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

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

Foreword INDIES 2025 Book of the Year Finalist (Religion)

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

As a pastor's wife for twenty-five years, Beth Allison Barr has lived with assumptions about what she should do and who she should be.

In Becoming the Pastor's Wife, Barr draws on that experience and her academic expertise to trace the history of the role of the pastor's wife, showing how it both helped and hurt women in conservative Protestant traditions. While they gained an important leadership role, it came at a deep cost: losing independent church leadership opportunities that existed throughout most of church history and strengthening a gender hierarchy that prioritized male careers.

Barr examines the connection between the decline of female ordination and the rise of the role of pastor's wife in the evangelical church, tracing its patterns in the larger history (ancient, medieval, Reformation, and modern) of Christian women's leadership.

By expertly blending historical and personal narrative, she equips pastors' wives to better advocate for themselves while helping the church understand the origins of the role as well as the historical reality of ordained women.

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

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