The Making of Biblical Womanhood, by Beth Allison Barr

11 min readJan 4, 2022

The book is available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08CJHYGRN/

This was the reading I did with my church’s small group during the last few months. It was a great experience, even as it forced us to face hard challenges that church history brings to our faith. Throughout the history of the church, there are tons and tons of examples when the people in power found the exact interpretation of the Bible that would keep them in power. On multiple occasions, the church didn’t manifest the love of Jesus for the needy and oppressed, but rather continued the practices of oppression that were happening outside their temples.

It is important to note that Dr. Barr is a PhD in Medieval History and this book makes a case for equality between men and women from a historical perspective. I have seen many people arguing that this book doesn’t move the egalitarian cause any further, because it doesn’t deal with the biblical text properly, but that is not true. In the end, I agree that, as Christians, we should treat the Bible as the word of God. However, in the same way we can use philosophical arguments as part of a cumulative case for the existence of God, we can also use historical arguments as part of a cumulative case for the acceptance of women in ministry.

Background

The initial motivation for this book came after Dr. Barr’s husband was fired as a youth pastor of a church because he challenged the leadership to accept women as teachers in the church as well. They were not only fired from the church, but received just a month of severance pay, subject to them not disclosing the reasons why they were leaving. The last bit was meant to keep up appearances, and that reflects so much of the toxicity that is seen in the contemporary church, at least in the US (A Church Called Tov, by Scot McKnight and Laura Barringer moves this conversation even further).

Full of grief and sadness, the book shows examples of how the church in the US failed to meet Jesus’s standards and contributed to the practices of oppression in their society. I’ll not cover all of those stories in this summary, but rather focus on the content that Dr. Barr extracts from her examples.

The Beginning of Patriarchy

The Council of Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW) is part of multiple examples presented in the book, and they explicitly defend that “God created a divine order in which husbands rule over their wives, and this order was established at the beginning of creation” (p. 11). Owen Stratchan, one of the leaders in the CBMW, equates the notion of “man rule; woman follow” with what is described currently as complementarianism in the church setting, and more commonly referred as patriarchy by the rest of our society.

A gender hierarchy in which women rank under men can be found in almost every era and among every people group. When the church denies women the ability to preach, lead, teach, and sometimes even work outside the home, the church is continuing a long historical tradition of subordinating women (p. 20).

Dr. Barr points out that subordination of women to men is found as early as The Epic of Gilgamesh, but its presence in the beginning of our history does not imply that it was designed by God: “Instead of assuming that patriarchy is instituted by God, we must ask whether patriarchy is a product of sinful human hands” (p. 25). In Genesis 3:16, when God is speaking to the woman about the consequences of her sin, he says “she shall be under dominion of her husband,” i.e. the subordination of women to men is a consequence of the fall (I didn’t research more about this interpretation of the text, so I’ll leave it to the reader).

Pauline texts

Paul is definitely a major source for male authority arguments by evangelicals, but Dr. Barr argues that we could be reading Paul differently. It is true that she is not a biblical scholar and this chapter relies a lot on secondary sources, but I’ll try to focus on the most interesting passages that she brings up.

“The evangelical church fears that recognizing women’s leadership will mean bowing to cultural peer pressure. But what if the church is bowing to cultural peer pressure by denying women’s leadership?” (p. 41)

This quote above is, for me, the best insight from the whole book. Whenever we are talking about women as preachers, or equality between men and women in general, people will respond that we are just succumbing to cultural pressure. The author asks us to question this assumption and flip the narrative to see that maybe women subordination is the position that yielded to cultural pressure throughout history. She points out that, in medieval sermons, we see very little emphasis on female submission as a basis for a successful marriage (p. 43), and even in the whole Catholic tradition, marital subordination is not broadly found.

In Colossians 3:18–22, for example, Paul is describing exactly what Roman society would expect from wives, children, and slaves: “Rather than including the household codes to dictate how Christians should follow the gender hierarchy of the Roman Empire, what if Paul was teaching Christians to live differently within their Roman context?” (p. 46). The Ephesian household code, on the other hand, is completely oppositional of what the Roman world would expect, putting mutual submission right in the beginning (Eph 5:21) and asking husbands to love their wives as their own bodies (women’s bodies were considered imperfect and deformed men).

“Not only did early Christians place women in leadership roles; they met together on equal footing — men, women, children, and slaves — in the privacy of the home, a traditionally female space. Christianity was deviant and immoral because it was perceived as undermining ideals of Roman masculinity. Christianity was repugnant to Pliny because it didn’t follow the Roman household codes — not because it followed them.” (pp. 53–54)

In 1 Corinthians 14:33–36, it appears that Paul is blatantly telling women to be silent in the church. However, Paul uses a rhetorical practice in 1 Corinthians 6 and 7 where he quotes a faulty view of the Gentiles (“all things are lawful to me”, “it is well for a man not to touch a woman”), so that he can challenge that view. What if Paul is doing the same in chapter 14? Theologian Lucy Peppiatt writes: “The prohibitions placed on women in the letter to the Corinthians are examples of how the Corinthians were treating women, in line with their own cultural expectations and values, against Paul’s teachings.” (p. 61, quoting Lucy Peppiatt, Rediscovering Scripture’s Vision for Women, p. 42)

“As a historian, I find it hard to ignore how similar Paul’s words are to the Greco-Roman world in which he lives. Yet, even if I am wrong and Paul is only drawing on Roman sources instead of intentionally quoting them for the purpose of refutation, I would still argue that the directives Paul gave to Corinthian women are limited to their historical context. Why? Because consistency is an interpretative virtue. Paul is not making a blanket decree for women to be silent; he allows women to speak throughout his letters (1 Corinthians 11:1–6 is a case in point). Paul is not limiting women’s leadership; he tells us with his own hand that women lead in the early church and that he supports their ministries.” (pp. 62–63)

From Medieval to Modern times

Conventional wisdom will tell us that, during medieval times, women were not allowed to preach, since they weren’t allowed to be priests; and that women were subordinate to the men in their lives, like her husband or father: “But conventional wisdom isn’t always true” (p. 73). Margery Kemp was an exemplary woman that challenged the status quo and confronted the archbishop by explaining how Jesus endorsed women to preach the Word of God and that she should not be silent. And she is not the only example: “Unlike modern evangelicals, medieval Christians remembered the female leaders of their past. Medieval churches, sermons, and devotional literature overflowed with valiant women from the early years of Christianity” (p. 76).

However, the medieval church was still uncomfortable with women actively serving in leadership roles. Peter Abelard (famous medieval theologian) was a champion for women in leadership and argued that Jesus himself supported female ordination, but he lost the battle. Historical circumstances can be seen as the cause. The church was trying to increase clergy authority and, given the patriarchal world they lived in, women needed to be taken out of the picture: “Priests were defined as men who were not polluted by the sexual impurity of women. Not only could women not be priests, but women’s bodies were seen as potentially threatening to male leaders” (pp. 93–94).

“Women have always been wives and mothers, but it wasn’t until the Protestant Reformation that being a wife and a mother became the “ideological touchstone of holiness” for women. Before the Reformation, women could gain spiritual authority by rejecting their sexuality. Virginity empowered them. Women became nuns and took religious vows, and some, like Catherine of Siena and Hildegard of Bingen, found their voices rang with the authority of men. Indeed, the further removed medieval women were from the married state, the closer they were to God. After the Reformation, the opposite became true for Protestant women. The more closely they identified with being wives and mothers, the godlier they became” (pp. 102–103).

It is interesting that, on the one hand, women could be seen as spiritually equal to men given the priesthood of all believers; on the other hand, women’s subordinate role even in their home made them confined to low-status domestic work (p. 104). The identity of women was tied to their role inside the house, and nothing more. “Theologically, though, I agree with the Reformation… I think Luther was right — about faith, Jesus, the priesthood of all believers, and the Bible. At the same time, the Reformation wasn’t perfect. Glorifying the past because we like that story better isn’t history; it is propaganda.” (p. 107)

“Reformation theology might have removed the priest, but it replaced him with the husband.” (p. 117)

In somewhat recent times, when the NIV (New International Version) announced some changes in their translation to be more gender neutral, they were accused of going on a slippery slope of feminism. Famous names like Wayne Grudem and John Piper denounced that, most of the time, this gender-inclusive language was not biblically accurate (p. 131): “The ESV was a direct response to the gender-inclusive language debate. It was born to secure readings of Scripture that preserved male headship. It was born to fight against liberal feminism and secular culture challenging the Word of God” (p. 132).

Dr. Barr reminds us, though, that medieval Christians would translate the Bible in gender-inclusive ways hundreds of years before any feminist movement around the world. For example, in Genesis 1:27, the Latin Vulgate translated the Hebrew word adam as gender-inclusive Latin word homo or hominem (p. 140): “The English Bible is a historical artifact as much as it is the Word of God… People are products of the world in which they live, and translators are no exception. What any translator or interpreter brings to the Bible influences how we understand the Bible” (p. 143).

In 1 Timothy 3:1–13, for example, it is possible to see how the choice to translate many neutral Greek words to masculine words in English heavily influenced the church doctrine that only men could be lead pastors:

“We assume 1 Timothy 3:1–13 is referencing men in leadership roles (overseer/bishop and deacon). But is this because of how our English Bibles translate the text? Whereas the Greek text uses the words whoever and anyone, with the only specific reference to man appearing in verse 12 (a literal Greek translation of the phrase is “one woman man,” referencing the married state of deacons), modern English Bibles have introduced eight to ten male pronouns within the verses. None of those male pronouns in our English Bibles are in the Greek text” (pp. 147–148).

Battle over inerrancy

As I pointed out above, one of the main arguments from conservative Christians is that support for women in leadership is succumbing to cultural pressure. And Biblical inerrancy is at the heart of this issue: “For many, inerrancy meant not only that the Bible was without error but that it had to be without error to be true at all… If we can’t trust the biblical account of creation, they argued, then how can we trust the biblical story of Jesus?” (p. 188).

The problem is that inerrancy is oftentimes linked to a plain and literal interpretation: “If Ephesians 5 told wives to submit to their husbands, the plain and literal interpretation demands that wives submit to their husbands. Those who disagree were not faithful to Scripture. And just like that, evangelicals baptized patriarchy” (p. 190). The same argument of plain and literal interpretation is brought up by people who defend the 7-day literal creation account. However, if you speak with any serious Biblical studies scholar, they will tell you that you also need to consider the context and type of literature of the text.

“The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing Christians that oppression is godly. That God ordained some people, simply because of their sex or skin color (or both), as belonging under the power of other people. That women’s subordination is central to the gospel of Christ” (p. 173).

A recent development of the women subordination issue was the revival of a heresy called Arianism. Arius argued that Jesus is not of the same substance, and also subordinate to the father. As part of their argument, people would now say: “because Jesus is eternally subordinate to God the Father, wives are eternally subordinate to their husbands” (p. 193). This is not the focus of the book, but a tangential note, so I’ll not continue the discussion further.

Conclusion

After looking at so many examples from Church history, it is essential for us, as Christians, to at least challenge the notion of Biblical womanhood that we see around us. Of course, we need to dig deep into the Bible, but I believe that the biblical text will also point towards a more egalitarian view of men and women.

“Evidence shows me how Christian patriarchy was built, stone by stone, throughout the centuries. Evidence shows me how, century after century, arguments for women’s subordination reflect historical circumstances more than the face of God. Evidence shows me that just because complementarianism uses biblical texts doesn’t mean it reflects biblical truth. Evidence shows me the trail of sin and destruction left in the wake of teachings that place women under the power of men. Evidence shows me, throughout history, the women who have always known the truth about patriarchy and who have always believed that Jesus sets women free” (p. 205).

In an important topic like this one, it is not sufficient to change your own views. If you believe that women’s subordination is not biblical and actually detrimental to women, we have a moral obligation to fight against it: “Biblical womanhood is Christian patriarchy. The only reason it continues to flourish is because women and men — just like you and me — continue to support it. What if we all stopped supporting it?” (p. 216)