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Becoming the Pastor's Wife

How Marriage Replaced Ordination as a Woman's Path to Ministry

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  • 256 pages
  • 9 hours of reading

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Beth Allison Barr has lived with assumptions about what she should do and who she should be. In Becoming the Pastor's Wife, Barr draws on her 25 years of experience as a pastor's wife and her scholarship as a historian to trace the role of the pastor's wife, showing how it both helped and hurt women in conservative Protestant traditions. While they gained an important leadership role, it came at a deep cost: losing independent church leadership opportunities and strengthening a gender hierarchy that prioritized male careers. Barr examines the connection between the decline of female ordination and the rise of the role of pastor's wife in the evangelical church, tracing its patterns in the larger history of Christian women's leadership. By expertly blending historical and personal narrative, she equips pastors' wives to better advocate for themselves while helping the church to understand the origins of the role as well as the historical reality of ordained women.

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Becoming the Pastor's Wife, Beth Allison Barr

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Released
2025
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(Hardcover)
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Title
Becoming the Pastor's Wife
Subtitle
How Marriage Replaced Ordination as a Woman's Path to Ministry
Language
English
Publisher
Brazos Press
Released
2025
Format
Hardcover
Pages
256
ISBN10
1587435896
ISBN13
9781587435898
Series
Tags
Description
Beth Allison Barr has lived with assumptions about what she should do and who she should be. In Becoming the Pastor's Wife, Barr draws on her 25 years of experience as a pastor's wife and her scholarship as a historian to trace the role of the pastor's wife, showing how it both helped and hurt women in conservative Protestant traditions. While they gained an important leadership role, it came at a deep cost: losing independent church leadership opportunities and strengthening a gender hierarchy that prioritized male careers. Barr examines the connection between the decline of female ordination and the rise of the role of pastor's wife in the evangelical church, tracing its patterns in the larger history of Christian women's leadership. By expertly blending historical and personal narrative, she equips pastors' wives to better advocate for themselves while helping the church to understand the origins of the role as well as the historical reality of ordained women.