Beth Allison Barr | From Pulpit to Parsonage: Gender, Ordination, and the Pastor’s Wife

The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that deny God. As such, we need Thinking Christian to become as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian podcast. I'm Dr. James Spencer. Through calm, thoughtful theological discussions, Thinking Christian highlights the ways God is working in the world and questions the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now, on to today's episode of Thinking Christian. Before we start today's episode, I want to take a moment to tell you about usefultogod.com. From online courses to free downloadable study guides. I'm confident you'll find something to help you live faithfully in today's world. You can also check out some of my books, including Christian Resistance, Serpents and Doves, and my most recent contribution, The D.L. Moody Essentials Collection. Coming this fall, we're also running a German Reformation tour. The tour runs from October 30th through November 9th. And we'll be visiting sites from Berlin to Munich. The booking deadline for the tour is May 31st, and spots are filling up fast. If you're interested in learning more about the Reformation, World War II, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, you can check out the tour at the link in today's show notes. As always, if you find this podcast valuable, take a second to like, share, and leave a positive review. It really does make a difference. And if you haven't yet, subscribe to our YouTube channel for even more content to equip and encourage you. Now, let's get into today's episode. Hey, everyone. Welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian. I'm James Spencer, and I'm joined today by Beth Allison Barr. She is a professor at history, an endowed chair of a gentleman's name I can't remember right at the moment. But she is a professor of history at Baylor University in Texas. She's just written a book called Becoming the Pastor's Wife, How Marriage Replaced Ordination as a Woman's Path to Ministry. And she previously authored a book called The Making of Biblical Womanhood. And so this is part of the ongoing conversation we've been having on this podcast about biblical masculinity, femininity, gender role orientations, male and female embodiment, all that kind of fun stuff. And so I'm really excited to have you on the program this morning. Thanks so much for being here. Oh, thanks for having me. Yeah. Tell me, I mean, just to start out, maybe just introduce a little bit of how you got into this topic, because I think these two books do kind of fit together. How did you get into this topic in the first place? Yeah. So I'll make the story short, but I am a medieval historian, for people who don't know. And I never intentionally meant to write on topics of modern evangelicalism and the Southern Baptist world. And it was really in the aftermath of some crises in my life, namely my husband being fired from a church over advocating for a woman to teach Sunday school. And that's the story that I tell in my first book, The Making of Biblical Womanhood. And really, that book, the goal of that book was simply to tell the broader church what I knew as a scholar about women's roles in church history. And I never meant for it to be a really big splash. I never meant for it to become as controversial as it became. It was all a surprise to me. And since I'm a scholar of 14th and 15th century sermons, that's really what I do. Being thrust out into the limelight was not something I ever expected. So it was a crazy ride for me. And in the aftermath of it, my press was like, do you want to write something else? And my first response was, no way. This is, I'm just going to go back to 15th century sermons where it's quiet and, you know, nobody knows my name. And but I talked with a friend and he gave me some really good advice. And he said, Beth, you're in a position where if there's anything you left unsaid in the making of biblical womanhood, you are being handed the opportunity to say it. And that was really good advice. So I thought about it. And one of the things that I'd left unsaid was what happened to women's ordination in church history. And I was reading a book by one of my Baylor colleagues. Her name is Elizabeth Flowers, and it's called Into the Pulpit, Southern Baptist Women in Power in the Post-World War II Era. And she was talking about the rise of what we know as the conservative resurgence or the fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention, which started in the 1970s and in the early 1980s. And she was talking about how the women who were most vocal about advocating against female pastors were pastors' wives. And since I'm a pastor's wife myself, I have been for over 25 years, this caught my attention. And my question was, what does the role of pastor's wife have to do with the story of women's ordination? And that's where this book was born. It's really interesting. I mean, I went to seminary, so I did an MDiv at a relatively conservative evangelical seminary. And it was my first theological training. I was, at the time, I just didn't know anything. But, you know, my wife was studying to be a pharmacist. And so I had all these different points of confusion, even as I'm sitting in my seminary classes. Number one, just trying to orient myself to this conversation because, you know, in secular world, right, women can do anything, right? It's like whatever they would like to do. But I can remember sitting there thinking two questions. Number one, why are there women in these classes? I was just sort of lost. Like, what do they do after this? If this is the case, what happens after this? That's a very good question. And then the second one was more like, I had one of my professors say, you know, husbands or men, your wives should never make more money than you. And I'm thinking to myself, I'm going to be in real trouble here. I'm studying for ministry. My wife's going to be a pharmacist. Like, I feel like she could get a part-time job and she'd make more than me. So we're going to have some issues. I love that. You know, when my husband was in seminary and people found out that I was in graduate school, one of them seriously asked him, like, what are you going to do when your wife makes more money than you? And he was like, I can't wait until my wife makes enough money. You know, I'm not expecting a lot of money in ministry, so it'll be really nice to have a dual career. Yeah. My wife and I always joke, you know, she's like, I always wanted to be the trophy wife. And I said, and yet I am the trophy husband. So, but yeah, it's been enjoyable. It's been an interesting ride, I think, married to someone who has her own professional career and then navigating some of these more conservative theological spaces where I've worked and learned and, you know, done those kinds of things. It has raised some tensions, especially after we had kids. And so, you know, while she was never seeking ordination, right? There was that sort of friction between why would you stay home for two years to take care of your son? You know, and it's like, well, math, you know, but also, why wouldn't I? You know, there's that question too. So, but it was an interesting tension that we dealt with. And I appreciate in biblical, The Making of Biblical Womanhood, I feel like you kind of got at the heart of a lot of those issues. And so this new book is kind of an extension of that specific to ordination. And I'm interested to sort of hear, because you hint at some of that stuff in the medieval sections of the biblical womanhood book, where you used to have female preachers, you used to have women who were serving in formal roles in the church, and then that sort of dwindles out and goes away. So can you give us like a, maybe a thumbnail sketch of some of the big interesting events there that that sort of lead into this? Yeah. So, you know, I love that you're interested in definitions of masculinity because what happened to women's ordination is really attached to a redefinition of masculinity in the medieval world. And it has to do, you know, if you think about for much of the ancient church and into the early medieval world, masculinity is often defined by relationships with women in whatever ways those may be. And marriage is a different thing to talk about in this part time frame. But nonetheless, it was defined by your relationship to women as well as your role in society, such as, you know, especially in like warfare. You can think about that. This is a time of a lot of disruption in the Western world, the collapse of the Roman Empire, the rise of these early medieval kingdoms. And so masculinity was defined in some ways, ways, you know, not completely, but nonetheless, these traditional types of male caricatures as the warrior, as the father, and having multiple children. So what happens when the church that's working really hard to redefine what it means to be clergy and is very concerned about royal kings.

Things and politicians taking control of churches, often through them becoming sort of family affairs, where the children of priests and stuff, you know, people need to know that priests were married in the early medieval world. And they actually continued to be married throughout the medieval world. They were just not supposed to be. But nonetheless, but so, yeah, the church tries to kind of separate the what it means to be a clergy and get it out from control of political lords. And one of the ways they did this was by introducing clerical celibacy, which means now to be a priest is to not be married. And part of this came with, it's like, what is this? It was in some ways a little bit of a crisis of masculinity, because what does it mean to be a man if you are not being defined by being a politician, by being a warrior, by being a leader in your community, by being a husband? And so it kind of created this crisis of masculinity. And so in which they are trying to say to be a man is now instead of being a conqueror, you now are resisting marriage. You're resisting the female body. You're resisting. So it's still sort of this conquest, but it's the reverse that now to be a clergy is to resist. And so what we find for the first time in Western church history is that suddenly the female body is really pushed out as not only unable to be in these types of ecclesiastical positions, but actually dangerous to male clergy. So that, you know, and this is where we begin to see a decline in women having access to what we would consider to be ordained roles. It comes with this redefinition of masculinity in the central Middle Ages. That's really interesting. I mean, it's hard to even come up with a follow-up question to that. I mean, it's almost like you have the sort of, what I guess we could call the masculine structure of power, right? Yeah. Creating pressures between these two organizations, entities, and then that squeezing the women out. Yes, that's exactly it. Yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, I try to tell people that ordination has never had a stable meaning throughout churches. I mean, it's not actually something you find in the Bible. There's different passages we connect to it and say this is ordination, but ordination is a word we came up with to explain what it means to be set apart for Christian ministry. And even this idea that you have a set apart Christian ministry that functions outside of everything else, this also has a history, which is also, you know, is really born in the central Middle Ages moment where you're trying to say it's not good for the church to be controlled by politicians, which I think we can all sort of like, you know, be like, oh yeah, that's probably a good idea. True. Right. So, you know, but in order to do that, we have to separate. We have to set the church apart and we have the separate orders. And now, you know, we really start to see the evolution of ordination as we would consider it today. And it is born at this time. The shift in ordination is born in this idea of clerical celibacy, which regards the female body, you know, is now dangerous to clerical ordination. So this is where we can sort of start tracing the push of women out of this type of ordained ministry. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free retirement defense guide or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. Do you know, I mean, so there would have been a familial way in which the political realm could weave its way into the church through the children. I understand that. But why were there other solutions? Is there any, is there any literature that would suggest, are there other solutions to this than just celibacy? It seems like such a, you know, it's very. Yeah. You know, I mean, I, my mind goes to, and I think it's just because I've been, you know, what I've been reading, but it goes to the community at Qumran, right? Where they're just like, we don't like any of this. We're just going to go live in the desert. Thank you. It feels like such a drastic option and it would have such, and it has had so many implications down the ages. Yes. Yes. No, you're exactly right. So two things that I think really made it seem like this was a good solution. One of them is in the early church from the very beginning, we have, and you just actually described it. You have this, what we call this ascetic movement to that, that our bodies in some way are evil. And this can stretch to heretical ideas that the early church also faced, but sort of in moderation, it's this idea that the flesh is sinful. And so in order to really be set apart for God, we have to reject the flesh. In some way, I mean, I would actually argue that modern purity culture is similar to this type of argument. You know, that the flesh, that sex, that everything about us, that is evil. And so we have to protect from it. So there is that. And you can think about Augustine who was, you know, his background is in the Manichean movement, which does have this dualistic religion that the flesh is evil and the spirit is good. So he kind of set us up for this idea that the flesh, especially as associated with the female body is rooted in evil and sin. That's half the answer. The other half is that the people who were making the changes in the medieval church in the central Middle Ages were all monastics. They were all monks. And so this was actually a vow that they'd already taken, this idea. And both men and women both took this vow that separated them out from family responsibilities and allowed them to carry on the work of the church. But now we have these monks who were, you know, one of them, the nickname of one of these guys who was for these reforms was called Holy Satan. So these were very committed and some ways a little bit extreme in how they handled things. And they were working from their experience as monks who had grown up in an environment that was regarded women as dangerous to them. And so they're the ones who came up with this solution of celibacy, which was very drastic and never was 100% accepted in the medieval world. It's something. And in some ways you can think about the reformation when the reformation sort of set itself up as the antithesis to clerical celibacy. Now, in order to be a clergy, you have to be married. It's sort of like the exact opposite. But it is rooted in this very drastic change in the central middle ages. That's really interesting because I have noticed that a lot of times when I've been reviewing the literature on modern day masculinity, one of the things that generally comes up is there's a direct move when you're talking about masculinity to talk about husbands. Yes. And it's like, well, but not every man is a husband. And so do we have anything to say to just the single men out there apart from them being husbands? And then also, why aren't we looking at, let's say, the bond servant passages, which there would have been male bond servants that doesn't seem to fit modern notions of masculinity. But, you know, because they don't, they're sort of like, yeah, we don't, we don't want to do those really. We we just prefer to stick to husbands and fathers. And these are the pictures that we're more comfortable with. Obviously, go back to David who was sort of is sort of pictured as a renaissance man. He plays the harp. He, you know, he fights the battles. He rules the kingdom. Yeah. He gets the ladies, you know, like you, you have this sort of vibe around these things, but it's fascinating to think through that. So the celibacy comes in, the reformation reverses it. And now it's odd to have a single male.

Pastor, we would find that odd today in a lot, you know, even if we wouldn't articulate it that way, I think a lot of people would actually find it odd. Yeah, we're suspicious of it, I think, you know, and this, really, it's in this Reformation ideology that is a reaction to this clerical celibacy. And so now, instead of being single, like that was bad, you know, enforcing the singleness, the celibacy, that didn't work out well, so let's go to the opposite extreme. And that is that the highest calling for godly people are to be married. And we have never really escaped that aspect of the Reformation, that impact of the Reformation that to be godly is to be married and to be a godly minister is to be married. And that has stayed with us since the early 16th century. Would you say then that a lot of the notions of femininity and even, you know, as you talk about, you know, wife replacing ordination, right, pastor's wife replacing ordination, do you think these were intentional moves or was it just done by default? We're trying to solve a problem and we have no concept of the implications that are going to really come. It's probably a mix of both, like that's probably a weird question, but you get what I'm saying, like how much of this was really thought through, like how are we really thinking about women? How are we really thinking about men and how are our structures, how are our structures going to impact that? So I think in the 16th century, you know, I cited one really good book that's called From Priest Whore to Pastor's Wife, which I know has a little bit of a shocking title, but it's actually, it's fantastic. And it kind of talks about this shift that in the beginning, really these early reformers, they don't have a game plan. They don't. They're just trying to, they're like figuring out things ad hoc on the spur of the moment. And so like even deciding to marry, it's like, oh, we're telling everybody that they need to get married to be godly, so I guess we should get married too. So you have all of these monks who have no experience with women, grew up, you know, and suddenly they're, and they're even marrying these women who grew up in these female communes. I mean, they have no idea what they're doing. And it's, and so I don't think they really, they could not see the implications of how this was going to play out. Yeah. And so I think it's, and also there were changing economic situation of the Western world at this time, where we see what becomes the beginning of industrialization and we see work being moved outside of the home. And this is a big shift, you know, where you start off first with that, the whole household in many ways, in these business economies, we're all involved in the labor and women's labor starts to disappear under the labor of the head of household. And then we see that work shift outside of the home and the head of household just goes outside of the home and leaves the woman behind. And so we also see these changing economic forces that are completely unconnected to the Bible or faith. And it has these change, you know, and that, but they begin to be aligned with, with these, because many, these people involved in these economic changes are also some of those involved in the early Reformation. And so we begin to see this alignment of Reformation theology with a work theology that emphasizes male labor and female, you know, secondary labor. Yeah, it, I remember I've been in Germany a few times and so we've been to Wittenberg and, you know, you tour Luther's house and you see the brewery and you see the complex mechanisms that his wife was running. Right. I mean, they really were impressive. She was definitely industrious. She knew what she was doing. But when you hear their story, one thing I've always wondered, maybe you can, maybe you can shed some light on this. I don't know. I don't remember you writing about it in your book, but what always struck me was you've got these former Catholics who wouldn't have been married. Like you were saying, you know, Luther's a monk, right? And then you've got these former Catholic nuns who are sort of opting out of Catholicism. They're joining the Reformation. This does create a bit of a problem, right? Because the structures of male and female housing, living, support, all of those things. Now you're divorcing yourself from and Protestantism, the Reformation folks have essentially nothing to offer at this point. Right. It's not like they had infrastructure or anything like that. And so marriage intuitively makes sense. Like, OK, let's get together. But then it, from what you're talking about, it sort of snowballs almost into an ethic that is too dominant. They in in responding to the Catholics at the time, the Reformation overcorrects toward marriage. And we've just never lost it. Yeah, I think, yeah, that's exactly right. I mean, it's kind of ebbed and flowed since the Reformation. Yeah, this it's it's really in the 19th century that we see a doubling down on this marriage ideal. I think, but it. But, you know, in fact, my central chapter to this to becoming the pastor's wife is called The Rise of the Pastor's Wife. And it's the Protestant Reformation chapter because this is where the pastor's wife is born. She she has not been a part of history up to this point. There have been people in ministry married. But this notion of a pastor's wife is just really not there. She's absent until the Reformation era. And so, yes, I would say that the aftermath, what we see the pastor's wife role has become today is was definitely born in the Reformation era. Yeah, because wouldn't you say now the pastor's wife and I don't want to put words in your mouth, but just having read the book, it feels like the pastor's wife is almost a technical position. And so you're, you know, and I've heard it before, you know, when you're hiring, when we're hiring this position, we're hiring you and your wife. Right. And it's like, well, but you're not because you're not paying her. But but that's the language. And so I know, particularly in like the African-American church, when I've had opportunities to interact with certain of those, they have a first lady. Yes. And this is the pastor's wife. And so it does take on a more technical position. Yeah. Is that and that's what you mean by it replacing ordination, yes? Yes, that's exactly right. That and this does not happen until very late in the game. I mean, this is not until the second half of the 20th century that we see, you know, there are always really up until the 19th century to be married to a pastor was just to be like any other Protestant wife. You may be slightly more visible. Some places you might be more involved in your and I tell some of these stories. You might be more involved in ministry in some churches, but not always, you know, there's no hard and fast rules for it. And in some ways, the pastor's wife was really sort of like the middling bureaucracy where the expectations put on her would have been like being a more upper class woman. And this is, you know, like you care for the poor when you when you have more money, you care for the poor, you take gifts to people, you take, you know. And so these things the pastor's wife does or is associated with are often pretty similar to what any Protestant wife who's in a more visible position would do. So it's not until the 20th century and really the post World War II era. And, you know, part of my research for this book was reading 150 pastor's wife books. So from 1923 to 2023. And so I can tell you authoritatively that there's a shift in them that really starts in the 80s and the 90s. And it begins to emphasize that a woman who's married to a pastor is called by God to this unofficial position in which she has expectations that are reasonable for the church to expect of her. And this becomes and this is also why we see the genre of books for pastor's wives exploding, because suddenly you have all of these women who are put into these positions that they're not prepared for. Suddenly having to fulfill these expectations that they don't even know what they are. And they're like, I don't know how to do this job. And so these books are mostly pastor's wives writing to other pastor's wives saying, yeah, this is a really weird, hard job, but it's one that God that has value and God wants us to do. So let's walk through it together. There's so many questions running through my head. So, you know, I can't imagine my wife is a CPO. She's chief pharmacy officer of a hospital system. I can never imagine her hospital system calling me up and asking me to do anything for the hospital system. We would in, you know, theologies of work and the way we think about Christian calling, we would view professional.

And as, you know, an aspect of that, of an aspect of Christian calling, and while we might affirm the fact that, you know, one who aspires to be an overseer aspires to a good thing kind of vibe, I don't think we'd want to make such a hard and fast distinction between someone who works in the ministry and someone who works outside of the ministry. Maybe some people would, but I wouldn't. And so I guess I'm wondering, I mean, how legitimate is this sort of aspect of the calling from your perspective, where there is some sense in which you could assume maybe that the pastor's wife, particularly in a certain era, would have been more involved in the church and maybe taken on certain roles for the church that would have been commensurate with being part of a family that's doing that, right? But as it gets into the 80s and 90s and even today, I mean, I can't imagine if I ended up, you know, stopping doing what I'm doing now and going and pastoring, my wife would be a very non-traditional pastor's wife, I have a feeling. She would be continuing to pursue her own career. She would be involved where she wanted to be involved, but there would be no particular expectation for me that she'd, you know, be a pastor's wife. Right. Yeah, no, you're exactly right. You know, this is, and this is really one of, one of the reasons I was writing this book because I wanted people to realize that the pastor's wife is born in this changing historical moment that in some ways is born in the, you know, post-World War II era, where we're really trying to push women out of the jobs that we asked them to come into because of the war. And now we're trying to normalize society by helping men get jobs. And so literally women start getting fired from positions and being pushed. And so you start to see a lot of this literature like trying to convince women that the best job is to stay home. And so this is not just Christian. This is broadly cultural in the U.S. We see it, you know, throughout. But then you also begin to see more of this emphasis put that the pastor's wife role is part of that, but it's also something different. And, you know, like, for example, there's one pastor's wife who she was writing in the late 60s or early 70s. So she's on the forefront of this. And she has this really remarkable statement where she says, look, you know, in some ways being a pastor's wife is like being a wife of anybody who has a higher degree. But when the husband gets his medical degree, we don't expect the wife to go into surgery with him. Right. But now that's what we're expecting of these women who are just married. And, you know, some of these women are called to ministry and flourish in the pastor's wife role. I would actually say I'm one of these women. I've been a pastor's wife for over 25 years. I have, you know, I have had moments where I've been like, what is this? What are people doing? But in general, it kind of fits my gifting because I like to be behind the scenes. I'm a fixer. I don't mind stepping in and like solving problems when I need, you know, to help. Like, in fact, just last Sunday, my husband's sermon notes didn't show up in his Dropbox. And so I had to drive home and go get them for him. You know, I do think, I don't mind that. It's fine. But there's other women who this does not fit their gifting at all. And so it's sort of like the pastor's wife role has become a one size fits all. And one of the books that just really grabbed my heart the most when it was Gell McDonald. And she is a really challenging story. I mean, my heart goes out to her. But I remember the argument that she made is that for pastor's wives who feel tension in their role, that the problem is really their heart. It's a heart problem that you haven't surrendered completely to Jesus. And I'm like, How awful to tell these women who get stuck in this role that has no biblical basis, that doesn't fit their callings or giftings, and they maybe feel called to something completely different. And yet if they don't match what their church expects of them, they're being told their problem is their heart, that they're not surrendering to God. And so, you know, I just, I feel, I feel for these women who have been given an impossible job and told that it's their duty to a Christian duty to figure it out. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility, and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian-owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free retirement defense guide or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. I think that's, that probably articulates one of the things that hit me most when I read your book. When we think about this, sometimes it's easy to get caught in the sort of flashy, you know, men domineering women and, you know, women can't be pastors and those kind of conversations. What I think your book on the pastor's wife really brought out to me that I hadn't really thought deeply about before is the removal of agency from pastor's wives to be able to say, yeah, I'm married to a pastor, but I'm not a pastor's wife. Like I have, I have giftings that I think everybody should have giftings that plug into the body of Christ in some way. But man, to think that just because you married some guy who decided to be a pastor one day, right, that automatically you have to be this sort of stereotypical picture. It just feels like it's such a, an oppressive move. Even if you thrive in it, I think it should be, you're thriving in it, not because you have to, you're thriving in it because that's who you are. And the way you articulated it, I think is, is an appropriate way to articulate it, but that, that was definitely what struck me. I'm like, man, it's a, such a subtle. Now your marriage determines who you are and what you do. That's exactly it. That it's that, that instead of it being a call from God, instead of it being something that, you know, that a husband and wife through, you know, together have decided or come to conviction about it is as soon as your husband enters or feels a calling to ministry, that women are like, okay, automatically you're drafted and there is no you, you can't really get out of it. And in fact, if you try to get out of it, it's going to reflect badly on your husband and he's not going to be able to do what God called him to do because you are resisting what, you know? And so it is, it puts women in a, in a no-win situation. It raises tension. You can, I mean, being a minister is already such a stressful job. I mean, I've been, I've been in ministry for a long time. And then you create this artificial pressure on women within the marriage that just raises that stress level even more. And so anyway, it's just, obviously my sympathies here are with these women who have been put in this, this really no-win situation. I would say mine are too. And I think the interesting thing is, and this is the, you know, as I reflect it back on my time in leadership and my time being married, I had a female executive coach work with me the first year I was a vice president in a college. She was fantastic. I mean, she was just awesome. And I, my wife has always been pretty strong-willed, you know, she'll, she'll push back on me. She doesn't mind, you know, like telling me I'm doing something foolish or, you know, giving me advice or what have you. And a lot of times what I feel like is when we create these mismatched relationships, when the, when you have the pastor's wife and the pastor, you're taking on these roles that then don't allow for that freedom of expression across. You're no longer just two individuals in a marriage. You're actors on a stage trying to figure these things out. I think some people navigate that better than others. But I would say that the loss isn't fully on the women's side. The loss is on the men's side and it's on the body of Christ side, you know, sort of as well. We're all missing out on something here. Yes. And if we don't recognize what we're missing out on, it won't feel like we've lost it.

And so, I just find that, yeah, that part of it was, it really hit me when I was reading through. I'm like, man, it's a default. As soon as I decide this, now my wife has to come along because the whole system is built on, if you don't have her support, if she doesn't want to do this, there's this weird question about, are you really running your home well? Why isn't this happening? You know, so from the men's side, I could kind of see how it would all work. You know, and from an economic standpoint too, I mean, if we think about, you know, I think when we think about pastors, we often think about megachurches, but most churches are under 200. Most are actually under 150, which means their pastors are usually living on salaries that are under 60,000, many under 40,000. And yet the expectations are that the wife is not going to work or that she's only going to do part-time work that doesn't, you know, and then, and then when she does work for the church, we're not going to pay her for it, even though we're already paying her husband very little for this enormous job. You know, I'm just, I don't know if churches really have thought through the, the stress that this puts on these families. And then again, it always, you know, the husband's job performance in some way is evaluated by how his wife does. And, you know, that I think about, you know, as a college professor myself, my husband never comes up in my job performance review at Baylor. No. So it's, it's just a crazy thing that we have come to expect as normal and we don't realize how abnormal it is. Can you talk a little bit about how children factor into this? Oh, sure. Yeah. I mean, what, how does that all sort of piece together with, because it's usually not even, yes, you want your pastor to be married, but you also want your pastor to have children. Yes. This, I do, I talk about this in the book because actually my husband and I, um, had infertility and it was actually not through, um, didn't have anything to do with us delaying because we were both, I was actually through grad school really fast. So I was in my late twenties by the time I had my PhD. So I'm not like considered to be, you know, out there, but, um, but for, um, I was born partially paralyzed as a child actually. And that has played out with repercussions throughout my life, including making it challenging for me to have children. And this expectation, you know, I, the question I ask in the book is if the highest calling for a Christian woman is to be a mom and the highest calling to ministry for a Christian woman is to be a pastor's wife, then what happens when the pastor's wife can't be a mom? And this is something that I, you know, can speak firsthand to that pressure that churches place on pastors, wives having children and, you know, the questions like, I mean, I even remember when my husband was being hired for a position. Um, one of the questions was, well, y'all don't have any children. Are y'all going to have children? Um, as if that was part of his job that he have children. Right. And, you know, and we certainly wanted to have children, but it's, you know, it's not always your choice. Whether or not you have children. Um, and to have this be as an added expectation to the job, that to be this, to be a godly minister is to be married to a godly woman with godly kids. Um, and if you're missing some piece of that, then that means that you can't really be, you're not, you're not fulfilling what God has called you to. It's part of your vocation because your family is literally a part of the job. And so, you know, and as I wrote this, I do have two children. They're five years apart. Um, and I'm so thankful for both of them, but I know, I know pastor's wives who, um, have been unable to have children and the pain that they have felt, um, mostly from their churches, from the pressure put on them by other women and other people in the church about them not fulfilling their godly obligations. It's interesting. I spent the last couple of years doing research on Christianity and politics. And when I was reading through your book, I was like, there's so many weird echoes between the two sides because on the Christians and politics side, you often have these sort of expectations that are put out there. Like every Christian should vote. Right. And you're like, well, that may be an entailment from certain scripture passages, but we're really supposed to be doing something else. We're supposed to be glorifying God. And so what if voting at some point makes it seem like I can't glorify God, right? Either candidate I vote for is going to defame the name of the Lord. And so should I still vote? Like, do I have to do this? Right. And I can remember having that conversation with people and, and them just saying, Oh no, you still have to vote. You still have to vote. And I would always bring up, I'd say, and this is not meant to be sort of virtue signaling on my part or anything, but I'd say, my wife and I are adopting how many kids have you adopted? Oh, you don't think every Christian should adopt, but you think every Christian should vote. It's like, well, you know, I don't even think every Christian should adopt, but the point is then neither should every Christian have to vote. And, and as I was reading your book, I'm, I'm just sitting there thinking like we do this to ourselves all the time. We create these additional expectations that we're putting on people and we treat it as if it's thus sayeth the Lord, when really it's just, no, this is our preference and we're going to enforce our preference. A hundred percent. And, um, it's, you know, if you think about ministerial positions in which the ministers are really there at the goodwill of the congregation. And so it's really hard because if a pastor tries to stand up for something that is unpopular in the Congress, I mean, it literally costs him his job all the time. It costs, you know, it costs families, their jobs. And so, um, it becomes this, it's easier to try to fulfill the congregational expectations because that's how you can keep your job and keep, you know, it's like, do I, do I think I'm doing good here? Do I think I'm doing what God has called me to do? Okay, then let's just acquiesce to these unreasonable expectations and try to figure them out the best we can, because if people get mad at us, they might fire us. And so, you know, being in ministry is such a precarious job. It is. Um, for both men and women. And I don't think people realize how them trying to place these artificial burdens that have nothing to do with the gospel on their ministers, um, is just hurting the gospel. Yeah. Well, we're running, we're running close to time, um, to almost at the end of the episode. And I'm wondering, you know, sort of as you wrote this book, what were you hoping it would accomplish? What's the message you want to leave with both book pastors' wives, but I would just say the church as a whole. Yeah. I, you know, I sort of did a little bit of a vision at the end of it, um, where my final chapter is together for the gospel. And I was like, what if we lived in a world where we let God, we let calling be determined by God and that we let, um, both women and men who are called to ministry positions flourish in those positions. And we let women and men who are called to different types of vocational work, that is not paid professional ministry. We let them flourish in those callings too. And it's just like, you know, how much have we hindered the gospel by putting artificial limit limitations that are rooted in culture instead of actually conveying, um, the, the biblical model, which is women and men serving in all sorts of different positions really for the good of the gospel to share the good news of Jesus. And I just really wish that's what we could be again. Yeah. Getting back to that. How do we allow the whole community of faith, each of the individuals within the body of Christ to do what they're intended to do as a member of that body and, uh, and really develop the sort of, I usually say it's like, we need to develop the coordination. So we're no longer the gawky teenager who hasn't quite grown into his body yet. You know, we're like, we're like a ballet dancer or something where we, our movement is so fluid. And when I read your last chapter, that's what the, the vision that came to mind was all of us just working together in harmony and fluidity and having a high degree of coordination that is born from our, our deep desire just to serve Jesus. Right. The body of Christ. I mean, that's the vision of Paul. Yeah. Yeah. The body of Christ. Well, I, I love the book. Um, I would recommend it. I highly recommend it to everyone. I'm going to put the link in the show description, uh, becoming the pastor's wife. But I would also recommend, um, you know, the, uh, biblical womanhood. Um, I'm sorry, I, I, my screen.

Thank you, Making a Biblical Womanhood. I'm like the absent-minded professor today, but Becoming the Pastor's Wife, I think, would be a fantastic read. Really loved it. And so I'll put links to both books in the show notes. I really encourage listeners to go out and buy these, really think about them, and try to understand just, you know, how these cultural expectations tend to seep in. We all want to be true to the gospel. We want to be true to the scripture. And we are, we're not living under the authority of the expectations of our communities. We are living, those expectations sit underneath the authority of God's word. And so we've got to figure out how to not invert that. We've got to, we've got to get that right. The authority of God's word governs everything else. And I think you've done a great job just tracing historically and, and being, offering a perspective on this that is much needed. So thanks very much for being on the show. Love the books. Recommend them highly. And yeah, just thanks for being here. Well, thanks for having me. Absolutely. Okay, everybody, we will catch you on the next episode of Thinking Christian. Take care, everyone. I just want to take a second to thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the Thinking Christian podcast. If you go to lifeaudio.com, you'll find dozens of other faith-centered podcasts in their network. They've got shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and more. I'm bestselling author, John Seidl, and I'm the Christian who became an alcoholic, not the other way around. Through the power of Jesus, I got sober, and now I'm sharing both my story and the stories of others just like me, along with helpful interviews from trauma, faith, and addiction recovery experts. If you're a fan of messy sanctification and powerful stories, join me on the Confessions of a Christian Alcoholic podcast on Life Audio or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Let's get radically vulnerable.