Did you know there are piles of guidebooks meant to help women excel at being the church’s first lady? From how to step out of a car when pulling up to church on Sunday, to preparing the perfect casserole, to keeping the kids smiling and still in the front pew. And those dirty dishes in the sink? They could be the talk of the ladies’ luncheon if you’re not careful.

On a recent episode of the podcast “Saved by the City,” historian Dr. Beth Allison Barr shared her research on why the role of pastor’s wife has evolved in many denominations to be the primary path of ministry for some women.

Dr. Barr is a professor of history at Baylor University and the bestselling author of “Becoming the Pastor’s Wife: How Marriage Replaced Ordination as a Woman’s Path to Ministry,” as well as “The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth.” She is a pastor’s wife and mom.

The below excerpt has been edited for length and clarity. You can listen to the longer interview with Dr. Barr as part of the “Saved by the City” podcast episode “So You Married a Priest?”

Talk about the wide-ranging expectations of a pastor’s wife.

The pastor’s wife really embodies, in many ways, the church and the ministry of the church. And so this goes from her home to her appearance to her ministry, as well as her demeanor, how she responds to people. Is she kind to people? Does she have a tone in her voice? You know, pastors’ wives get tone-policed all the time for how they talk to other people. Her ministry encompasses not just what she does, but also how she looks and even how well she keeps her house clean. I think about Dorothy Patterson, in her handbook for pastors’ wives, which was originally published in 2001, she says a sink full of dirty dishes in the parsonage may not be everyone’s business, but it is everyone’s gossip. And I’m just like, gosh, the pressures on these women who can’t even have dirty sinks.

In the book, you refer to this concept of “ministry by marriage.” What is this ministry that pastors’ wives are expected to fulfill?

Essentially, anything their husband or their church needs them to fulfill. I analyzed 150 pastor’s wife books across 1923 to 2023. While you see this language of calling kind of scattered throughout them, it picks up significantly by the time we get to the ’80s and the ’90s and the early 2000s. It’s this idea that Dorothy Patterson — again, our queen of the pastor’s wife role — she says God never calls a wife to something different than her husband. So, because God called the husband and you married him, you, by extension, now have that divine call, and it’s not to be a separate ministry role. You are now divinely called to be part of his ministry role. And she makes crystal clear: This isn’t you doing ministry — this is you being a helpmeet to your husband’s ministry.

Some women might hear that kind of two-in-one model — like you’re called to do all the things your husband is called to do as pastor, except potentially preach, depending on your setting or denomination — and think, wow, I get to do so much to serve the church, so what’s the problem?

I can speak really well to that because I’m somebody who actually likes the pastor’s wife role. I like not having to always be doing ministry. I can do what I want to do when I want to do it. And I like being a behind-the-scenes person. The problem is, is when you say this is the calling for everyone, that every woman who marries a man who’s in ministry is required to serve in this same way. You know, I think there’s some women that really flourish in this role because it fits their personality, it fits their gifting. This is all they really want to do and that’s great. But I’ve read enough of those pastor’s wife books to know there is a large number of women — in fact, I might even say the majority of women — who this is not an easy role for, and so much of those pastor’s wife books are actually trying to talk women down from the cliff. You can do this — this is really hard, but you can do this because God wouldn’t call you to do something he didn’t equip you to do. And so you see a lot of this trying to cheer each other on, because this is such a difficult, challenging role that most women don’t feel equipped for.

As a historian, you help modern Christians understand this broader, richer history of women in the church in the premodern, medieval, late medieval church, even Reformation era — that we see examples throughout church history of women leading and teaching authoritatively. And one of the biggest claims of your new book is that there’s a causal link between the slow erasure of those roles for women and the rise of the role of pastor’s wife. So talk about how the two are connected. 

What we begin to see is that model, those images of those women, begins to fade significantly. What we begin to see focus is the image of women as wives, and that the primary calling for women in ministry is through their marriage. And as this image gets more traction in churches, we start seeing the spread of biblical womanhood that is being led by pastors’ wives. We begin to see a demonization of women in independent ministry roles — that women who are doing separate ministry are doing it out of pride, out of sin, out of feminist rebellion because God doesn’t call women to preach. I cite some research studies of people in more conservative churches — when you ask them, “How do you feel about your church not supporting women in ministry?” — they’re like, “Our church supports women in ministry! Look at the pastor’s wife — women in our church can do anything. Look how visible they are.” And of course, what they don’t see is that those women are not getting paid for that labor, and those women would not be able to be in those positions if it wasn’t for their marriage to a pastor. It creates this image of women being very active in ministry in these conservative churches but without having to give women the titles or pay them for their job.

If my book does nothing else, I hope maybe it calls out in these conservative spaces how many challenges and difficulties and unfair things they have done to the women married to their pastors.

Roxanne Stone is the managing editor for Religion News Service.

Katelyn Beaty is author of Celebrities for Jesus: How Personas, Platforms, and Profits Are Hurting the Church (2022) as well as editorial director of Brazos Press. Learn more at KatelynBeaty.com.