort of equalizing force that women were hoping
(25:18):
to have as life went on. So she picks out
these kind of moments in church history where it seems
like she believed it would have gone one way, and
then it didn't. And then more and more recent times
with SBC, it looked like women were going to achieve
(25:38):
full equality in the church. There were women being ordained
as pastors. And then in the nineties there was this
conservative resurgence led by Almore and they pushed back hard
and they managed to de barrow women from being ordained.
And again, now maybe there could have been another cusin
(26:00):
of this, but lately I think twenty twenty three. Saddleback
was removed because they have women on staff in pastoral roles.
So in each case it seems like, oh, maybe women
are going to get there, but then men usually come
along and push them out, and so they just never
(26:21):
get to have the full equal lives that they deserve
and that they have apparently always had.
Speaker 1 (26:32):
That's really interesting, and I think that became kind of
a lightning rod thing when Rick Warren's Church of Saddleback
had to answer to the full Southern Baptist Convention as
to whether they in fact had women on staff as pastors.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
I think.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (26:50):
I mean, I remember I watched it go down. I'm
always confused by Southern Baptist terminology. So I think there's
something called the law Amendment, and I think that has
to do with women's ordination, and I think it never
quite passes all the way. I'm not quite sure, but
the removal of Saddleback was a big deal, and I
(27:11):
don't think people expected that it would happen. And it
still seems that in many well I don't know if
it's many, but some Southern Baptist churches there are women
who exercise ordained pastoral functions, and it's always a controversy
about whether or not they should be allowed to do that,
and there does seem to be this very unsettled back
(27:33):
and forth about the roles of women in the church
and in the home.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
So how does she communicate basically the role of a
pastor's wife now in contemporary times. I mean, one of
the people that she points to, I think with I
don't know if I would say disdain, but just total
disagreement of what she's saying and how she's perceived is
a woman I the name of Dorothy Patterson, who is
(28:00):
the wife of a Southern Baptist, former big Southern Baptist leader.
So what does she say about Dorothy Patterson.
Speaker 3 (28:08):
Well, this was very exciting. I felt like the sort
of pure historian slipped away and this became very personal
for bar As you read the book, it does get
very exciting. She really really doesn't like Dorothy Patterson. And
it seems that Dorothy Patterson had an enormous amount of
(28:28):
influence over women in the eighties and nineties, over pastors wives.
That she developed a course, a seminary course for you
wives of young men who were in seminary to become ordained.
The women could take courses and they would be taught
(28:49):
how to be good pastor's wives. And so it seems
that Dorothy Patterson and others like her really shaped the
expectations that modern women live on in their life. As
the pastor's wife, it is a sort of a formal function.
It's a formal place that you have. It does carry authority,
(29:13):
the authority that's derived from the pastor the husband. And
so she was very forceful and clear in her expectations
of women in the eighties and nineties, and it included
things like keeping a very tidy and beautiful house. You
gave very particular instructions about decorating and what kind of
(29:35):
food to keep in the fridge, and being able to
be hospitable on a dime. She had something called a
company box. I think that she encouraged women to keep
things in a basket or some way that you could
easily pull a meal together, you could make a coffee,
You could invite people into your home and it would
(29:56):
be ordered and peaceful, and the husban and wouldn't be
looking for his socks or his shirt on Sunday morning.
He could really depend on his wife to care for
him as he ministered to the church, and then so
she set a high bar of expectations that I think,
(30:16):
according to Bar, many women struggled under and felt they
were inadequate for. And some women didn't want to be
in that role. They didn't want to sort of be
the smiling wife in the front pew. They didn't want
to play the piano, they didn't want to make the bulletin,
but they had to because she kind of institutionalized that function.
(30:38):
And I am a pastor's wife, so I certainly know
the struggle. I didn't know that maybe the source of
a lot of that was Dorothy Patterson. But I thought
it was interesting that Bar obviously has a lot of
emotion around this particular name and this person and isn't
(30:59):
able to quite dispassionately about her influence in the church.
And I don't I have heard other people talk about
Dorothy Patterson. I think that many people found her a
beloved figure and didn't view her with the same animosity
or you know, disappointment at being having a yoke placed
(31:22):
on their shoulders to carry along even against their will.
Speaker 1 (31:31):
That's very interesting. Do you think that doctor Barr makes
a theological and biblical case for the ordination of women.
I feel like this topic just keeps coming up over
and over, maybe with a just a different twist every
few years. And so she does she do that? I
think when we talked about her, I really want to
(31:52):
point people to her former book, because as a historian,
she does appeal to certain theological are humans that have
already been answered many times. So do you think in
this particular book that she went at it again and
she was more successful in making that theological case.
Speaker 3 (32:11):
I didn't find much theology in this book. I did
think her discussion of the changing views of ordination and
the Eucharist were interesting. I've read about those in other places, though,
and so I'm not quite I doubt her particular view
of how that went downs. She is referring to a
(32:33):
period in history that's well documented, and she sort of
gets up close to it, but she doesn't really get
to the heart of those issues, which really did affect
the Church and the way we viewed sin and confession,
and there was some deep and profound shifts in the
(32:57):
view of the human person in relation to God that
did happen through the Middle Ages that are really crucial
for understanding where we are today. And she kind of
refers to them, but she doesn't deal with them in
a way that I found satisfactory, and I don't quite
I mean, I didn't follow up every single one of
her footnotes. I question her reliance on some certain scholars who,
(33:25):
especially in the terms of the Priscilla Catacombs. Her assumption
about how men and women would have lived in the
ancient past, I don't buy. I don't think she establishes
even historically a historical case for the or nation of women.
(33:48):
And she absolutely doesn't do it on the theological level.
She really doesn't. She just assumes that that's what Jesus
and Paul would have wanted and moves on without showing
how that idea would have come about, whether where it
comes from in the scriptures, what it does theologically to
(34:10):
the church, to our view of God, to the person,
to the sacraments. She doesn't go there. Really, she assumes
that the case has been made, and I find that
disappointing because the last century has been tumultuous in terms
(34:33):
of men's relationships to women in the church and in
the home. There's so many different factors that have absolutely
shifted and changed the way that we function in the world,
and our assumptions about good and evil and about God
and people, and I do think we need to think
(34:53):
about this one thing. For example, I think in the
modern era, and this colors her work, there's no a
status for women as women that appears to be meaningful.
I think one reason why Barr just wouldn't be able
to fathom a world in which women couldn't be ordained
(35:14):
is because in our world, to be ordained is one
of the most important functions that there is in the church,
or the most important, and I don't think that that's
how it was viewed in ancient times. I don't think
women felt less than because they weren't ordained. I don't
(35:35):
think that women had the same expectations of life that
women do today, and that's worth investigating. But bar doesn't
investigate that. So I found this the lack of a
theological case being made to be perplexing, and I found
(35:57):
her historical work to be also similarly, not connecting the dots,
not really showing me how she got from A to
B to C.
Speaker 1 (36:07):
Today, So, as this debate continues within evangelical spheres, does
she actually deal theologically or historically even with any objections
to those for example, in evangelical spaces or other spaces
(36:31):
for that matter, who believe in complementarianism and that women
shouldn't be ordained, which by the way, is not just
the purview of Protestants. Other Christians who are not Protestants
don't ordain women either, And so does she satisfactorily deal
with it in a way that's persuasive.
Speaker 3 (36:51):
I'm not really. She doesn't really take it up. She
doesn't say why women should be ordained, and then she
doesn't deal with those arguments of people who say that
they shouldn't she really she does go into the question
of abuse a bit. She the women without she I
(37:16):
think her assumption is that women without authority in the
church are more readily abused and so by men, and
so it's actually very dangerous for women not to be
able to be in the upper echelons of power, if
that's the way you want to view it. And so
(37:38):
there is kind of a moral sense that she implies
that women should be in the should be pastors, if
only to keep abuse free churches. But that's not really
(37:59):
a theological argument, and she does not, at least she
didn't in the last book, and she didn't in this
one really address and answer the objections that most Christians
have for the ordination of women, most of which come
from Scripture, but some are sort of purely theological or sacramental,
(38:21):
and she doesn't get into it, so I don't know,
you know, it's kind of hard to argue back when
you aren't dealing with anything precise or meaningful.
Speaker 1 (38:36):
So, because the title of her book suggests that the
church today is not operating where women's gifts are fully
used in the full sense of the word, with the
authority that they should have, what kind of church does
Barr think would be best?
Speaker 3 (38:53):
Well, I think she would like a purely egalitarian church
where women are are able to be bishops, if that's
the kind of church they're in, and that she's SBC
so there are no bishops, but they should be probably
senior teaching pastor, and it would be a very good
thing to have a staff that's made up almost entirely
(39:16):
of women, and you know, men and women can get along.
There can be male pastors as well. I would imagine
she would be for that. But there just shouldn't be
any limit on the works that women are invited to
you in the church. For her and I think she
(39:37):
would say that this would make the church more representative
of what Jesus was like, and it would be protection
against abuse, and it would just be good all around.
Which that's the least kind of the vision that she paints.
And if you want to be a pastor's wife, that's
(39:58):
really great, but you shouldn't have to live up to
anybody else's expectations while you're doing that. And I think
in her perfect world, Dorothy Patterson would not have written
any books or have any influence in the church at all.
Speaker 1 (40:14):
Does she address the fact at all that the Bible
does emphasize the biological, very basic level, the binary you know,
creation that God has for man and woman, or does
she just doesn't really see any reason for that beyond
just pure procreation.
Speaker 3 (40:34):
Yeah, she doesn't really get into it. She doesn't deal
with anything like Ephesians five. She doesn't really address the
scripture as much. She does talk about Peter's wife and
how she just isn't mentioned in the scripture and so
(40:57):
we can only wonder about that, but she really doesn't
get into the differences between men and women and what
that portends, what it means for life in the church.
And she also doesn't really go into the question of
masculinity in a way that I found satisfying or femininity,
(41:20):
which are big hot topics today and I think fascinate
a lot of people, and most people want to know
more about those things, not less. But she kind of
it doesn't seem to have much bearing on her argument. Really,
she leans very heavily on this question of independence and
of leadership, both of which are categories that I don't
(41:41):
think are very suitable for understanding the scripture or the
Church through history.
Speaker 1 (41:49):
So she is still I assume a Southern Baptist, even
though she has perhaps many critiques of it. So there's
an organization called the Battist Women in Ministry, and so
what is that organization and does it align with what
she believes it all?
Speaker 3 (42:08):
The Baptist Women in Ministry organization had an event at
the same time as the SBC convention the couple of
weeks ago. It's in an organization that is trying to
help women gain equality in the church. So there websites
is imagine a gender equal Baptist world, and so they
(42:30):
help women through the process to become pastors basically, and
bar gave a speech at their event was it last
week or the week before and made I think the
case that was in her book about why it is
essential for women to be in leadership in the church.
(42:50):
And so it's interesting to me that there is this
group out there. I don't think it's necessarily associated with
the SBC, but they are trying to help women get
into churches and become pastors and preachers and teachers, and
help fund them and find them the opportunities that they desire.
(43:14):
They met at a United Methodist church though, next to
the convention Hall.
Speaker 1 (43:19):
That is very interesting. Well, I would like to point
our listeners once again to Anne's article and her review
of this book, and on a much lighter note, And
we just recently celebrated in June because the US has
holidays for everything, you know, National Eat your Favorite Vegetable Day.
So what is your favorite vegetable?
Speaker 3 (43:39):
My favorite vegetable right now is the asparagus growing in
my garden. I go out and just pick it and
eat it and it's so delicious.
Speaker 1 (43:48):
Oh that sounds very good. Well, thanks Ann for being
a guest again on the Postmodern Realities podcast.
Speaker 3 (43:54):
Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (43:57):
You've been listening to episode four hundred and fifty one
of the Postmodern Realities podcast from the Christian Research Journal.
Today's guest was Anne Kennedy and we have been discussing
her book review of the new book from Beth Allison
Barr called Becoming the Pastor's Wife, How Marriage Replaced ordination
as a woman's past and ministry. Ann has written a
(44:18):
review of this book and her review is called Beth
Allison Barr Becoming the Leader She Knew She could be
and you can read it for free at.
Speaker 2 (44:26):
Equipp dot org.
Speaker 1 (44:27):
That's equip dot org. You won't want to miss out
on subscribing to the other podcasts from the Christian Research Institute.
We have the Bible answer Man podcast, which is published
Monday through Friday, with the best of the week on Saturday.
It's hosted by CRI President Hank Handigraph and is available
(44:48):
wherever you get your favorite podcasts. In addition, Hank has
a podcast called Hank Unplugged. Hank takes you out of
the studio and into his study to engage in free flow,
essential Christian conversations on critical issues with some of the
most interesting, informative and inspirational people on the planet, and
(45:10):
you won't want to miss out on the brand new
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single week, so you won't want to miss these audio
(45:31):
articles of some of our most popular and most accessed
articles on our website equip dot org.
Hi everyone, Thank you for tuning in to the Postmodern
Realities podcast, brought to you by the Christian Research Institute
and the Christian Research Journal. I'm Melanie Cogdill, Managing editor
of the Christian Research Journal. It's June twenty twenty five
and you're listening to episode four hundred and fifty one,
which is a conversation about the newest book from doctor
(00:42):
Beth Allison Barr called Becoming the Pastor's Wife, How Marriage
Replaced ordination as a woman's path to ministry. Today's guest
is Anne Kennedy. She has an MDiv and is the
author of Nailed It, three hundred and sixty five readings
for Angry or worn Out People, and blogs about current
events and theological trends on her substack Demotivations with Anne,
(01:07):
and has written a book review of Becoming the Pastor's
Wife and her review is called Beth Allison Barr Becoming
the Leader.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
She knew she could be.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
You can read this article for free at equipped dot org.
That's equip dot RG. And it's good to have you
on the podcast again.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
It's great to be here. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
Well, as I mentioned to you, we are going to
be talking today in a spoiler filled conversation about the
news book from doctor Beth Allison Barr. And several years ago,
Anna and I talked about her first book, which was
called The Making of Biblical Womanhood, How the subjugation of
women became Gospel Truth, and that really made a big
(01:54):
splash nationwide because she was an evangelical, very much critical
for compliments Trianism, and also a member of the Southern
Baptist Association with the church that she was attending at
the time. I think she has since left that church,
but so she's now back with a brand new book.
As I noted, it's called Becoming the Pastor's Wife, How
(02:15):
marriage replaced ordination as a woman's path to ministry, which
is an extremely provocative title. Doctor Barr is also a
professor at Baylor University in Texas. So what is doctor
Barr's premise of her new book about Becoming the Pastor's
Wife and what is her main thesis in this book.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
Yes, this is a pretty brisk read, and I would
say fairly controversial given the state of evangelicalism in the
US at this point in time. The book is about
is a historical look at whether there's any evidence for
women performing ministerial and authoritative functions in the church up
(03:05):
to the Reformation and then beyond. That's kind of a
moment that she stops at for a while. And then
but in the modern era as well, and then her
her conclusion as there is a lot of evidence of
women acting as ministers, being ordained and even functioning as
(03:25):
bishops in some cases, and that it's historically anachronistic to
look back in the past and say that women did
not perform in pastor or priestly roles, and the Bible
would say would not, does not prohibit them from doing that,
(03:46):
and so the modern church should re examine the stance
that prevents women from ordained ministry, give it a rethink,
and you know, it's not It takes the history for
what it is and the Bible for what it is
and sort of join the modern era as it were,
(04:08):
and allow women full equality in the church in ministerial roles.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
That's very interesting that she's again she's kind of taking
that look at things through the historical ones that you mentioned,
because that's her expertise, is I guess history, and so
specifically since that is her expertise and her degree. Where
in history does bar claim that she has found this
(04:36):
evidence of what's called she says in the book independent leadership,
And where she's saying historically, does it show women in
more of a pastoral type of minister type of a role.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
Well, so she begins right back towards the beginning. She
references sort of briefly a New Testament era women such
as Phoebe and Priscilla and Junia, which she mentions in
her other book as well. And that's a big argument
(05:16):
about the degree to which women in the New Testament
exercised leadership. And there's been lots and lots written. I
would just say her analysis of Junia in particular, I
think is very specious. I'm not exactly sure if that's
the word I want, but she puts a lot of
(05:36):
weight on those three women, Junia in particular, And there
isn't really good consensus or scholarship on whether Junia was
a person who we would term ordained or understand it
in that way, and I think most scholars would say
that there's just not enough evidence for that, but she
(05:57):
kind of takes that as read. And of course Junia
was an apostle alongside the apostles, but she moves quickly
from the Bible to her first section is about she
spends time going to the Priscilla Catacombs in Rome and
looking at this one chapel that has figures of women,
(06:20):
a lot of women, but in particular a woman who
appears to be in liturgical garb, and she's at three
different sort of scenes in her life, and the question
is what are those scenes? And the tour guide that
went with her through the catacomb said it was a
woman on the day of her marriage, and then as
(06:43):
she became a mother, and then her death going into
heaven is kind of the traditional view of that person,
but there are some scholars who believe that that figure,
it's sort of a fresco, is a woman who's being
ordained or being consecrated by a bish and then is
at exercising authority or leadership and then is maybe maybe
(07:07):
part of the widow the order of widows and empowered
to protect or care for neglected infants. And so she
spends a good amount of time on this figure and
what it might portend, and then she kind of pulls
together different sources from that from the very early Church
(07:31):
about whether or not women, what kind of functions they
might have had. She believes that the order of widows
in particular would have been eventually it was they were
listed amongst clergy, that they probably exercised a great deal
of authority in the church is kind of where she
lands on that. And all through this she weaves through
(07:54):
her own experience, her own experience of being a pastor's wife.
She moves forward into the Middle Ages to some very
powerful figures Milburgher in particular, who was the abbess of
a double monastery, meaning both monks and nuns, who is
(08:16):
depicted sometimes with a crozier, which is the bishop's staff.
And she mentioned some other women as well, but she
really spends a lot of time on Melburger. And then
she teases out the period after the Reformation, where the
monasteries and convents were shuddered, priests began to marry, and
(08:38):
the pastor's wife kind of emerges in the rubble where
women had had positions. If an unmarried woman joined herself
to a convent, for example, she could rise up in
the ranks and become very powerful in terms of church
hierarchy and influence, and that kind of disintegrated at the
(09:00):
the Reformation and the aftermath, and so Protestants then did
not want to, you know, become nuns, and so what
were women to do? And they weren't prepared as time
went on to ordain women. The only way to gain
authority in the church was to get married to a
pastor and take up the role sort of an eclique,
(09:23):
an unordained ecclesiastical role or function within the church, unpaid
of a pastoral care ministry, sometimes even preaching and teaching
alongside a husband. And so she has a lot of
instances of that that are kind of woven through women
who wanted to be ordained but were turned away, pastors'
(09:48):
wives who functioned basically as pastors in different contexts. So
she covers an enormous amount of territory from the very
early church all the way up to the present day,
and she weaves it together quite artfully, i would say,
with her own story and tries to make a case
(10:10):
that we got it wrong.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
So this is interesting that this particular book is a
follow up to her first one, which listeners can go
We will link in the show notes where this article
is On the quip dot org website, you can listen
to the podcast that, and and I did then, and
also read the review of her first book, but you know,
it caused a lot of waves at the time. Has
this particular book been received as I guess widely as
(10:38):
the first one was.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
I have seen a few reviews in some places, but
it doesn't seem to have made quite the splash, I think,
because maybe I don't know if we're even more polarized
than we were a few years ago, or people have
kind of settled out into different ideological spaces. It is
controversial because the Southern Baptist Convention did just meet I
(11:05):
think last week or the week before, and it's a
continual conversation within the Southern Baptist Convention about the place
of women in the church. And so I think the
book I saw in different news articles was referenced here
and there, but I haven't heard a lot of people
reading it or talking about it in the same way
that I did the previous book. There is a very
(11:28):
glowing review in Christianity today, and apart from that, I
haven't come across too many different places. I don't think.
I don't know that it's making quite the splash. I
think people probably expected her to write a book like this,
and those that are her on her side are excited
(11:49):
about it, and those who aren't are probably not paying attention.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
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(12:15):
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We're just so thankful for that. And now back.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
To my conversation with Ann Kennedy. Things she keeps talking
about in this particular book is independent leadership, women in
independent leadership. What is this a term that she's coined,
and if so, what does she exactly mean by that
phrase independent leadership.
Speaker 3 (15:17):
I found this phrase so interesting and I kind of
got hung up on it. It appears I think eleven
times in the book, although she uses the word leadership
a lot, and she says that refusing to see the
position that women held in the church in ordained or
(15:42):
in authoritative functions is anachronistic if you read if she says,
if you look back at history and you don't see that,
or you see no evidence of it, you're really reading
your own perspective back into history. I would I would
say that I found the term independent leadership to be
an anachronistic term. I don't see how you can use
that and look back at history or the Bible. It
(16:05):
just seems like a very modern idea that doesn't really
correspond well with what I would see in history or
in the Bible. She would count a woman to be
an independent leader, a person who was unmarried, who did
not have to rely on her husband's authority to do
(16:26):
any work in the church. There's a few cases where
women were married to pastors but carried on and did
their own thing, and you know, maybe traveled around and
preached and without the blessing of a husband, or you know,
or they didn't seem to be a problem. So she's
(16:49):
looking through up until the Reformation, unmarried women who engaged
in the life of the church authoritatively be Hildegard of
being an Priscilla. Well, Priscilla was married, but yeah, so
that it kind of immediately breaks down. You would I
(17:11):
would never count Priscilla, the wife of Aquilla, to be
an independent leader in the church. That she had influence
over is clear in the text. She and Equila take
Apollos aside and instruct him in the way, and they
(17:32):
kind of correct him. And she's obviously a very important
person in early church history, and I think doubtless the
order of widows probably did grow into an early sort
of nascissism, and the church is replete with women whose
names we know, who wrote, who organize things, who spoke
(17:55):
authoritatively and performed did acts of ministry. I don't know
if that's not probably a very elegant way of saying it,
but obviously women were an essential part of the life
of the church, and they did important and impressive things
along the way. So it's interesting to me that she
would use this term independent leadership for an era in
(18:19):
which independence was probably not understood in the way that
we understand it now, and then bring it into the
modern era. Looking for women who act and work in
the church without the authority and blessing of somebody like
a husband. That's what she's looking for, So if you
(18:40):
are a pastor's wife and you lead a Bible study
and do the women's ministry, maybe even you preach a sermon,
you wouldn't count as an independent leader. But Melburga in
the Middle Ages, who was an abbess and was doubtless
(19:04):
under the authority of a bishop, would count as an
independent leader. So it seems very to me, very arbitrary term.
I struggled with it a lot. I don't think it's
a good measure of the sort of world in which
men and women live together the church, And I would
(19:27):
love to hear I would love for her to untangle
that a little bit more and say why she chose
that term, and what she means by it, and why
it applies, you know, to unmarried women who are under
the authority of a pastor or a bishop, but not
to a married woman, And what also is so wrong
(19:51):
with being under somebody else's authority. She kind of takes
it as a given that that's a negative, that women
being under the authority of men is bad for them,
and that they have the right to exercise or do
work in the church on their own terms. Is that
(20:14):
that's a given, that's a good obviously, And I don't
think she makes the case that it is. I think
she still has a lot of work to do on
that score.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
That is a fascinating term to me because just in general,
irregardless of gender, man or woman, the idea of independent
leadership in the church in general doesn't seem like what
the church is teaching in the epistles. I mean, you know,
there's people with different authority, even men, but it's not
you're independent from the rest of the church or I'm
(20:46):
not sure what she really means by that. So it
does a curious term. So what does she think is
the issue for women in the church and what would
she say where it went wrong for them in terms
of now she sees like there was this medieval period
where women were these you know, almost the point of
(21:07):
bishop or that's what she's arguing, and now women are
just exercising what gifts they can in a marriage, which
she doesn't think is really what the church women should
be called to in terms of leadership in the church.
Speaker 3 (21:22):
Yet I found this to be the case in the
making of Biblical womanhood as well. She says she's not
looking at the past with you know, rose colored glasses
that she doesn't seem some utopic vision in the past
that got wrecked. She wouldn't say that the past was
(21:42):
really wonderful and everything we have now is really bad.
But the way that she frames the narrative always leaves
me thinking that that's what she's thinking.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
That her.
Speaker 3 (21:56):
It seems as if she thinks there was this sort
of movement towards full equality for men and women. And again,
I would use the word equality in a modern sense
the way that people use it now, which is that
there should be no barrier for women doing any particular work,
(22:16):
that men and women are essentially the same except for
some parts of biology, and that there shouldn't be any
especially in the church and the home. A woman shouldn't
submit to her husband. They should both mutually submit to
each other in all things, so they do it. Don't
(22:38):
hold different texts and admonitions and in tension with each
other and try to harmonize them or live out the
mystery of marriage. You just sort of make this clear.
Men are completely equal to women and everything all the
time that it seems as though she thinks that that
was something that was definitely going to happen. But then
the Reformation came in the sort of unraveling of different
(23:05):
parts of social life that happened as a result of
the Reformation. There could have been again a sense of
greater equality, but then it didn't happen. It didn't work out,
and women were pushed towards marriage and if they wanted
to work and live in the church, and if they
(23:27):
wanted to work and exercise authority in the church. Even
though maybe nobody did this in a nefarious way. They
didn't try to be bad. It just happened that they
were more and more curtailed in what they could do,
and they had to depend on the authority of the
man they'd married to be able to do work. And
(23:51):
so she has a chapter there's different points at which
she would say things kind of maybe unraveled. So one
would be during the era of Melburga that who could
celebrate the Eucharist, she says, was more a localized situation.
So maybe Melburga would have celebrated the Eucharist in her
(24:13):
local context. She might not have been able to travel
around to do that. But they didn't have the same
idea of ordination in her day as they do now
in the Catholic Church. And so as things became more
about biology. She says, the idea of the Eucharist changed
(24:34):
and ordination changed, and so women were barred from eventually
barred from celebrating the Eucharist. And similarly, there had been
a lot of women at the time of the Reformation
who you know, Catholic priests were not as celibate as
(24:54):
they should have been, or a lot of people with
mistresses in the church. And after the Reformation, many of
those priests married those women, but it was still a
sort of a second class thing, and that didn't help
in the sort of equalizing force that women were hoping
(25:18):
to have as life went on. So she picks out
these kind of moments in church history where it seems
like she believed it would have gone one way, and
then it didn't. And then more and more recent times
with SBC, it looked like women were going to achieve
(25:38):
full equality in the church. There were women being ordained
as pastors. And then in the nineties there was this
conservative resurgence led by Almore and they pushed back hard
and they managed to de barrow women from being ordained.
And again, now maybe there could have been another cusin
(26:00):
of this, but lately I think twenty twenty three. Saddleback
was removed because they have women on staff in pastoral roles.
So in each case it seems like, oh, maybe women
are going to get there, but then men usually come
along and push them out, and so they just never
(26:21):
get to have the full equal lives that they deserve
and that they have apparently always had.
Speaker 1 (26:32):
That's really interesting, and I think that became kind of
a lightning rod thing when Rick Warren's Church of Saddleback
had to answer to the full Southern Baptist Convention as
to whether they in fact had women on staff as pastors.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
I think.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (26:50):
I mean, I remember I watched it go down. I'm
always confused by Southern Baptist terminology. So I think there's
something called the law Amendment, and I think that has
to do with women's ordination, and I think it never
quite passes all the way. I'm not quite sure, but
the removal of Saddleback was a big deal, and I
(27:11):
don't think people expected that it would happen. And it
still seems that in many well I don't know if
it's many, but some Southern Baptist churches there are women
who exercise ordained pastoral functions, and it's always a controversy
about whether or not they should be allowed to do that,
and there does seem to be this very unsettled back
(27:33):
and forth about the roles of women in the church
and in the home.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
So how does she communicate basically the role of a
pastor's wife now in contemporary times. I mean, one of
the people that she points to, I think with I
don't know if I would say disdain, but just total
disagreement of what she's saying and how she's perceived is
a woman I the name of Dorothy Patterson, who is
(28:00):
the wife of a Southern Baptist, former big Southern Baptist leader.
So what does she say about Dorothy Patterson.
Speaker 3 (28:08):
Well, this was very exciting. I felt like the sort
of pure historian slipped away and this became very personal
for bar As you read the book, it does get
very exciting. She really really doesn't like Dorothy Patterson. And
it seems that Dorothy Patterson had an enormous amount of
(28:28):
influence over women in the eighties and nineties, over pastors wives.
That she developed a course, a seminary course for you
wives of young men who were in seminary to become ordained.
The women could take courses and they would be taught
(28:49):
how to be good pastor's wives. And so it seems
that Dorothy Patterson and others like her really shaped the
expectations that modern women live on in their life. As
the pastor's wife, it is a sort of a formal function.
It's a formal place that you have. It does carry authority,
(29:13):
the authority that's derived from the pastor the husband. And
so she was very forceful and clear in her expectations
of women in the eighties and nineties, and it included
things like keeping a very tidy and beautiful house. You
gave very particular instructions about decorating and what kind of
(29:35):
food to keep in the fridge, and being able to
be hospitable on a dime. She had something called a
company box. I think that she encouraged women to keep
things in a basket or some way that you could
easily pull a meal together, you could make a coffee,
You could invite people into your home and it would
(29:56):
be ordered and peaceful, and the husban and wouldn't be
looking for his socks or his shirt on Sunday morning.
He could really depend on his wife to care for
him as he ministered to the church, and then so
she set a high bar of expectations that I think,
(30:16):
according to Bar, many women struggled under and felt they
were inadequate for. And some women didn't want to be
in that role. They didn't want to sort of be
the smiling wife in the front pew. They didn't want
to play the piano, they didn't want to make the bulletin,
but they had to because she kind of institutionalized that function.
(30:38):
And I am a pastor's wife, so I certainly know
the struggle. I didn't know that maybe the source of
a lot of that was Dorothy Patterson. But I thought
it was interesting that Bar obviously has a lot of
emotion around this particular name and this person and isn't
(30:59):
able to quite dispassionately about her influence in the church.
And I don't I have heard other people talk about
Dorothy Patterson. I think that many people found her a
beloved figure and didn't view her with the same animosity
or you know, disappointment at being having a yoke placed
(31:22):
on their shoulders to carry along even against their will.
Speaker 1 (31:31):
That's very interesting. Do you think that doctor Barr makes
a theological and biblical case for the ordination of women.
I feel like this topic just keeps coming up over
and over, maybe with a just a different twist every
few years. And so she does she do that? I
think when we talked about her, I really want to
(31:52):
point people to her former book, because as a historian,
she does appeal to certain theological are humans that have
already been answered many times. So do you think in
this particular book that she went at it again and
she was more successful in making that theological case.
Speaker 3 (32:11):
I didn't find much theology in this book. I did
think her discussion of the changing views of ordination and
the Eucharist were interesting. I've read about those in other places, though,
and so I'm not quite I doubt her particular view
of how that went downs. She is referring to a
(32:33):
period in history that's well documented, and she sort of
gets up close to it, but she doesn't really get
to the heart of those issues, which really did affect
the Church and the way we viewed sin and confession,
and there was some deep and profound shifts in the
(32:57):
view of the human person in relation to God that
did happen through the Middle Ages that are really crucial
for understanding where we are today. And she kind of
refers to them, but she doesn't deal with them in
a way that I found satisfactory, and I don't quite
I mean, I didn't follow up every single one of
her footnotes. I question her reliance on some certain scholars who,
(33:25):
especially in the terms of the Priscilla Catacombs. Her assumption
about how men and women would have lived in the
ancient past, I don't buy. I don't think she establishes
even historically a historical case for the or nation of women.
(33:48):
And she absolutely doesn't do it on the theological level.
She really doesn't. She just assumes that that's what Jesus
and Paul would have wanted and moves on without showing
how that idea would have come about, whether where it
comes from in the scriptures, what it does theologically to
(34:10):
the church, to our view of God, to the person,
to the sacraments. She doesn't go there. Really, she assumes
that the case has been made, and I find that
disappointing because the last century has been tumultuous in terms
(34:33):
of men's relationships to women in the church and in
the home. There's so many different factors that have absolutely
shifted and changed the way that we function in the world,
and our assumptions about good and evil and about God
and people, and I do think we need to think
(34:53):
about this one thing. For example, I think in the
modern era, and this colors her work, there's no a
status for women as women that appears to be meaningful.
I think one reason why Barr just wouldn't be able
to fathom a world in which women couldn't be ordained
(35:14):
is because in our world, to be ordained is one
of the most important functions that there is in the church,
or the most important, and I don't think that that's
how it was viewed in ancient times. I don't think
women felt less than because they weren't ordained. I don't
(35:35):
think that women had the same expectations of life that
women do today, and that's worth investigating. But bar doesn't
investigate that. So I found this the lack of a
theological case being made to be perplexing, and I found
(35:57):
her historical work to be also similarly, not connecting the dots,
not really showing me how she got from A to
B to C.
Speaker 1 (36:07):
Today, So, as this debate continues within evangelical spheres, does
she actually deal theologically or historically even with any objections
to those for example, in evangelical spaces or other spaces
(36:31):
for that matter, who believe in complementarianism and that women
shouldn't be ordained, which by the way, is not just
the purview of Protestants. Other Christians who are not Protestants
don't ordain women either, And so does she satisfactorily deal
with it in a way that's persuasive.
Speaker 3 (36:51):
I'm not really. She doesn't really take it up. She
doesn't say why women should be ordained, and then she
doesn't deal with those arguments of people who say that
they shouldn't she really she does go into the question
of abuse a bit. She the women without she I
(37:16):
think her assumption is that women without authority in the
church are more readily abused and so by men, and
so it's actually very dangerous for women not to be
able to be in the upper echelons of power, if
that's the way you want to view it. And so
(37:38):
there is kind of a moral sense that she implies
that women should be in the should be pastors, if
only to keep abuse free churches. But that's not really
(37:59):
a theological argument, and she does not, at least she
didn't in the last book, and she didn't in this
one really address and answer the objections that most Christians
have for the ordination of women, most of which come
from Scripture, but some are sort of purely theological or sacramental,
(38:21):
and she doesn't get into it, so I don't know,
you know, it's kind of hard to argue back when
you aren't dealing with anything precise or meaningful.
Speaker 1 (38:36):
So, because the title of her book suggests that the
church today is not operating where women's gifts are fully
used in the full sense of the word, with the
authority that they should have, what kind of church does
Barr think would be best?
Speaker 3 (38:53):
Well, I think she would like a purely egalitarian church
where women are are able to be bishops, if that's
the kind of church they're in, and that she's SBC
so there are no bishops, but they should be probably
senior teaching pastor, and it would be a very good
thing to have a staff that's made up almost entirely
(39:16):
of women, and you know, men and women can get along.
There can be male pastors as well. I would imagine
she would be for that. But there just shouldn't be
any limit on the works that women are invited to
you in the church. For her and I think she
(39:37):
would say that this would make the church more representative
of what Jesus was like, and it would be protection
against abuse, and it would just be good all around.
Which that's the least kind of the vision that she paints.
And if you want to be a pastor's wife, that's
(39:58):
really great, but you shouldn't have to live up to
anybody else's expectations while you're doing that. And I think
in her perfect world, Dorothy Patterson would not have written
any books or have any influence in the church at all.
Speaker 1 (40:14):
Does she address the fact at all that the Bible
does emphasize the biological, very basic level, the binary you know,
creation that God has for man and woman, or does
she just doesn't really see any reason for that beyond
just pure procreation.
Speaker 3 (40:34):
Yeah, she doesn't really get into it. She doesn't deal
with anything like Ephesians five. She doesn't really address the
scripture as much. She does talk about Peter's wife and
how she just isn't mentioned in the scripture and so
(40:57):
we can only wonder about that, but she really doesn't
get into the differences between men and women and what
that portends, what it means for life in the church.
And she also doesn't really go into the question of
masculinity in a way that I found satisfying or femininity,
(41:20):
which are big hot topics today and I think fascinate
a lot of people, and most people want to know
more about those things, not less. But she kind of
it doesn't seem to have much bearing on her argument. Really,
she leans very heavily on this question of independence and
of leadership, both of which are categories that I don't
(41:41):
think are very suitable for understanding the scripture or the
Church through history.
Speaker 1 (41:49):
So she is still I assume a Southern Baptist, even
though she has perhaps many critiques of it. So there's
an organization called the Battist Women in Ministry, and so
what is that organization and does it align with what
she believes it all?
Speaker 3 (42:08):
The Baptist Women in Ministry organization had an event at
the same time as the SBC convention the couple of
weeks ago. It's in an organization that is trying to
help women gain equality in the church. So there websites
is imagine a gender equal Baptist world, and so they
(42:30):
help women through the process to become pastors basically, and
bar gave a speech at their event was it last
week or the week before and made I think the
case that was in her book about why it is
essential for women to be in leadership in the church.
(42:50):
And so it's interesting to me that there is this
group out there. I don't think it's necessarily associated with
the SBC, but they are trying to help women get
into churches and become pastors and preachers and teachers, and
help fund them and find them the opportunities that they desire.
(43:14):
They met at a United Methodist church though, next to
the convention Hall.
Speaker 1 (43:19):
That is very interesting. Well, I would like to point
our listeners once again to Anne's article and her review
of this book, and on a much lighter note, And
we just recently celebrated in June because the US has
holidays for everything, you know, National Eat your Favorite Vegetable Day.
So what is your favorite vegetable?
Speaker 3 (43:39):
My favorite vegetable right now is the asparagus growing in
my garden. I go out and just pick it and
eat it and it's so delicious.
Speaker 1 (43:48):
Oh that sounds very good. Well, thanks Ann for being
a guest again on the Postmodern Realities podcast.
Speaker 3 (43:54):
Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (43:57):
You've been listening to episode four hundred and fifty one
of the Postmodern Realities podcast from the Christian Research Journal.
Today's guest was Anne Kennedy and we have been discussing
her book review of the new book from Beth Allison
Barr called Becoming the Pastor's Wife, How Marriage Replaced ordination
as a woman's past and ministry. Ann has written a
(44:18):
review of this book and her review is called Beth
Allison Barr Becoming the Leader She Knew She could be
and you can read it for free at.
Speaker 2 (44:26):
Equipp dot org.
Speaker 1 (44:27):
That's equip dot org. You won't want to miss out
on subscribing to the other podcasts from the Christian Research Institute.
We have the Bible answer Man podcast, which is published
Monday through Friday, with the best of the week on Saturday.
It's hosted by CRI President Hank Handigraph and is available
(44:48):
wherever you get your favorite podcasts. In addition, Hank has
a podcast called Hank Unplugged. Hank takes you out of
the studio and into his study to engage in free flow,
essential Christian conversations on critical issues with some of the
most interesting, informative and inspirational people on the planet, and
(45:10):
you won't want to miss out on the brand new
podcast from the Christian Research Journal. Christian Research Journal Reads
presents audio versions of Christian Research Journal articles. It was
a print incarnation of almost forty five years. It's now
on the web as you know, with new articles every
single week, so you won't want to miss these audio
(45:31):
articles of some of our most popular and most accessed
articles on our website equip dot org.
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