The Making of Biblical Womanhood

How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth

Barr, Beth Allison

• Publisher: Brazos Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781493429639
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Sexuality & Gender in Religion

USA Today Bestseller Christianity Today 2022 Book Award Finalist (History & Biography) Foreword INDIES 2021 Finalist for Religion "A powerful work of skillful research and personal insight."-- Publishers Weekly Biblical womanhood--the belief that God designed women to be submissive wives, virtuous mothers, and joyful homemakers--pervades North American Christianity. From choices about careers to roles in local churches to relationship dynamics, this belief shapes the everyday lives of evangelical women. Yet biblical womanhood isn't biblical, says Baylor University historian Beth Allison Barr. It arose from a series of clearly definable historical moments. This book moves the conversation about biblical womanhood beyond Greek grammar and into the realm of church history--ancient, medieval, and modern--to show that this belief is not divinely ordained but a product of human civilization that continues to creep into the church. Barr's historical insights provide context for contemporary teachings about women's roles in the church and help move the conversation forward. Interweaving her story as a Baptist pastor's wife, Barr sheds light on the #ChurchToo movement and abuse scandals in Southern Baptist circles and the broader evangelical world, helping readers understand why biblical womanhood is more about human power structures than the message of Christ.

ONE
The Beginning of Patriarchy

IN MAY 2019, Owen Strachan, former president of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, wrote an essay titled “Divine Order in a Chaotic Age: On Women Preaching.” He got straight to the point, quoting Genesis 1:1: “In the beginning, God made the heavens and the earth.” Strachan’s argument followed with confidence: God created a divine order in which husbands rule over their wives, and this order was established at the beginning of creation.

The man is created first in the Old Testament, and possesses what the New Testament will call headship over his wife. Adam is constituted the leader of his home; he is given authority in it, authority that is shaped in a Christlike way as the biblical story unfolds. . . . On the basis of a man’s domestic leadership, men are called to provide spiritual leadership and protection of the church (1 Timothy 2:9–15). Elders preach, teach, and shepherd the flock of God; only men are called to the office of elder, and only men who excel as heads of their wives and children are to be considered as possible candidates for eldership (1 Timothy 3:1–7; Titus 1:5–9).1

Men lead. Women follow. The Bible tells us so.

For a time, I believed this too. It echoed all around during my teenage and young adult years. I heard it attending a Bill Gothard conference, which some people in my small-town Southern Baptist church invited me to. I heard it from my Bible study leaders in college. I heard it from the hosts of Christian radio stations. I heard it from the notes in my study Bible. I heard it at almost every wedding ceremony I attended, spoken loud and clear as each preacher read Ephesians 5. Male headship was a familiar hum in the background of my life: women were called to support their husbands, and men were called to lead their wives. It was unequivocal truth ordained by the inerrant Word of God.

But this was too familiar a story.

Even from my early years training as a historian, Christian arguments about male headship troubled me. You see, Christians were not the only ones to argue that women’s subordination is the divine order. Christians are, historically speaking, pretty late to the patriarchy game. We may claim that the gendered patterns of our lives are different from those assumed in mainstream culture, but history tells a different tale. Let me show you, from the world history sources I have been teaching for more than two decades, how much Christian patriarchy mimics the patriarchy of the non-Christian world.

What Is Patriarchy?

First, let’s talk about patriarchy.

Not long ago, evangelicals were talking a lot about patriarchy. Russell Moore, currently the president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, declared patriarchy a better word for the conservative Christian gender hierarchy than complementarianism. He told Mark Dever, pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, DC, that, despite his support for complementarianism, he hates the word itself. “I prefer the word ‘patriarchy,’” Moore said.2 Moore made a similar argument in an earlier journal article, warning that evangelical abandonment of the word patriarchy was capitulation to secular peer pressure. For Moore, this wasn’t a good reason to give up the word. As he writes, “We must remember that ‘evangelical’ is also a negative term in many contexts. We must allow the patriarchs and apostles themselves, not the editors of Playboy or Ms. magazine, to define the grammar of our faith.”3 Because the word patriarchy itself is biblical, biblical Christians should be proud to use it.

I first learned of the evangelical conversation about the word patriarchy from a 2012 blog post written by Rachel Held Evans, the well-known author of A Year of Biblical Womanhood.4 She noted that Owen Strachan used the word patriarchy too. Of course I looked up the reference. I remember smiling when I read Strachan’s words. His straightforward approach provided a compromise between evangelicals who prefer the word patriarchy, like Moore, and those who would rather use the word complementarian (like Denny Burk, the current president of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood).5 “For millennia,” Strachan explains, “followers of God have practiced what used to be called patriarchy and is now called complementarianism.”6 Complementarianism is patriarchy. Owen Strachan is right (at least about this).

So, what is patriarchy? Historian Judith Bennett explains patriarchy as having three main meanings in English:

1. Male ecclesiastical leaders, such as the patriarch (archbishop of Constantinople) in Greek Orthodoxy
2. Legal power of male household heads (fathers/husbands)
3. A society that promotes male authority and female submission

It is this third meaning on which, like Bennett, we will focus. As Bennett writes, “When feminists at rallies chant, ‘Hey, Hey, Ho, Ho, Patriarchy’s Got to Go,’ we are not talking about the ecclesiastical structures of Greek Orthodoxy or about a specific form of fatherly domination within families, but instead about a general system through which women have been and are subordinated to men.”7 This third meaning of patriarchy encompasses the first two. Both the tradition of male church leaders and the authority of male household heads function within cultures that generally promote male authority and female submission.

American evangelicalism provides a case in point. A 2017 Barna study, focused on the perception of women and power in American society, drew evidence from three polls to compare attitudes toward women across several demographics—including gender, age, political preference, and religious identity (evangelical, Protestant, Catholic, and practicing Christian). The study found that evangelicals are the “most hesitant” group in supporting women’s work outside the home: only 52 percent “are comfortable with the future possibility of more women than men in the workforce” (a percentage more than 20 points below that of the general American population). Evangelicals also express the most discomfort with a female CEO. The study also found that evangelicals are the least comfortable with women as pastors (39 percent). For evangelicals these attitudes are connected: limiting women’s spiritual authority goes hand in hand with limiting women’s economic power. As the study puts it, these results are “perhaps due to a more traditional interpretation of women’s roles as primary care-givers in the home.”8 Evangelical teachings that subordinate women within the home and inside the walls of the church influence attitudes about women in the workplace.9 Or, considered within Bennett’s framework, male ecclesiastical authority and male household authority exist within broader cultural practices that subordinate women to men. Patriarchy doesn’t stay confined to one sphere.

Let’s consider an even more specific example of how patriarchal attitudes manifest in evangelical culture. Several years ago, when my husband was serving as a youth pastor, our church was looking for a new secretary. He suggested a friend of ours for the position. The friend really needed some additional work and had the advantage of already being a church member. But the friend was a man. And my husband was suggesting him for church secretary. The response from one of the other pastors was telling. Would this man, the pastor asked, really want to answer the phone? It was okay to hire a woman to answer the phone, but the job would be demeaning to a man. So demeaning, in fact, that the pastor preferred not to hire him, despite our friend’s financial need. The job, suitable for a woman to do, was beneath the dignity of a man.

This example of a man being deemed above the work suitable for a woman fits into a larger social pattern in which men’s work is more highly valued than women’s. Women outnumber men in my hometown of Waco, Texas, and women outnumber men at two of the three local institutions for higher education (more women attend Baylor University and McLennan Community College, while more men attend Texas State Technical College). Yet women in Waco average close to $20,000 less in yearly income than men. The largest wage gap between men and women is at the managerial and higher-administration level, where men earn almost $120,000 per year while women earn only $78,000.10 Women’s work, quite literally, is worth less than men’s.

This pattern of devaluing women’s work—whether the type of work or the monetary value of the work—is an example of patriarchy: a general system that values men and their contributions more than it values women and their contributions. Russell Moore maintains that this general system of patriarchy is not the same as the complementarian gender hierarchy. Christian patriarchy isn’t “pagan patriarchy,” as he has called it.11 Moore warns against a “predatory patriarchy” that harms women, but he also continues to support a system that promotes male authority and female submission. He argues that an orderly family structure in which wives submit only “to their own husbands” and fathers serve as a “visible sign of responsibility” makes life better for everyone.12

So is he right? Is Christian patriarchy different?

Christian Patriarchy Is Just Patriarchy

“But you only work part time?”

“So how many hours does that take you away from home during the week?”

“Oh, you breastfeed? I figured you didn’t do that since you worked.”

“Is your husband okay with you making more money than him?”

These are just a sampling of the questions I have been asked over the past twenty years. A pastor’s wife who continued to pursue my own career even while I had children perplexed many in my evangelical community—including some of my college students. One student was particularly vocal. He was theologically conservative and expressed concern about my choice to continue teaching as a wife and mother (especially as a pastor’s wife). He challenged me so often in the classroom that I took to rewriting lecture material, trying to minimize his disruptions. I wasn’t successful. Once the student suggested that I clear my teaching material with my husband before presenting it to my classroom. This both angered and unnerved me. It angered me that he thought it appropriate to suggest that I submit my teaching materials to the authority of my husband. It unnerved me because every semester I worried about how my vocation as a female professor clashed with conservative Christian expectations about female submission.

When I read Russell Moore’s attempt to distinguish “Christian patriarchy” from “pagan patriarchy,” the experience I had with this student came to mind. According to Moore, “pagan patriarchy” encourages women to submit to all men, while “Christian patriarchy” only concerns wives submitting to their husbands.13 Moore has softened his discussion of patriarchy over the years, emphasizing in his 2018 book that, in creation, men and women “are never given dominion over one another.” Yet he still clings to male headship. While he writes that “Scripture demolishes the idea that women, in general, are to be submissive to men, in general,” he explains wifely submission as cultivating “a voluntary attitude of recognition toward godly leadership.”14 Thus his general attitude remains unchanged: women should not submit to men in general (pagan patriarchy), but wives should submit to their husbands (Christian patriarchy).

Nice try, I thought. Tell that to my conservative male student. Because that student considered me to be under the authority of my husband, he was less willing to accept my authority over him in a university classroom. No matter how much Moore wants to separate “pagan patriarchy” from “Christian patriarchy,” he can’t. Both systems place power in the hands of men and take power away from women. Both systems teach men that women rank lower than they do. Both systems teach women that their voices a...