A haunting story

Know the past, change the future

I am declaring this week Beth Allison Barr Week here at CONNECTIONS. Her long awaited follow-up to The Making of Biblical Womanhood releases *tomorrow*!

Becoming the Pastor’s Wife is a remarkable book. In Beth’s signature style, she mixes archival research, a vast knowledge of church history, and personal narrative to tell long-lost (and intentionally hidden) histories.

I knew when I first read the manuscript of The Making of Biblical Womanhood that it would shake things up. Becoming the Pastor’s Wife does the same, perhaps even more so. Beth tenaciously follows research rabbit trails where they lead, which is sometimes to devastating places. These are hidden stories because they were intentionally hidden. And these are stories that must be told if we are to understand how evangelicalism became what it is today.

One story in particular is absolutely gutting. Chapter 8 was an especially tough read for me because I know for a fact that it is not the only such story. I have heard first-hand accounts of other women whose stories align remarkably closely with Maria’s story.

Beth has given me permission to share with you an excerpt from that chapter. This chapter alone is worth the cost of the book. (But it’s also perfectly fine to borrow a copy from a library or a friend; buying a book is the most direct way to support an author, but authors really are just thrilled to have their books read, any way you can get your hands on one!)

If you do want to purchase a copy, you can do so here from Bookshop. Or, if you want to preorder multiple copies (this is your last day to do so), you can get some free merch by ordering here.

Preordering or buying a copy the week the book releases is extra important—it sends the message to bookstores to stock and promote the book, so if you’re thinking of buying a book or two, now is the best time to do it!

Without further ado, here’s your first glimpse at Becoming the Pastor’s Wife:

The Cost of Dorothy’s Hats

I stood in the atrium of our recently built $2 million church building. It was in the early days after my husband was fired. My sleeveless shirt was gauzy blue. I remember because the tears I fought to suppress came anyway, sliding down my face to stain my shirt. The shirt hung loose on me; for the first (and only) time in my life, I had lost my appetite. The stress of what was happening to us, my disbelief that the people who knew us so well would let this happen to us, had overwhelmed my body. I stopped eating; I stopped sleeping; I stopped laughing. That Sunday morning, I followed one of the elders out of the worship service on a whim—a last- ditch effort to plead for my husband’s job.

Sympathy showed in his face as we stood in the morning light that flooded through the tall windows and pooled on the polished concrete floor. He was my friend, but in that moment it wasn’t my friend listening to my story. It was a male church elder, authorized by a particular interpretation of 1 Timothy 2–3. I watched when he walked away to stand by another elder. I could tell he was conveying my words. Only a few feet separated us, but I wasn’t invited to join them. Their posture, backs turned away and heads bent, signaled a closed space almost as clearly as if they had shut an office door.

This didn’t surprise me.

As a pastor’s wife in a conservative evangelical church, I had served like a leader for fourteen years. I had been interviewed like a leader before my husband was offered the job, I had conformed to leadership expectations, and I was perceived as a leader by the church congregation.

But I wasn’t one.

I reflected pastoral authority but carried none of my own. I was a glorified volunteer who invested several hours a week in ministry work yet was not included in any official leadership role. At best, my efforts that morning would be received as that of a suffering wife, perhaps helping to soften the blow of the sudden job loss on our family. They wouldn’t be received as that of a leader with wisdom about the implications this decision had for the community. I had played a significant role for fourteen years teaching and guiding a subset of the congregation, yet my voice was excluded from a conversation about the fate of that ministry.

The worst part wasn’t the realization that my last- ditch effort would fail (which it did).

The worst part wasn’t my growing concern with a theology and ecclesiology that concentrated church governance in a very small group of men.

The worst part wasn’t understanding, perhaps for the first time in my experience as a pastor’s wife, how contingent my role was— that all the influence I had wielded, authority in ministry I had carried, had come only as an extension of my husband’s job.

I didn’t understand the worst part until later, after I had time to reflect, and even then, I didn’t fully know the worst of it.

I do now.

The worst part is knowing, historically, how I had come to be in that atrium; knowing how women like me had become ministry leaders without ministerial authority; knowing how the disappearance of women’s independent leadership and the rise of a dependent ministry role tied to marriage had little to do with the Bible; knowing how removing women from leadership positions equal to those of men and tying their authority to subordinate positions increased women’s vulnerability.

You see, during a research trip to the Southern Baptist Historical Library and Archives in Nashville— exactly one week before the 2023 annual Southern Baptist convention in New Orleans—I began to uncover a story hauntingly familiar to the sex abuse crisis plaguing the SBC. A story connecting the dots between a gender theology that rejects women’s independent pastoral authority and a culture that privileges male clergy over clergy abuse victims. A story that shows the precarity of the pastor’s wife role.

It took me eight months to piece together the story, with the assistance of the SBC archives in Nashville, the Canadian Baptists of Ontario and Quebec at their main office in Toronto, and the archives in the neighboring town of Hamilton, as well as conversations with former church members at Dufferin Street Baptist Church in Toronto.

The story I uncovered reinforced for me how lucky I am in my personal experience as a pastor’s wife.

I may have been powerless in that atrium seven years ago, but I have never been powerless in my marriage. I am married to a kind and generous man who loves Jesus, has integrity, and believes fully in the dignity and equality of women. He majored in social work and became a pastor because he felt called to help people— not because he wanted to build a social media platform and preach before thousands of people. Neither money nor power motivate him. He isn’t perfect, but he is a man after God’s own heart; he loves me and our children deeply.

I am lucky.

Not all pastors’ wives are.

Content taken from Becoming the Pastor’s Wife by Beth Allison Barr ©2025. Used by permission of Brazos Press.

Also, catch Beth in-person in Waco tomorrow to celebrate the book’s release; details and registration here, and also a link to attend virtually.

And…Beth will be in West Michigan this Thursday, March 20, 7pm, at the Calvin University chapel! Information and registration here.

I’ll have more to say on another project Beth has launched, later this week. Stay tuned…