8. Biblical Womanhood with Dr. Beth Allison Barr

Summary

Podcast Summary: Flipping Tables – Episode 8: Biblical Womanhood with Dr. Beth Allison Barr

Host: Monte Mader
Guest: Dr. Beth Allison Barr
Release Date: March 19, 2025

In Episode 8 of Flipping Tables, host Sam engages in a profound and enlightening conversation with Dr. Beth Allison Barr, a renowned medieval historian and author specializing in the role of women in church history. Together, they delve deep into the historical underpinnings of biblical womanhood, the pervasive influence of complementarianism within evangelical circles, and the lasting impacts of these doctrines on women's lives today.

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1. Introduction to Dr. Beth Allison Barr

[00:00] Sam:
Sam opens the discussion by sharing her personal journey of deconstructing fundamentalist evangelical beliefs, highlighting the detrimental effects of strict gender roles imposed by the church. She introduces Dr. Barr, emphasizing her expertise and contributions to understanding women's roles in church history.

Notable Quote:
"The Making of Biblical Womanhood is one of the best books on this issue that I've come across."
— Sam [00:00]

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2. Dr. Barr’s Academic Journey and Background

[03:23] Dr. Beth Allison Barr:
Dr. Barr recounts her path to becoming a medieval historian, initially contemplating classics before gravitating towards medieval studies. She discusses her dual life as a pastor’s wife and an academic, illustrating how her personal experiences within the Southern Baptist community informed her scholarly work.

Notable Quote:
"My scholarship can be used to help make the church a better place for women."
— Dr. Barr [06:05]

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3. Understanding Complementarianism and Its Realization as a Problem

[08:23] Sam:
Sam probes Dr. Barr about her awakening to the problems posed by complementarianism—the doctrine that, while women and men are equal, they have distinct roles with women submitting to male leadership.

Notable Quote:
"God has ordained men to be in charge and that women need to accept that."
— Dr. Barr [08:25]

[11:25] Sam:
She shares her childhood experiences questioning why women must submit solely based on gender, not character or faith.

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4. Historical Shifts in Women’s Roles within the Church

[16:28] Dr. Barr:
Dr. Barr elaborates on her research into medieval texts, revealing that early church history featured women in significant leadership roles—roles that were systematically diminished during and after the Reformation.

Notable Quote:
"For the first 1500 years of church history, women served in the same types of leadership positions as men."
— Dr. Barr [20:35]

[35:14] Dr. Barr:
She discusses the Reformation's pivotal role in redefining women's roles, linking marriage to ministry and reinforcing the notion of women's subservience within the church structure.

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5. The Making of Biblical Womanhood and Becoming the Pastor’s Wife

[53:21] Dr. Barr:
Transitioning to her books, Dr. Barr explains how The Making of Biblical Womanhood and Becoming the Pastor’s Wife dissect the historical and cultural constructs that have perpetuated women's subjugation in evangelical settings.

Notable Quote:
"The pastor's wife exemplifies a woman who centers her entire life around supporting her husband's ministry."
— Dr. Barr [54:54]

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6. Personal and Societal Impacts of Complementarianism

[26:05] Sam:
Sam shares her personal struggles with purity culture and how the teachings of complementarianism led to severe mental health issues, including anorexia nervosa and bulimia.

Notable Quote:
"I lost 90 pounds in high school, and I starved myself down to 110 pounds."
— Sam [28:08]

[32:36] Sam:
She recounts the trauma of being forced into an unwanted sexual relationship, underscoring the destructive nature of these doctrines.

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7. Abuse and the Silencing of Women in Evangelical Churches

[62:35] Sam:
The conversation intensifies as Sam addresses the connection between complementarianism and the systemic abuse of women and children within churches. Dr. Barr provides historical context, revealing how patriarchal structures have enabled abuse to flourish unchecked.

Notable Quote:
"Complementarianism silences the voice of the abused and empowers the abusers."
— Dr. Barr [65:37]

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8. The Role of Women in Contemporary Issues: Abortion and Healthcare

[65:46] Sam:
Dr. Barr discusses how complementarianism influences contemporary debates on abortion and women's healthcare, highlighting the disproportionate impact on women of color and lower-income women.

Notable Quote:
"The pro-life movement values women based on their ability to produce a child, not on their health or autonomy."
— Dr. Barr [67:11]

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9. Pathways to Healing and Reforming the Church

[72:24] Sam:
As the conversation nears its conclusion, Sam seeks advice on how to begin healing the church and empowering women who have been harmed by these teachings.

Notable Quote:
"We have to recognize our complicity in perpetuating the system and speak out against it."
— Dr. Barr [73:53]

Dr. Barr emphasizes the importance of education, awareness, and proactive support for women to dismantle the harmful structures of complementarianism.

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10. Future Endeavors and Closing Thoughts

[78:39] Dr. Barr:
Looking ahead, Dr. Barr shares her plans to complete her trilogy on biblical womanhood with a focus on how historical understanding can transform present-day beliefs and practices within evangelical communities.

Notable Quote:
"What we have learned from history can change where we are today."
— Dr. Barr [78:44]

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Conclusion:

Episode 8 of Flipping Tables offers a compelling exploration of biblical womanhood through the scholarly lens of Dr. Beth Allison Barr. The conversation sheds light on the historical evolution of women's roles in the church, the harmful effects of complementarianism, and the urgent need for reform and healing within evangelical communities. By intertwining personal narratives with rigorous historical analysis, Sam and Dr. Barr provide listeners with a thorough understanding of the systemic issues at play and inspire actionable steps toward equality and empowerment for women in the church.

Further Resources:

• Books by Dr. Beth Allison Barr:

  • The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became the Gospel Truth
  • Becoming the Pastor’s Wife: What Pastors Have Taught Us About Marriage, Leadership, and Gender Roles
  • Upcoming: Losing Our Medieval Religion: The Cost of Forgetting History for Evangelical Women

• Follow Dr. Beth Allison Barr:

  • Instagram: @bethallisonbarr
  • Twitter (Blue Sky & Threads): @bethallisonbarr
  • Facebook: Beth Allison Barr

• Support the Podcast:

  • Patreon: Flipping Tables Patreon

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Thank you for listening to Flipping Tables. Please like, share, and comment to support the podcast and further promote essential conversations like this one.

Transcript

[Sam]

When I started deconstructing from fundamentalism, my deconstruction started with politics, with political discussions that I believed were wrong, with exclusionary, racist, prejudiced and abusive policies that were labeled as Christian that I felt were outside of the spirit of Christianity itself. That also just felt wrong. They didn't match up with history. They didn't match up with the data. But as my deconstruction fell apart on what Christianity had taught me to believe about America in the world, it also started to affect me on a personal level. I had been told by the church my entire life that women were less than, that your entire goal was to get married and have kids and serve your husband. Purity. Culture taught me that my body belonged to my husband. It wasn't mine. It didn't teach me what consent was. You had to look perfect. Everything that you did had to be pleasing to the male gaze. And I really struggled with that. And it deeply harmed me as a woman. But both in the way that I functioned in relationships or couldn't function, the years it took for me to understand a healthy sexuality, and after my weight loss, struggling with anorexia nervosa and then later bulimia for years because of these teachings. So as I deconstructed these external beliefs, I was forced to deconstruct my internal beliefs. Were these teachings really biblical? Did God make women and decide that they were less than, that they were second class, that they didn't deserve as much freedom or power? And because of that journey, I've been reading on these topics a long time. And one of the best books on this issue that I've come across is the Making of biblical womanhood by Dr. Beth Alison Barr, who is a medieval historian who talks about the role of women in the church, what medieval scholars and priests and teachers believed about the role of women and how that changed in the Reformation. Dr. Beth Allison Barr is the James Vardaman professor of History at Baylor University. She earned her PhD in medieval history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. And she is the best selling author of the Making of Biblical how the Subjugation of Women Became the Gospel Truth and her new upcoming book, Becoming the Pastor's How Marriage Replaced Ordination as a Woman's Path to Ministry. And she is on flipping tables today to talk about women's role in history, how the Church has subverted it, and hopefully to you ladies who have either deconstructed or have made, maybe had questions about this in the church, provide some answers and some healing to the true value, wholeness and Equality of women. Thank you all so much for the recent comments. 5 star reviews, sharing the podcast, posting about it, it helps me so much. It's really a game changer for me. Thank you so much for that. To some church history, some women's history, how it affects us in Today's World with Dr. Beth Allison Barr on today's episode of Flipping Tables. So thank you and welcome, Dr. Barr, for being here. I was geeking out a little bit before we started recording. I'm very excited to talk with you today and have this conversation. Thank you so much for being here.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Oh, I'm so glad to be here.

[Sam]

And before we get started, because I know who you are and I've been preparing for this and have stalked you online, I would love for you to just, you know, introduce how you got into the profession that you're in, how you started this journey for yourself, and then really dive in to your books and really women's biblical history.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Yeah. So I'm a medieval historian. I work on women and church history. It's a lot of fun. But throughout my entire career as a medieval historian, and I'm currently at Baylor University, where I've been teaching there for I really don't want to tell you how long, but the class I want to do, I want to. Well, you know, the Making of Biblical Womanhood is my women's history classes at Baylor. I mean, that's how I was able to think about talking through that many thousands of years in within a short time frame was because I have to teach that. And so that's kind of. So my students who read that book are like, Dr. Barr, I remember you doing that. And I'm like, yes, that's. Those are my lectures. Yeah. So anyway, but I am, I'm a professor, but throughout my entire life, I, as a professor, I've been married to a Baptist pastor, to an evangelical pastor. And so while I was getting, while I was getting my PhD in grad school, he was getting his Masters of Divinity at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, which at the time was ruled by Paige Patterson and his wife Dorothy Patterson, who are major players in the Southern Baptist world and have been part of the sex abuse allegation, cover ups, et cetera, and just really so. So my life has always had two parts to it. This one as a pastor's wife in an evangelical world, and then this one as an academic historian. And the making my first book that got a lot of attention, you know, not my medieval sermons books, but my first book that got a lot of attention was The Making a Biblical Womanhood, which I published in 2021, which really paralleled my journey as a pastor's wife in the Christian in the evangelical world. And what happened when my husband and I attempted to bring what I knew as a women's historian to our church regarding women's roles. And so since the publication of that book, I've realized that my scholarship can be used to help make the church a better place for women. And that's what I've been doing ever since then, which I love.

[Sam]

And with your academic journey, just because when you mention in the book that you're like, medieval history is my wheelhouse, how did you get there? Because I. Yeah, oh, sure. How did, like, medieval history become the choice for you?

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Yeah, yeah. So when I was an undergraduate, I was a classics minor as well as a history major. And so my favorite book is actually the Iliad. I love the Iliad. And originally, when I was thinking about grad school, I wasn't really sure if I wanted to be a professor. Professor yet. What I wanted to do was write. And I was like, I want to get the credentials so that I can actually write. Yeah, here I am. I know I kind of took a roundabout route to get here, but. But I wanted to write. And so I started looking to think about it. And at first I was going to go in classics, but then I realized that the sources are so limited in the classical world. And really, to become a scholar in there, you either limit yourself to the. To the few texts that are available or you become an archaeologist, which is co. But I was like, I don't know if I want to do both of those things. And so I started thinking about it, and I was taking an independent study at Baylor, where we were reading medieval texts. And I was like, this is actually really cool, too. Maybe I'll just jump forward a few hundred years. And so that's exactly what I did. And I've been. I've been a very happy medievalist ever since then.

[Sam]

That's incredible. That's like. I love that. It was just. It caught me off guard in your book, and I was like, wait, what? That's amazing.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Yeah, it's fun.

[Sam]

But you're. The relationship that you have of. Of being this. This brilliant, successful scholar. And then going into the church on Sunday at the church says, oh, no, no, no, women can't teach. Tell me about your journey with complementarianism. And for my, who are either atheists or maybe you didn't grow up in the church. Complementarianism is this doctrine within evangelical churches that it. It basically is a separate but equal doctrine. It says that women. Women can't teach, women can't be pastors. You're still technically equal, but you need to submit to your husband. And it's heavily enforced in evangelical circles, which creates a lot of conflict and a lot of subjugation as well.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Yes, absolutely.

[Sam]

Tell me your journey with that as far as, like, even realizing it being a problem because, you know, you talk about your, you know, your moment in the book where you're washing dishes and your husband's in the kitchen and you say, I don't believe in male headship.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Right.

[Sam]

You know, tell me about that journey.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Yeah. So, I mean, I was raised in the Southern Baptist world in a small Texas town. And now, as a historian, I know that my childhood was during a time of significant change in the Southern Baptist world, and that is going to spill over into the broader evangelical world. And so. But looking back on it, you know, when I think about. About my early years, it never really occurred to me that women couldn't do things in the church very much because women were all over teaching all of the things that I were doing. One of my very good family friends was a missionary in the Southern Baptist world. She was the first woman I saw behind a pulpit. And so it was a slow realization, especially as I moved into my teenage and college years, that there were limits on what women could do in the church and that these limits were sort of hidden behind this idea of male headship, that God has divinely ordained men to be in charge. That's really what complementarianism is, that God has ordained men to be in charge and that women need to accept that. And there's a variety of reasons why women need to accept that. One of my favorites are people who try to pull out, like, creation order. They say because Adam was created first, Eve has to, you know, is. Has to be submissive. Or because Eve sinned first, she has to be submissive. They try to pull out all sorts of weird things to try to argue.

[Sam]

This story itself specifically designates that both masculine and feminine are in the image of God.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Absolutely.

[Sam]

Like.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Absolutely. And if you did create, if you break down, you know, I. I actually was quoted in the New Yorker because I just say things off the cuff, and I said, the created order is just silliness. I was like, because animals are created first.

[Sam]

Yeah.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

So if you go that way, if you flip it the other way and say, well, God saved the best for last, then that's women.

[Sam]

Yeah. So congratulations.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

It doesn't work either way for men. So I. It's just this bizarre thing.

[Sam]

And I remember the first time I remember hearing complementarian doctrine. I was nine. And I didn't have. I was. I was always really smart for my age. And I've always been way too logical. Like, not emotional enough sometimes. But I remember being like, why would I. Why would I have to submit to someone just because he's a man? Like, that doesn't logically make sense. I remember being upset and, like, going to my room and being angry about it. But when I was about 13, where my. My conflict with complementarianism kind of ramped up was they started, you know, talking more to us about, well, you can't show your shoulder because it'll cause a man to sin.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Purity culture.

[Sam]

And I remember asking a Sunday school teacher, I said, well, if they're supposed to be the leaders, why am I responsible for their sin?

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Oh, you were a. You were a bright kid. Yeah, she.

[Sam]

She was. She literally couldn't answer the question and just asked me to leave and told my dad I was being disruptive. And I. But, like, it just never. And as I got progressively older, about 16, 17, I'm like, how convenient that the men get to walk around saying, well, God said, I'm in charge. Right? And I was like, that doesn't make any sense.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Yeah, yeah, it's exactly right. I mean, it really is this bizarre concept. And as I moved, you know, as my career began, as I moved into graduate school and met my husband, who's never been a very domineering or forceful person, and we. Even though we recognized complementarian theology, it didn't really affect our marriage or our life very much. And it. And because my husband with a. Was a youth pastor, I pretty much could do whatever I wanted within the bubble of the youth group. So I could. I could lead Sunday school. I could do whatever, teach. I could do whatever I wanted, really. So while there was this barrier that I knew, I also wasn't personally hitting it, which I think is a problem of a lot of women. We don't worry about things that aren't hurting us. Yes, it's a white woman problem.

[Sam]

Yeah. I was about. I was about to clarify that, saying white women in particular tend to just be like, well, it's not hurting me, so I'm not gonna address it. And then. So how did that. When did it finally affect you and your husband? Those.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Yeah, it was really as my. As my scholarship progressed and as I began teaching women's history courses at Baylor that I Just was like, this is fundamentally wrong. This is. You know, it doesn't matter if it's not personally affecting me. The simple fact that I'm going to a church where women are seen as unable to theologically teach in the same way of men simply because they're. Because their bodies are different was, you know, begin to weigh more and more heavily on me. And this also paralleled the church we were at at the time was taking a noticeably conservative turn in this area. And so women who once were more visible on stage were becoming much less visible, including not even being asked to pray on stage and not even, you know, leading music. They would be in the background, sort of with the music, but not the front people. And so this was. This was becoming even more notice to me because I was already aware. Yeah, My. My antennas were up. And so I was living with this. You know, I would. I remember thinking, sitting in our Sunday school classroom one time and just being like, we are teaching these kids that just because the boys have a male body, that there's something superior about them. And we are teaching women, these young girls, that they are less in God's eyes. And I was like, I can't do it anymore. It's like, I can't. And that was when I told my husband. I was like, I cannot. I cannot support male headship anymore.

[Sam]

Yeah.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

And that was a. It was a pivotal moment for me. And, you know.

[Sam]

Yeah.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

So. And that it.

[Sam]

Around it, when you. When you confront a pastor or, you know, someone who believes in complementarianism, they try to dance around and say, no, no, do really believe that they're equal. My dad used to compare it to, like, internal organs. He was like, well, when you see a basketball player running down the court, you don't think, wow, his liver is working really well. But his liver is working well. And that's why he can. It was this whole dance. But I'm like, dad, you. You teach a doctrine that a woman's work is inferior to you.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Yes.

[Sam]

That's being a secretary or being a child caregiver or like, all of these things. And you pay them less because the evangelical church runs on the back of women's volunteer work. That they 100. None of those special events, those revivals, the VBS would happen if women weren't volunteering. And it was a. It's. They do dance around it, but it's like, if one person has no power, no final say, can't teach, can't lead, they are by definition, not equal.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Yes.

[Sam]

Like those two. Those two things Cannot be true at the same time.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Yeah, I. Yeah.

[Sam]

What? I love that you point out your book that I had never heard of. And this is where. I mean, I flew through your book. I was like, wait, hold on. The early ministries of women in the church. And I went. Some of the books you mentioned, like the medieval sermons, I went and read those because I was. I was like, wait, like these medieval ministers, priests would teach about the ministries of what? I had no idea. It never. And that was one of the questions. Knowing as much church history as I did. I went to Liberty University. I studied therapy abroad in Israel. I knew a lot about church history, but I had been so used to women not being included, it never occurred to me to ask where the women were.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Right.

[Sam]

And your book, like, I was like, oh, where were the women? What were the women doing? They were doing something, you know, we have, like, Romans 16. I knew what some women were doing, but I would love a little bit more about the ministry of, like, Martha of Bethany and Mary Magdalene, like, what medieval scholars believed and what we know about those ministries.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Oh, yeah, yeah. No, and I. I think this is also where I begin to have that dissonance in my life, where I was like, how am I going to a church that is claiming that it is biblical and what it is teaching, but yet the way it regards women is not biblical at all? Because what we. We have done. And I hit this in both my first book, the Making a Biblical Womanhood, and then I think my second book, the Pastor's Wife, it hones in more. On this inequal system. Yeah, on this inequal system of what's happening with women, which is. So I really am glad I got the chance to do both of them. But what we see throughout most of church history is while there always are more limitations on women, women always face more challenges. There's always more barriers. That's probably a better way. It's harder for women to get into leadership positions, but for the first 1500 years of church history, what we see is women serving in the same types of leadership positions as men, and women being recognized by other men as having the right to be there and whose voices are listened to and having the right to preach. And in the medieval world, they got this from what they saw women doing in the biblical world. And so, for example, there. There's not questioning that. That Phoebe is a deacon and that, you know, women like Junia is an apostle. And of course, in the medieval world, the woman that they really focus on is Mary Magdalene, and she was called the Apostle to the apostles. And the medieval world believed that Mary Magdalene and her sister Martha were actually prominent preachers who carried the good news of Jesus actually west across the Mediterranean to Europe, and that their ministry was sanctioned by Peter himself. That was one of the stories. You know, somebody goes back to Peter and is like, hey, there's these women who are, like, preaching. And Peter's like, yeah, they're preaching with the authority of God. And. And so probably, I'm sure one of the stories that I love, I always tell my students because when we think about Martha of Bethany and medieval world, they conflated Mary of Bethany with Mary Magdalene. So that's how we kind of. So Martha of Bethany was considered to be the sister of Mary Magdalene. And so when Martha and Mary are. You know, I often tell people, my students, when I, like, bring this up, I'm like, okay, let's talk about what we know about Martha of Bethany. And usually what people come up with, they're like, hey, well, Martha was, you know, the hostess with the mostest. She was the one who made the dinner for Jesus and changed all of the linens, etc. Etc. So they could come and stay in the house. And I'm like, yeah, that's great. Tell me where that is in the Bible. So they all start, you know, looking, and they're like, well, it's the ministry. Martha's doing this ministry. And I said, let's look at that word, ministry. What's the word that Martha. That's used for Martha? And what we find out is the word that's used for Martha is diaconia, which is the word we get deacon from, which is the word that's used to describe the ministry of Paul. So what Martha is actually doing in the biblical text is the ministry like Paul.

[Sam]

Incredible.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

She's not doing domestic work.

[Sam]

Origin as well, pointed out that. That Paul himself had appointed Phoebe and. And how deacon. When it's addressed to Phoebe, who's the only one we know by name in the.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Right, Right.

[Sam]

It's the only time that it gets translated sometimes to, like, helper or servant, even though it's the same exact word used to address Paul or any other deacon or rules for deacons. It's the same word.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Absolutely. It's. Yeah. And the ESV as well. Yes, the ESV is the. You know, really, I think, has crystallized this in modern evangelicalism. It's the English Standard version. And it has a footnote about Phoebe when it says the word deacon and it says. Some translate this as servant. And this is actually not true. It's not. Not translated a servant until Bible translations that are trying to minimize women's leadership.

[Sam]

When did that happen? When did those translations. I know some of the names got changed in the early 20th century, but when did those translations start to shift?

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

So there's a. There's some concern in the post Reformation era. Actually, Martin Luther is one of our first ones who is like, Junia has to be a man because, you know, whatever. But. Right, right. You know, that's the whole thing with. Well, anyway. Well, I, I'll maybe continue that, but.

[Sam]

We'Ll talk about the Reformation when we go to the making of the pastor's wife.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

I know both my books go together really well, so it's. They do. I do. I'm like.

[Sam]

I was like.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Which. Where did I talk about that?

[Sam]

And we'll go right over to this one.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Yeah, it's. It's funny. But anyway, so it's. There's some. You can always look back in history and you could find somebody who like, is going to say something that might support whatever. But for the most part, this is pretty absent from Bible translations until the 19th century.

[Sam]

Okay.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

And in the 19th century you can actually go to the Greek lexicons, the Greek translations of the. Or the Greek editions of the New Testament, the different ones. And what you begin to see in those is you begin to see Junia being translated as Jew or being listed as Junius. And then those begin to be picked up by English Bible translations in the latter half of the 19th, really the late 19th century and the early part of the 20th century. And one day I was talking with Beverly Roberts Gaventa, who is an amazing biblical scholar, and she talks about this more than once, but she says that this, it is, it seems no accident that this shift in de emphasizing women's leadership roles in the Bible coincides with the suffrage movement.

[Sam]

Yep.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

And she's absolutely right about that. So that's when we first see it.

[Sam]

The Bible gets altered so that they can say, well, the Bible says you shouldn't have the right to vote and you shouldn't have this and you need to submit and you're 100.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

That's it.

[Sam]

Even though I knew those dates, I never made that connection that there was that direct overlap.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

That's when it happens. And it kind of goes in and out of some of the translations. Some keep it where women are deacons and Junias and apostle, etc, but in the post, really in the 1970s and 80s is when we begin to see this more predominance of translations that de. Emphasize women's leadership roles. And it is parallels the rise of complementarianism, which is a theology that is fully articulated in 1986, 1987, with the publication of the Danvers statement.

[Sam]

Oh, and yeah, because it was the Southern Baptist convention. It was 1984.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Yes, yes.

[Sam]

That's secondary proclamation. Was it? It was either 99 or 2000 that they came out with. The 1 was like, it is the biblical mandate of you to submit to your husband.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

That's exactly right. So in the making of Biblical Womanhood, I'm more broadly evangelical, showing how this affects everything. And in becoming the pastor's wife, I focus very much on the Southern Baptist Convention, which is the largest Protestant denomination in the US and has significantly influenced the broader evangelical world.

[Sam]

I feel like they set the tone. Like, whatever the Southern Baptist Convention starts to do, the rest of the evangelical denominations begin to follow.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Yeah. And, you know, I mean, there's a little bit of Betsy Flowers, who wrote this great book called into the Southern Baptist Women in Power in the post World War II era. She says that the Southern Baptist Convention is both influenced and influenced, you know, and influenced by. So in some ways, this is a stream going in and out. But I do think that the Southern Baptist Convention is the heavier weight in that stream.

[Sam]

I agree.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

And so, again, these dates where we begin to see women pushed out of Bible translations parallel the rise of what we call the conservative resurgence, the fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist world. And can I ask, were you raised Baptist or. Okay, were you Southern Baptist?

[Sam]

Yeah.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Okay.

[Sam]

That's. I was like, yep. Well, verse.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

I don't want to. Were you. So were you in youth group during the purity culture?

[Sam]

Like, yeah. So youth group. Early 2000s for me.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

That's what I figured. Yeah. So I was late 80s, early 90s, youth group person. And so it was right before purity culture, like, took over the world.

[Sam]

Heavy. I mean, it dominated youth groups.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Yeah. Oh, I'm so sorry. I know.

[Sam]

So in looking back on it now and again, I always remember having these issues with it. And when I was really young, I kept thinking, oh, that's just my pride. That's my sinful pride. I'm rejecting God's order. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But I would always have these questions of, like, okay, you've been telling me this since I was nine. First of all, I was a little kid. Rude. Second of all, why does this only apply to women and not to the men? Again, like, if men are supposed to be the leaders, how can I Trust you to be a leader when you cannot lead yourself.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Yes, yes, yes.

[Sam]

And I constantly had this pushback in this conflict and I was largely pretty quiet about it growing up. I knew from a very young age I never wanted kids and I assumed that I would change my mind when I got older. So I didn't. But I didn't say a word because I knew what people would say. I realized late teens, mid-20s up through there, that I really didn't want to get married either. And I was like, oh, what does this mean? And again, through more of my work, I realized it's not the marriage that bothers me, it's what I would taught me, is what I was taught marriage meant. Because no, I want to be someone's house slave. No, thank you, I'm going to take a pass on that, you know, and, and that was really what I was taught that marriage would be like is just, it's just subservience and you have to do what your husband tells you. And if you can stay home, do it like if you have to work outside the home, you know. And purity culture and complementarianism just completely link and overlap in that way. But I was, yeah, I was in the heart of it when it was at its biggest and I kissed dating goodbye was the big book. And.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

I'm so, yeah, I do know. I'm so sorry. I, you know, I will put in there as a little caveat. I have a 15 year old daughter who has not been raised. We got her out of that church when she was little and it is amazing the level of confidence that she has that I did not have as a child. And her, she doesn't have body shame. She doesn't, you know, and I'm just like, it's just beautiful. You know, she doesn't like worry about her weight. She doesn't, I mean she's a very healthy, active, happy child. And I'm just like, what, what did we. And it really helps me see what we did to just, you know, three decades of women. And it's just. Anyway, that's a, that's a aside.

[Sam]

I want to on that a little bit more. And then I want to really move on into kind of the Reformation and this becoming his wife dialogue. But with the purity culture. And again, it took me so long to realize the damage it had done in a lot of ways. Some of it was immediately evident and I'll get a little vulnerable here. I didn't lose my virginity until I was 23 and I lost it to my. Then Fiance. It was not a situation I wanted to be in. I thought it would save the relation, all those things, and the shame that I felt from that one act. Because I didn't have sex for years after that, because it was such a horrible experience for me that it completely demolished my sense of self. Because I had been raised with this dialogue of, the only thing you're good for is to be this perfect wife. And your body doesn't belong to you, it belongs to your future husband, this imaginary man that I may not ever meet. And all of these, the rhetoric of, you'll be like a piece of chewed gum or a piece of grumpled paper. Nobody wants used goods. A good man's not. My dad yelled at me. I called my dad crying, because I was so traumatized by what had just happened. He screamed at me. But as I look back at it now and I realize how insecure I was, how much I hated my body. I felt like my body had to be perfect. I lost 90 pounds in high school, and I went from being really overweight to really fit. And I was so terrified of gaining weight again. And I was so terrified of not being this perfect woman that I fell into an eating disorder. And so I was diagnosed with anorexia Nervosa. And I'm 5 foot 10, was starved myself down to 110 pounds. And I look, I can look at that now and recognize where that all came from, because it was this idea that you have to. You need to take care of the house and the kids and serve your husband. You can never say no. I didn't know what consent was. I didn't learn consent until I was in my mid to late 20s. And I had instances in my 20s later on when I'd kind of gotten over the initial trauma. I didn't realize that no was an option. And I didn't realize that when someone coerces you into sex, that's assault. And it was just all these things. And then I look at my sisters, how much, like, the relationships they got into, how much they hated their bodies. And the constant dialogue for the women in my family was, you're not pretty enough. You're not skinny enough. You're not this enough. And it took me, really until my late 20s to realize that that was directly linked to what we were taught via purity culture.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Yes, absolutely. I mean, it teaches women that our value is in how we appeal to men, but it also teaches us that our value is in. Is in how much we can protect men from the. From the. Essentially, the Sin of our bodies that on the one hand, you know, it's this push and pull that our. We are made to give our bodies to men, but yet that we are also the ones who are supposed to keep them from falling into sin. And it's, it's such a devaluing, dehumanizing teaching that has scarred so, so many women. So I'm so sorry.

[Sam]

Carryover from Aristotle's teaching that the woman's body was, was just a deformed man. And well, we need to have them because we use them for reproduction, but that women were physically inferior because we were deformed men.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Yeah, it's exactly right. You know, and that's what's so weird about this Christian. You know, we think about, we're like, where do you find that in the Bible that women are deformed men, that women are devalued because of our bodies, that we're not created in the image of God? You know, I always tell people the first woman in the Bible who names God is Hagar, who is this enslaved woman of color who has been sexually. She's been raped and assaulted and mistreated. And God comes to her and says, I'm going to help you. And she names God the God who sees. And it's just like God always has seen women and has lifted women up. And it's just, I just, it's so, you know, it makes me so angry what the church has done in how. Teaching women how God sees us.

[Sam]

Well, and the teaching of kind of your entire existence is in service of men, whether that's being physically and sexually appealing or in service of like, women are valued for their labor but not their opinions.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Yeah.

[Sam]

And I think the clearest seeing, especially as we see this rise in fundamentalism, especially recently.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Yeah.

[Sam]

I saw the purity culture push back in a way I never anticipated when. And I'm not wearing it today, but I have a septum nose piercing. And middle aged white men ooze their minds when they see me. If I have because I change my hair every 30 seconds or I wear a septum piercing and they lose their minds. And at first I was like, why are you so upset over an earring that I can take in and out? What?

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Right.

[Sam]

I realized it was because it was so clear that I was not doing it to appeal to them. Right. And that to them was morally wrong.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

That's funny.

[Sam]

I was, it didn't occur to me until literally about a year ago. I was like, oh, that's why they get so upset is because it's not done in service to them.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

And it's just something you like.

[Sam]

It's just something I like and that I wanted to do, and I didn't realize it would make so many people so mad.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Yeah.

[Sam]

I would love to kind of shift gears as far as into, like, becoming the pastor's wife. And I want to spend some time talking about Paul and the chapters that have been used to justify. But give me a little bit for the listeners as far as what changed in the Reformation that started to change the role of women in the church.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Yeah. So that is really where we see the big shift, I think. And I hit this. I hit this in the making of Biblical Womanhood, and I hit it even more in becoming the pastor's wife. Because it's in the Reformation era that women's role as a wife becomes connected to godliness in the medieval world, really. Because. And this is not a good idea either, because of the idea of original sin. And I'm hoping. You can't hear my dogs barking in the background.

[Sam]

It's totally fine.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

So I'm so sorry, too.

[Sam]

So listen, you're getting.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

I can't shout at them.

[Sam]

Experience of real life today.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

I'm so sorry. Okay. Okay, that's good. Good, good, good. I was just. They keep barking. But anyway, so in the Reformation, you know, in the medieval world, the highest thing that either a man or a woman could do is give themselves over completely. Of Augustine, sex was connected to original sin. That's how original sin is passed from human to human is through the sex act. So because of that, if you were going to go into service to God, it was better to be disassociated from the sex act. So either be a celibate in a celibate marriage or not get married at all. And this went for both women and men. And so the best thing a woman could be in the medieval world was not married, was a single woman. A single woman who didn't have kids and dedicated herself to service to God. With the Reformation, this shifts. And it's at the Reformation, and this shifts. Actually, I didn't fully understand this when I wrote the Making of Biblical Womanhood, but in the Becoming the pastor's wife, I realized the shift is because of the role of pastor. And in the medieval world, the priest was this celibate man. All clergy were, you know, if they were a certain level, were celibate, including women. But the symbol of resistance to Catholicism in the 16th century was getting married. And the way you knew a Protestant pastor was that he was married. So the pastor's wife literally becomes a symbol of resistance to Catholicism, which I love. I love that.

[Sam]

That in and of itself is great.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Yeah, that's really cool. But at the same time, it also creates, for the first time, marriage gets written into the job description of ministry. And. And for women who aren't, you know, whose husbands aren't ministers, there's still this ideal that the best thing a woman can be is a godly wife. So for both the pastor's wife as well as ordinary Protestant women, the best thing you can be is to be married to a. Is to be married and to be under the legal jurisdiction of your husband. So this is where we see that big shift.

[Sam]

How did. How did Martin Luther's teachings affect that?

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

So Martin Luther is a lot of fun. He is. So one of my good friends is a Reformation scholar, and he actually has a book coming out on Martin Luther and Agender, which is great. It's. It's coming out next fall. But. And masculinity on Martin Luther and masculinity. And so Martin Luther is sort of has. Is a complicated person. And on the one hand, there was a lot of misogynist rhetoric in everything that he preaches, and he talks about how women are, you know, really less than men and are created to be under male control and aren't really worth very much. And then he gets married to Katie Luther. And Katie Luther did not keep her mouth shut. You know, she was an ex nun, he was an ex monk. So they both had these independent professions before they got married. And Katie Luther never becomes the subservient pastor's wife. And she's very vocal against Martin Luther. And we actually see Lutheran attitude towards women shift a little bit while he's married to Katie, which is great.

[Sam]

It's a person you care about.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Yes, yes. I mean, at least in his dealings with her, when he's still out public and stuff, and with other guys, he still says really awful things about women. So it's, you know, still this. This. This masculinity world. But what happens to Katie, I think is actually also epitomizes the danger of this shift for women, where their value. Their value in the church is through their marriage to a husband is what happens when that. What happens when your husband dies or when your husband is not a good man. And when Martin Luther dies, Katie Luther gets dropped and her family just really just. Just cycles into poverty and she ends up dying a pauper in these really horrible circumstances. And it's like as soon as he Martin Luther died, her reason for existing was like gone and people didn't reach down and help her. And it was, I mean it's a really sad commentary on how the legacy of Martin Luther is his wife who was completely shut out and relegated to this pauper status simply because he had died.

[Sam]

Well. And that unfortunately is still applicable today. I don't know if you've seen, you know, on social media that Ron DeSantis nominated Scott Yenner to be a trustee for University of West Florida. And Scott Yanner has, is so misogynistic and so public about it, but he keeps going on about we should be, you know, making women be young mothers and not incentivizing them to go to school. And you know, they shouldn't be in law, they shouldn't be in medicine and they shouldn't win Nobel prizes. But my question to men that have this belief is what happens if you die?

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Yeah.

[Sam]

Don't you want her to be able to feed your children? Don't you want survive like you as an adult, regardless of gender have to be able to provide for yourself and education does that. And I know that men like that don't want women to have an education because they want them to be easily controlled and manipulated.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

I know that absolutely.

[Sam]

People who have bought into that idea kind of subconsciously, I'm like, you don't see the risk of this. And even if she is educated, deciding to be a stay at home wife is a risk.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Absolutely.

[Sam]

Happens to him if he becomes disabled or he passes away. You've now had this huge employment gap.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Yep.

[Sam]

You know, if you're not, if you don't have credentials of some form, your job options are limited and you're looking at minimum wage jobs. And so it's, it's a really harmful doctrine one, to teach that the most important thing you can be is married.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Yes.

[Sam]

The least interesting thing about us two, it's dangerous in the long run and it sets women up for elder poverty. I was, I don't know if you've read the book.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Yes.

[Sam]

She talks a lot about the. What sets a woman up. Up for elder poverty. And being a stay at home wife is one of the number one ways a woman gets set up to die in poverty.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Yeah.

[Sam]

When he's gone. Because men tend to die sooner. She's got nothing. She hasn't worked in 40 or 30 years or however long it's been. And it's such a dangerous ideal. So as you studied this and you went through the Reformation and Martin Luther's teaching, how do you see that play out through history since that time.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Yeah. So, you know, the Reformation is really the birth of this concept of the pastor's wife. But honestly, it is not. So I'll do two roads here. I'll do one. In the making of biblical womanhood, what we see is that this idea of godliness is associated with being a wife for women. But it is really not until the 19th century when we begin, when we have changing economic circumstances that begin to push women into lower wage jobs. And also it pushes work outside of the home. And then it begins to push women into lower wage jobs, arguing that, that women are not supposed to be in charge, that because women have babies, et cetera, that they can't be in higher management, which means that they make lower pay, but then also not providing them childcare or anything like that to help them to be successful in this as well. And so we begin to see this, you know, this, this, the Industrial revolution has a really detrimental impact on women's ability to earn an income for themselves and really begins to reinforce this idea that women belong in the home. And so like one, one British industrialist actually quotes, he says the reason we pay women less us is so because they really shouldn't be working outside the home anyway. And he just says that, you know, which is just crazy. And so honestly, this idea of the domestic housewife is a product of the Industrial revolution, especially as it plays out in capitalist societies. You know, this is not something we find in Africa. This is not something, you know, especially during this time period. This is a, a why this is a Western development that we see going along and has. It plays with the pastor's wife. I love this part too, because we think about the pastor's wife today. And I've read 150 pastor's wife books, which really no one should do. And in these, yeah, in these, you know, especially the late 90s and the early 2000s, there is a significant push for the pastor's wife to be focused on sort of like, like, you know, creating the perfect house and being the perfect housekeeper and being able to, you know, decorate her house well and provide good meals for everybody. And I point out that this actually is a role reversal in history also that through the late medieval period, it was often the, the household head who was in charge of decorating the house and like, making sure there was good food and that even male servants were the ones who mostly carried out like keeping your house clean and doing that. And it is not until really, again, this industrial, the rise of this capitalist economy that is going to move into the Industrial revolution, that this becomes a gendered task that focuses on women. So when Dorothy Patterson tells the pastors.

[Sam]

How can you find and decorate your house?

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Yeah, yeah, it was men before.

[Sam]

I mean, this is just incredible that I did not know.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Yeah, I love, I love. You know, it's, it just shows us how much these roles for women are constructed in culture and history. And then the Bible is used to try to apply onto that, you know, so it's sort of backwards. Ben Witherington, he says the tail wags the dog. That's exactly right.

[Sam]

Yeah, well, and it's, you know, you mentioned those late 90s books and I remember I can think of so many where there was this really big push that, that it was kind of like the, the new 50s housewife. Kind of like you need to be perfect and your makeup needs to be done in your hair and you've got to decorate the house and the food's got to be hot and you gotta. And all these women were writing these books about being a stay at home wife while being women who were working outside the home and teaching. Yeah, and that's exactly right. There was always this glaring hypocrisy. Like when I would go to like a woman's conference, I did. I only went to like two in my late teens. And I was like, no.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Yeah, I wasn't good at them either.

[Sam]

Not for me. Like, I was like, I don't. This, this does not make sense. And it always felt so superficial. And I was like, no, I want to talk about the heavier topics. I want to get into history and doctrine and theology. And it never went there. It was always very superficial and it was always focused on purity and your role in the home.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Right.

[Sam]

I was just like, no, I don't think so. And interesting, because you're talking about how these roles were socially constructed. It makes me think of like in World War II where the women went to work and then when the men come back and they're like, oh, we got to get these women back in the home. So they released the 1950s Housewife propaganda campaign.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Yep.

[Sam]

And also having laws where you can fire a woman because she got married, you can fire her because she got pregnant, you can fire her basically for whatever reason you want in order to get women back into the home. And most women were so depressed, suicides were very high, drug addiction was high, and so was murdering your husband. And I think that people need to think about that a little bit more.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

So, you know, I mean, my students and in fact, right now it's really hard for me thinking about how the political stage is playing out right now. But you know, I teach a suffrage course. It's a freshman history course and I teach it through the lens of suffrage. And my students are always just shocked to find out that women did not have the ability to take out credit in their own name until the 1970s. You know, I always tell them that Barbie owned a dream house before women could actually purchase houzz in their own name.

[Sam]

That was one of the reasons that Barbie was the dream.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Yes.

[Sam]

Self sufficient property owning. Like it was, it was, it was a dream when she first came out because most women couldn't, they couldn't, they couldn't do it.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

You're right.

[Sam]

Property. But that was it.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

And you know, one of my students did a project on Barbie. It was actually really great. We were in London and so she did it through one of the displays on Barbie at the time at the toy Museum. And she pointed out that Barbie's dream house didn't have a kitchen. And that actually did. I didn't know that when it first came out. It didn't have a kitchen. So I'm a Barbie fan now, not just because of the movie, but because I have learned that Barbie was on the cutting edge, you know, despite her appearance. And the reason they made her look like that is because they wouldn't sell her. The men in charge wouldn't sell her unless she looked like that. And so she's sort of this like. She looks like what men want women to look like. Like. But yet she is this woman who is able to buy her own house, to have whatever job that she wants. Yeah. I mean, it's crazy. So, yeah, the idea of like the.

[Sam]

Barbie universe, she's the main character.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Yes.

[Sam]

She's not the secondary character.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Yes.

[Sam]

I think, you know, I grew up, my dad, I was not allowed to play with Barbies and my dad could never explain why because I could play with like a Disney princess doll that was shaped exactly like a Barbie. Right. Same reason, I'm sure. But when I got older, he was just like, oh, you know, I just don't like their messaging for young women. And I look back on it now and I'm like, oh, you don't like that she was in charge? She's a character. She's got a house, she's got a car, she's got these different roles. You know, there's the Barbie doctor and there's the Barbie lawyer. But my dad was confusing with that too because he Would take these hard stances on things like Barbie. But then when I was a teenager and my dad realized, oh, she's really smart. Like, I had like specialty testing done on me in middle school, IQ stuff, stuff. And when he realized how smart I am and he had proof, he shifted lanes a little bit where he was like, I'm going to teach you to do everything so that you never have to be with someone. You can choose to be with someone. And that was the first time a man had ever said anything like that to me. Yeah, I grew up in the church, but my dad's. That standard for my dad did not apply to other women. It was just me. Right. Well, you're exceptional. So therefore. But he held that belief for other women. So it was really confusing because I'd go to church pastors tell me, as this really smart reader, curious kid. Nope. Your number one goal is to get married. But my dad's telling me you can do everything while taking me to that church.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Right? Yeah, very. I think it is. And that's part of women do. I mean, we get these mixed messages. And you know, in reading all of these pastor's wife books, I felt so sorry for the, you know, because all of these, these women, especially in these latter ones in the, you know, 80s and 90s, etc, they all struggle with the role, how hard it is and how many expectations that they don't know about until they, until they do something wrong, they don't know that these things are being put upon them. And so there's a lot of confusion that you can hear in them. And even like, you know, do I get a work outside the home? And answers. In this one that's written in 2009 or 10, she says, well, you can work outside the home as long as your work supports what your husband is doing. And so again, this idea that, yeah, you can do this and you can use your gifts, but it always has to center on your husband.

[Sam]

Yeah. And when you moved from, you know, what you did in the making of biblical womanhood into becoming the pastor's wife, what were, as you took that deep dive, what were the big topics that stood out for you that maybe even grew your own belief in these or even like, maybe you're like, I didn't realize that. What were some of the big moments in that story because you are a pastor's wife. Like, yes, impart your story.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Yeah.

[Sam]

I would just love to know how deep diving in that book, like, impacted you.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Yeah. So, I mean, it really clarified for me how much this role of biblical woman, which is what I really go after in the making of biblical womanhood, is this concept of biblical womanhood that women are divined by God to follow male leadership. And what I found is that the pastor's wife role is one of the reasons that this role of biblical womanhood is successful in churches, because she exemplifies this woman who centers her entire life around supporting her husband, ministry and calling. And she also, and this is something I, I quote the research in the book that was terrifying and fascinating to me that in churches that support male headship and do not support female pastors, oftentimes congregants don't realize that there are limits on women in the church because the pastor's wife, who is serving in this unpaid, unrecognized job, but is so visible, they're like, well, of course women could do things in our church. Look at our pastor's wife. And so she covers the absence of female pastors. And so I, I really think the pastor's wife role is a big reason why women in these evangelical spaces accept complementarian teachings is because they have this.

[Sam]

Model, because she is in leadership role.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Yes.

[Sam]

Not getting paid or recognized for it. And again, it ties into this idea. Well, her work is complementing and serving her husband's work.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Exactly, exactly.

[Sam]

We don't necessarily see it that way when it's playing out literally on the stage in front of us.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Yeah, that's exactly right. And you know, and I think this came out really clearly in this 2023 LifeWay study and Lifeways, the publishing arm of the Southern Baptist Convention. And they, they put out this study on the state of women in ministry. And what they found is that 80, I think it's 83%, it's either 82 or 83% of all women serving in ministry roles in Southern Baptist churches are either unpaid or part time and as volunteers. Which is just insane if you think about, you know, these, all the things women do in the church and they are not getting paid for it. It. And most of them are volunteers and.

[Sam]

Most of them aren't even getting thanked for it.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

A lot of them, yes.

[Sam]

Like you're not even getting recognized for the work that they do. Because I being kind of deconstructed from how I grew up because my family was very like, it was Southern Baptist alt, right. Like way, way out there. And I can look at it now and just be like, man, you know, and you would have these women who would volunteer at the church every Sunday, 20, 30 years, they'd get Cancer. Or they'd get sick and nobody from the church would go see them.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Oh, gosh. Yeah.

[Sam]

You know, and it. And you just. It just plays out like that over and over and over because it's expected of you. But at this. But your. But your worth outside of your service is in no way valued. I don't know. Are you familiar with Darius Daniels?

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

No.

[Sam]

So he. He teaches out of Atlanta. I will. I'll send you a link to this sermon.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Okay.

[Sam]

I. I saw. I saw a clip of it, and I was like, wait, I'm gonna go watch that whole sermon. I went and watched it, and it was the first time in my life, as someone who grew up in the church, he. He was talking about three thieves of modern Christianity. And one of those thieves, he's like, we've got the thief of sexism. And he rakes the church over the. For how they treat women. And he talks about how we value their service and their servitude, but not their opinions. Like, we hold them accountable for our lust. And I've never in my life heard a pastor say that. I'm like. I was like, I'm about to drive to Atlanta and go to go to his church, because now I'm curious. But it was so refreshing because I also think that this idea. I do believe that the Pastor's Wife kind of covers the harmfulness of complementarianism, and I would love your opinion on this. This is just my opinion. I think that it contributes to the fairly systemic sexual and physical abuse of women and children in the church.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Oh, yeah, and.

[Sam]

Yeah, go ahead.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

No, I mean, this is something that the Pastor's Wife book really hit home for me, and it's not something I was looking for. As I was writing the book. I was in The Archives In 2023, in June 2023, right before the Southern Baptist Convention met and disfellowshipped churches with women pastors, as well as continue to handle the sex abuse case really ineptly. They, you know, do it, so not doing all that. So I'm in the archives, and I ran across this series of documents that were from the early 80s that involved the president of the Southern Baptist Convention and some other major players in the Southern Baptist Convention. And they were attending to a letter that had been written to him alleging that one of the pastors that they'd hired that was in this major role in Washington, D.C. as sort of a missionary pastor to all sorts of international important figures coming to Washington, and the allegations were that he had had committed this serious Crime of clergy sex abuse. And they. At first they're like, oh, this is awful. Let's find out about it. And what they find out is that, yeah, they knew about it. They hired him knowing that he'd done this, or at least knowing part of what he'd done. And their response to it was like, yeah, he said he wasn't going to do it anymore, and we believe him, and he's really good in service. And so then the president of the Southern Baptist Convention says, oh, I think you've handled this well. We have to be a redemptive community. And they close the books on it. And this is 1983. This is right before the 1984 resolution in which the same pastor, the same president, presides over the resolution that says women can't be pastors because of the sin of Eve, which is sort of saying that women can't be in these leadership roles. And so what they've created is a structure in which male voices are privileged, in which crimes against women are seen as not important or not important enough to imperil a man's job, and where women are shut out of the leadership table. And this story. And in the midst of this, I followed the story all the way to Toronto to where this happened, and I found out that there was more than one victim here. And one of the victims was actually the. This, the pastor's wife. And I tell the story through the lens of her. And she finally divorced this man at the age of 73 or 74 after being hospitalized for being scalded from her neck to her waist. And she was hospitalized for months. And her story just really encapsulated for me the precarity of women in the system of complementarianism that shuts women out of leadership spaces, says that their voices are worth less and privileges the positions of men, protects the positions of men over harm done to women. So these things are connected and, you.

[Sam]

Know, same like growing up again in these churches in these spaces. So, like, recently. So I. Not anymore, but Nashville used to be the headquarters of the sbc.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Oh, it still is. That's where I go and look in the archives.

[Sam]

They just. They're selling their.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

They're selling it. Yeah. I'm really concerned about that cases because it's costing them.

[Sam]

There are so many physical and sexual abuse allegations that they're having to sell their headquarters to deal with it instead of dealing with the internal problem.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Yeah.

[Sam]

You have repeatedly taught that women are worth less. There's also the foundation of Christian marriage counseling, which, if A man steps out or cheats or abuses you, well, you weren't submitting enough.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Right.

[Sam]

To try harder. And. And people don't realize that the founder of Christian marriage counseling was a white supremacist atheist eugenicist who recruited evangelical pastors because they were the ones that bought into it. And he also mentored James Dobson.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Yep. And absolutely.

[Sam]

So there's that. That whole. Like the. The marriage counseling is encouraging women to stay in abusive and unfaithful relationships.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Exactly.

[Sam]

As. Because you have created a doctrine of the man is superior no matter what, not based on his character, not based on his actions, not based on his faith, but based. Strictly because he is a man, you have created a petri dish for abuse.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Yes.

[Sam]

And that's why we see, like these scandals are so common anymore. Like, I mean, I, again, I went to Liberty and I left before the pool boy scandal broke. And it's just, it's, you know, it's so common.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Yes.

[Sam]

And. And I really believe that these complementarian teachings are largely what's contributing to this, because you're not footing. You're not even giving women a voice because women are. If the pastor or the youth pastor is doing something, they're afraid to even say anything against him.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Absolutely. And you can think about this. I mean, I think the pastor's wife role really magnifies this. And I tell this story of abuse. It's my last chapter before the conclusion. And I call it the Cost of Dorothy's Hats. And that's Dorothy Patterson, who's the matriarch of complementarian theology.

[Sam]

She is.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Yeah. So the cost of her hats. She's known for wearing her hats as a sign of her subservience. And I tell the story through the lens of two pastors wives. This woman who was in Toronto and whose husband then is committed this clergy sect, he actually confessed to it. I found his confession. So we know he did it, and we know people knew he did it. But anyway, I tell it through her lens and then also through the lens of Joyce Rogers, who is the wife of Adrian Rogers, who was sort of the pastor of the conservative resurgence in the sbc. And Adrian Rogers seems to have been a really, you know, good person, aside from his support of these types of theologies. But he treated his wife really well. He treated his kids really well. He was really kind to people. I haven't heard anyone say anything bad.

[Sam]

About, remember good things about Adrian Rogers. Right. Handles. I don't remember.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Yeah.

[Sam]

Oh, he's this. And he also had a very good, like, wholesome spirit about him. Like, he just seemed. There was never. Because some pastors, you would hear them teach and be like, something's wrong there. And he never had that feeling.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

He seems like a good, like a good man, you know, in. In the sense of like how he treated people etc. And what my point with doing this is that whether or not his wife or this other woman, Maria, had a good experience in the church was not actually dependent on what they did. It was dependent on if they married good men.

[Sam]

Yeah.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

And. And so for the pastor's wives. Yeah. You don't know.

[Sam]

And really good at hiding it.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

The vulnerability here for women when we create a system that doesn't give them access, that silences their voices. And that's what complementarian does. It doesn't create abusers. It silences the voice of the abused and they can't speak out. And it empowers people who are. Who are abusive. It empowers them because there's not checks and balances on them.

[Sam]

Yeah.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

And so it's this perfect storm.

[Sam]

Yeah. And how do you think that complementarianism plays into, you know, again, because everything. Evangelical Christianity at large is a political party now.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Now. Yes.

[Sam]

And how do you think that complementarianism is playing into the beliefs around abortion?

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Oh my gosh. You know, this is something that I tried really hard with with pro life people, you know, is trying to help them understand that this system of pro life actually works against helping women of lower income and also women of color that this maternal sort of, you know, the. In the pro life movement, the value was placed upon the women being able to produce a child. It is not placed upon. The value is not placed on that woman staying healthy and alive. The whole value is in her ability to produce a child. And so what we end up with is a system that we can see the inequalities. And especially when we think about women of color who, when they come in with any sort of issues regarding childbirth or infertility or anything like that, they are given less medical care than white women. And so more black women die when they are pregnant than white women do. And I'm afraid white women are going to start experiencing this with these really extreme. I mean, you know, I mean, it's bad for any woman to be. Be experiencing this, but all women are going to be experiencing this more because of the.

[Sam]

Are so extreme.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Right. You can't even have a dnc.

[Sam]

Yeah. Idaho is, is severing its relationship with the University of Washington. And that partnership specifically was teaching Idaho doctors how to safely Perform abortions.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Yeah. And, you know, and people don't realize that abortion isn't. It is actually a. It's. It's part of medical care in helping and it. So it applies to anything from simply a miscarriage that's very early on where you have to go in and remove the tissue so a woman doesn't get infected, which happens quite frequently. Yeah.

[Sam]

And.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

And can cause death. And it is causing death, especially more now. And so it's a whole range. It's not simply someone who doesn't.

[Sam]

Who.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Someone who is having sex without worrying about the consequences and then just going and killing. You know, it's. That's the concept that people have of this.

[Sam]

People have like, don't use it as birth control. And I'm like, nobody is.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Nobody uses it as birth control.

[Sam]

Nobody's doing that.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Nobody's doing. You're right. Yeah, that's absolutely right. People do not use abortion as birth control. It is the way it is often, you know, often used is to play out for safe medical practice. And often it's with case where there are pregnancies, are already failing pregnancies and it's going to be dangerous for the woman and those. And it's just. It's just crazy. So. Yes. So, I mean. Yes, this complementarian attitude that a woman's job, divinely ordained command is to get married and produce children and that's what she's worth. That definitely is playing out in these attitudes towards maternal health care, towards women's health care, as well as the fact, you know, my father is actually a physician and his mind was blown when he read this article by this female doctor who talked about menopause. And he realized, he said, we knew nothing about menopause because we actually weren't talking to women.

[Sam]

Yeah.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

And it just. Yeah. Yep. And so it's just, you know, it's this again, it's this platform in which male voices are privileged and protected and it harms women under it. And this is. This is playing out in abortion. This is playing out in education. This is playing out in marriage laws. You know, I mean, Texas has recently have this covenant marriage law where if you opt for it, it's hard to. Yep. And that's so dangerous.

[Sam]

No, thanks.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Yeah.

[Sam]

And I think the way that I see kind of the abortion doctrine, you know, people are like, oh, you know, again, it's kind of this. A further application of this separate but equal idea. And I'm like, we're not equal if my rights vary state to state.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Yes, that's yeah. 100.

[Sam]

Not equal. Like, and whether. Whether I'm a straight person or a gay person, if my rights vary state to state, then we are by definition, not equal.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

That's absolutely right. And, you know, this is one of the reasons why we fought so long to get the Equal Rights Amendment, and that's why people fought so hard. Because the reason women's. How women can receive reproductive health, how women marriage laws, all of these types of things vary from state to state is because there is not equal protection clause for women in the Constitution.

[Sam]

And so we are not. We're not guaranteed anything. Right. Roe v. Wade was passed largely on the view of the right to privacy and. And the precedent of the right to medical privacy, not the foundation of women having guaranteed bodily autonomy, because bodily autonomy. That passed it, it wouldn't have been at risk.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Right.

[Sam]

You know, which is why Obergefell is on a little bit of a teetery platform in Lawrence as well, because they were all based on the right to privacy in the bedroom.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Yep. And that's why Ruth Bader Ginsburg always said that Roe v. Wade was very precarious. Because. And she said. She always said that it wasn't. It wouldn't stand challenge because of what it was based on. And so it. What. People would get mad at her for saying that. But, I mean, like, how can you think.

[Sam]

Well, here we are.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Yeah. Yeah, but it's. That's. That's exactly what happened.

[Sam]

So. And as we. Because I want to start kind of like wrapping up a little bit. But as we. We see this in the church now, we see complementarianism for what it is, the role of the pastor's wife. How do we start healing the church, pulling women out of this and healing the women who, like you and like me, have been so damaged by these teachings. Like, I can look at my relationships in my life and recognize where I messed up and where I had growth to do, but I also recognize how the church damaged my ability to function in a healthy relationship.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Yes.

[Sam]

How do we start to steer the ship in a different direction, especially in the wake of what's happening right now?

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Yeah, that's a. You know, that's a. I've been thinking about this for quite a long time, trying to figure out how to do this. And one of the things I. I honestly believe, probably because it's also because I'm an educator, is we've got to get people to realize the problem, to realize, you know, we've got to get women who are serving, who are living in these roles to Realize that not only is this, you know, even if their circumstances are great, you know, if they're like Joyce Rogers and they have this really happy, it's not hurting me. We have to get them to realize that it is hurting other people. And I can't tell you how many angry text messages and DMs and stuff I get from white women whenever I talk about the patriarchal bargain and that white women are complicit in the harm of other women. Yeah. And people get angry at me all the time for this. And I'm just like, you know what? It's true. And so we've got to get women to recognize our complicity in perpetuating the system. And so, you know, I. And part of what I've tried to do with this is help people to realize that what we are supporting in our churches is not. Not biblical. It is not biblical. It is made in history. It is made in particular cultures, especially, you know, for the evangelical world, white Southern culture that also enslaved black people.

[Sam]

Yes.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

And so we got to realize that that is what we are doing. And. And that's just really hard because people have to unlearn so much of what they've been taught in the church.

[Sam]

The foundation of everything that a lot of people have been taught.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Yes.

[Sam]

And I know, again, as someone who deconstructed, you know, a lot of people get very. Because I'm. I run my own business. I'm also a singer. I'm a metal singer here in town. And I get a lot of people, like, I don't know why you're sharing all these political opinions. Aren't you worried it's going to hurt your career? And I'm like, it might, but. But one, I actively participated in these harmful systems.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Yes.

[Sam]

For the early portion of my life, until I was about 25, 26, and I didn't realize that what I was saying was so racist and so sexist and so homophobic and so trans. I didn't write at the time, but my intent does not negate harm.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Right. That's exactly.

[Sam]

In my deconstruction. I was very passive because things weren't hurting me yet. Yeah. And when I realized that I was being. I was still promoting these ideas by silence. I refused to stay silent anymore. It's like, I can change those things, but I can be really loud now, especially with my background. But I get.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Yeah.

[Sam]

Just about the same thing. And I'm like, I could. My music career pales in comparison of trying to save people. Trying to save people like that's. That's actually insane to me and super cowardly. I'm not a lot of things, but I'm not a coward.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

No.

[Sam]

And I was like, all the. All the Christian women are going to be real mad.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

I. I make a lot of people mad all the time. But the good news is, is that the making of biblical womanhood has survived these four years, and the scholarship in it has been. Has been proved and supported. And so now people are more. People are happy having to deal with it. And so I think the pastor's wife. I'm really hoping to build on that to like, push this home even more. That what the church has done is created a model of maleness and femaleness and gender that actually is not a model that is based upon the biblical text. And so we are creating a false image and saying it's from God when it's not. And that this is. And that as Christians, we should be like, oh, my gosh, what have we done? Because we have been misrepresenting God. So I think that's part of it. I mean, we've got to recognize it and we've got to. We've got to speak out. You know, I tell people all the time, I'm like, book groups are. Are resistance. You get even in, you know, very conservative evangelical spaces. You know, you can be like, oh, yeah, I'm going to lead a book group. Let's get a bunch of women together and we can read things. And that changes things. I also think, you know, Ruth Bader Ginsburg's, you know, she has a quote. It's not. I'm not going to say it exactly, but she says they wouldn't try to silence your voices if they weren't powerful.

[Sam]

And not fragile like a flower, fragile like a bomb.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Speak up. Speaking up makes a difference. And so I think, you know, those two things, recognizing our own complicity, where we went wrong is, number one, we have to. We have to realize that we're swimming in this water and be able to see the water. And then we have to speak up about it. We can't stay silent about it. And. And we have to realize. I think it helps me because I'm like, I was complicit in a system that harmed other people. And so we have to realize that God always calls us to protect, to help, to support others, and to focus more on others than on ourselves. You know, nobody says, you know, that the first rule is to love yourself and then love God and then love others. You know, it's love God and Love others. And if we actually did that, it would change the church.

[Sam]

Church. Oh, it would. If we just listened to what Jesus said to do. It would change the church if we were just actually listening. And someone Instagram, and I wish I could remember who sent it to me, but they said I was taught that the word, the. The commands of God will always comfort the broken and challenge the complacent.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Yes. Which is. This is why people don't like to hear it.

[Sam]

I don't like to hear that either. So, last question. Obviously, becoming the pastor's wife is the big push right now. What's next for you?

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Like.

[Sam]

Yeah, what are you dreaming about? What's. What's kind of the next things that are happening.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

So I actually am going to finish out. I'm already working on the finale to my Making a Biblical Womanhood trilogy, which is going to be, you know, my working title is Losing Our Medieval Religion. The Cost of Forgetting History for Evangelical Women. And so it's going to really play into my strengths as a medieval scholar and talk about what we have, how knowing the past really could change where we are today. And so, in fact, I have a chapter you're going to love in it because it's based on the goth capital of the world. So, anyway, Whitby. I actually met one of my friends who's a metal historian there. There when I was up there, and we went. A metal historian. I'll send her. I'll send you her name. Yeah, that's.

[Sam]

I found a new calling.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Yeah. Yeah, she's a Met. Yeah, she's really. She's fun and she's. You know, it's. Whitby is where. The goth capital of the world in North Yorkshire, because that's where Bram Stoker wrote back Dracula. And so it's this whole. It's. You would love it. It's great. So anyway, but she's a metal historian and so she. She goes there all the time for the goth. They have two goth festivals a year and, like, has taken over. So anyway, it's. That's a lot of fun, but that. One of my chapters called Surviving Dracula.

[Sam]

So it's perfect, like. And you can see part of my wall here, but I've got.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Yeah.

[Sam]

Candles and black roses everywhere. And it's definitely a look. But where can everyone find you? What's. What's the best. Yeah, you know that you're most active on. Where can they find your book?

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Book. I'm always Beth Allison Barr. You can find me on. I'm most active probably on Instagram and Blue sky and Threads. I occasionally pop up on Facebook. I have Facebook, but. Because I have to. But anyway, so you can find me on all of those social media sites and you can find my books really anywhere books are published. I always encourage local bookstores, so especially in these. And I know there's some really great local bookstores in Nashville as well as, you know, almost anywhere there. So yeah, Parnassus and also there's that one in Franklin. I went to a book thing there. I can't remember not too long ago.

[Sam]

But anyway, books from there. So.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Yes. So you can find it almost anywhere. And it releases Becoming the Pastor's wife releases March 18th and the making of Biblical Womanhood just got a new cover because we just surpassed a hundred thousand copies. So they're celebrating that.

[Sam]

Amazing. And I'll include all of that in the show notes.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Notes.

[Sam]

Thank you so much for this conversation. This. I mean, I had these moments where I'm tearing up thinking about life, but it also makes me so excited that this knowledge is becoming so much more well known and, and women like you are leading this charge saying, listen, I'm qualified to have this conversation.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Yes.

[Sam]

Such important work.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Well, thank you for having me. This has been fun.

[Sam]

Thank you. We have to. Where have you get it? I think we have to do a part two.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Maybe we can talk about Dracula.

[Sam]

We can talk about Dracula and metal history.

[Dr. Beth Allison Barr]

Yes. I don't know anything about metal history, but I know people find some things.

[Sam]

I'm like, that's a new calling for me. I think that's my new. I've included all of the places you can find Dr. Oh, so much for in the show notes as well as her book. Thanks for having me. Please, please, please purchase her book, the Becoming the Pastor's Wife, which comes out March 18, and support her and just the amazing, incredible work and the truth that she's bringing. I loved this episode so much. I was so excited to talk to her because. Because these issues around what the church teaches about women and how they vote about women was something that was a big hang up for me for a long time and caused a lot of damage for me personally. So I hope that it was educational for you. To the women listening. I hope that maybe it healed some things that you were taught that simply were not true. And as always, a big thank you to my Patreon users and supporters. It means so much to me. You're giving me the opportunity to more actively pursue research and journalism as well as run for office. And I can't be thankful enough for that. As always, please like share and comment. That helps me so much and further promotes my work. Thank you for joining me on today's episode of Flipping Tables. Sam.