Beth Allison Barr Discusses Becoming The Pastor's Wife

Fabled is thrilled to welcome back bestselling author, and friend, Beth Allison Barr for the launch of her new book, Becoming The Pastor's Wife. She will be joining us for a conversation and signing on Tuesday, March 18th at 7PM!

About the Book:

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.

About the Author:

Beth Allison Barr (PhD, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) is James Vardaman Endowed Professor of History at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, where she specializes in medieval history, women's history, and church history. She is the author of the USA Today bestseller The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth. Her work has been featured by NPR and the New Yorker, and she has written for Christianity Today, the Washington Post, the Dallas Morning News, Sojourners, and Baptist News Global. Barr lives in Texas with her husband, a Baptist pastor, and their two children.