Beth Allison Barr Quotes

The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing Christians that oppression is godly. Their God ordained some people, simply because of their sex or skin color (or both), as belonging under the power of other people.

Instead of being a point of pride for Christians, shouldn't the historical continuity of a practice that has caused women to fare much worse than men for thousands of years caused concern? Shouldn't Christians, who are called to be different from the world, treat women differently? What if patriarchy isn't divinely ordained but is a result of human sin?

In a world that didn’t accept the word of a woman as a valid witness, Jesus chose women as witnesses for his resurrection. In a world that gave husbands power over the very lives of their wives, Paul told husbands to do the opposite—to give up their lives for their wives. In a world that saw women as biologically deformed men, monstrous even, Paul declared that men were just like women in Christ.

Ironically, complementarian theology claims it is defending a plain and natural interpretation of the Bible while really defending an interpretation that has been corrupted by our sinful human drive to dominate others and build hierarchies of power and oppression.

Like racism, patriarchy is a shapeshifter—conforming to each new era, looking as if it has always belonged.

I knew the problem wasn’t a lack of women leading in church history. The problem was simply that women’s leadership has been forgotten, because women’s stories throughout history have been covered up, neglected, or retold to recast women as less significant than they really were.

Ideas matter. Ideas that depict women as less than men influence men to treat women as less than men. Ideas that objectify women result in women being treated like objects (sex objects, mostly).

Patriarchy exists in the Bible because the Bible was written in a patriarchal world. Historically speaking, there is nothing surprising about biblical stories and passages riddled with patriarchal attitudes and actions. What is surprising is how many biblical passages and stories undermine, rather than support, patriarchy.

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.

Patriarchy walks hand in hand with racism, and it always has. The same biblical passages used to declare black people unequal are used to declare women unfit for leadership. Patriarchy and racism are "interlocking structures of oppression" Isn't it time we get rid of both?

From Mary Magdalene to Waldensian women, Ursuline nuns, Moravian wives, Quaker sisters, Black women preachers, and suffragette activists, history shows us that women do not wait on the approval of men to do the work of God.

When we differentiate women because of their sex, we objectify them and deny them their humanity.

Patriarchy walks with structural racism and systemic oppression, and it has done so consistently throughout history.

Ironically, complementarian theology claims it is defending a plain and natural interpretation of the Bible while really defending an interpretation that has been corrupted by our sinful human drive to dominate others and build hierarchies of power and oppression. I can’t think of anything less Christlike than hierarchies like these.

Adam’s rebellion was claiming God’s authority for himself, and Eve’s rebellion was submitting to Adam in place of God.37

Glorifying the past because we like the story better isn't history; it's propaganda.

Patriarchy looks right because it is the historical practice of the world.

Complementarianism rewards women who play by the rules.

The historical reality is that social systems that invest some people with power over the lives of other people result in the destruction of people.

Reformation theology might have removed the priest, but it replaced him with the husband.

It is in Genesis 3:16 (God speaking to the woman) where we first see hierarchy in human relationships. . . . Hierarchy was not God’s will for the first pair, but it was imposed when they chose to disregard his command and eat the forbidden fruit. . . . Adam would now be subject to his source (the ground), even as Eve was now subject to her source (Adam). This was the moment of the birth of patriarchy. As a result of their sin, the man was now the master over the woman, and the ground was now master over the man, contrary to God’s original intention in creation.34 Patriarchy wasn’t what God wanted; patriarchy was a result of human sin.

Once I finally came face to face with the ugliness and pervasiveness of historical patriarchy, I realized that rather than being different from the world, Christians were just like everyone else in their treatment of women. When Dobson upheld a battered woman's desire to remain with her husband, he was just one more voice in more than four thousand years of history that agreed: women's place is under the power of men.

The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing Christians that oppression is godly.

Glorifying the past because we like that story better isn’t history; it is propaganda

We can no longer deny a link between complementarianism and abuse.

Historically, one of the greatest problems for women is that we do not remember our past and we do not work together to change our future. We do not stand together. But what if we did?

Once I finally came face to face with the ugliness and pervasiveness of historical patriarchy, I realized that rather than being different from the world, Christians were just like everyone else in their treatment of women.

For example, Katherine Zell, wife of the Strasbourg reformer Matthew Zell, demanded that she be judged “not according to the standards of a woman, but according to the standards of one whom God has filled with the Holy Spirit.

No, the problem in the church is not strong women, but rather weak men who feel threatened by strong women, and have tried various means, even by dubious exegesis, to prohibit them from exercising their gifts and graces in the church.

The Reformation world elevated marriage as the ideal state for women, and evangelicals, who identify strongly with the Reformation legacy, … have done the same — to the detriment of not only single women and working women but also married women.

Women became "wives" in English Bible translations, even when they would not have been considered wives in the biblical world. The word marriage never appears in the Hebrew text. But it appears fifty times in the Geneva Bible and nineteen times in the KJV.

Paul’s purpose seems clear: to distinguish what the Corinthians were doing (“women be silent”) and to clarify that Christians should not be following the Corinthian practice (“What!”). While I cannot guarantee this is what Paul was doing, it makes a lot of (historical) sense.

It’s true that historical memory about female leadership empowered later women like Margery Kempe to preach, teach, and lead. But it’s also true that patriarchal beliefs about the inferiority and impurity of female bodies made it more difficult for women to exercise these spiritual gifts.

Instead of justifying male authority on account of female inferiority, the Christian household codes affirm women as having equal worth to men. Instead of focusing on wifely submission (everyone was doing that), the Christian household codes demand that the husband do exactly the opposite of what Roman law allowed: sacrificing his life for his wife instead of exercising power over her life.

If we look at the broad sweep of history, we find some interesting patterns regarding the size of women’s rooms. When political and social structures are less centralized and less clearly defined, women often experience greater agency; their rooms are bigger. It is no accident that the stories of the most authoritative women in Christian history stem from the fourth century through the tenth century, when the authority structures of Christianity—not to mention the political structures to which Christianity became attached—were more fluid. It is also no accident that, after the ecclesiastical hierarchy became more centralized and more powerful during the central Middle Ages, women’s ability to exercise formal authority diminished; women’s rooms became smaller. There are always exceptions, of course, but these general patterns are clear.

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.7 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.

So here is my question for complementarian evangelicals: What if you are wrong? What if evangelicals have been understanding Paul through the lens of modern culture instead of the way Paul intended to be understood? 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? What if, instead of a "plain and natural" reading, our interpretation of Paul - and subsequent exclusion of women from leadership roles - results from succumbing to the attitudes and patterns of thinking around us? Christians in the past may have used Paul to exclude women from leadership, but this doesn't mean that the subjugation of women is biblical. It just means that Christians today are repeating the same mistake of Christians in the past - modeling our treatment of women after the world around us instead of the world Jesus shows us is possible.

The culture that created the KJV championed marriage as the ideal state decreed by God. The holy (male-headed) household formed the center of English society, from the household of the urban merchant to the lordly estates of the members of Parliament. Law codes favored husbands and male heirs by excluding women from inheritance, reducing married women to the legal status of children, and elevating marriage as key for securing masculine social rank and authority. Yet early modern biblical scholars found that marriage was puzzlingly absent from the Old Testament (the Hebrew Bible), especially for an institution thought to be championed by God.

I use my own interpretation of Virginia Woolf’s phrase “a room of one’s own” to explain historical differences within the continuity of women’s lives.19 Women, throughout history, live within the confines of patriarchy. Bennett describes this as the patriarchal equilibrium. Regardless of how much freedom women have, they always have less than men. Yet the patriarchal equilibrium is a continuum, not a fixed standard. The boundaries of patriarchy wax and wane; the size of a woman’s room—the space where she is able to make her own choices—changes. Some women have bigger rooms, such as wealthy women with husbands and fathers among the highest social classes. Some women have smaller rooms, such as poorer women from families with little political and social influence. Historical circumstances, such as the aftermath of the Black Death in Europe, temporarily expanded women’s rooms by increasing their independence as wage earners, while other historical circumstances, such as Athenian democracy, made women’s rooms smaller.

Paul was an educated Roman citizen. He would have been familiar with contemporary rhetorical practices that corrected faulty understanding by quoting the faulty understanding and then refuting it. Paul does this in 1 Corinthians 6 and 7 with his quotations “all things are lawful for me,” “food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food,” and “it is well for a man not to touch a woman.”47 In these instances, Paul is quoting the faulty views of the Gentile world, such as “all things are lawful for me.” Paul then “strongly modifies” them.48 Paul would have been familiar with the contemporary views about women, including Livy’s, that women should be silent in public and gain information from their husbands at home. Isn’t it possible, as Peppiatt has argued, that Paul is doing the same thing in 1 Corinthians 11 and 14 that he does in 1 Corinthians 6 and 7?49 Refuting bad practices by quoting those bad practices and then correcting them? As 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.”50 What if Paul was so concerned that Christians in Corinth were imposing their own cultural restrictions on women that he called them on it? He quoted the bad practice, which Corinthian men were trying to drag from the Roman world into their Christian world, and then he countered it. The Revised Standard Version (RSV) lends support to the idea that this is what Paul was doing. Paul first lays out the cultural restrictions: “As in all the churches of the saints, the women should keep silence in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as even the law says. If there is anything they desire to know, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church” (1 Corinthians 14:33–35). And then Paul intervenes: “What! Did the word of God originate with you, or are you the only ones it has reached? If anyone thinks that he is a prophet, or spiritual, he should acknowledge that what I am writing to you is a command of the Lord. If anyone does not recognize this, he is not recognized. So, my brethren, earnestly desire to prophesy, and do not forbid speaking in tongues; but all things should be done decently and in order” (vv. 36–40).

My modern students balk at how Babylonian law allowed husbands to drown their wives for alleged adultery, but my students are also living in the state of Texas in which women make up 94 percent of the victims in domestic partner murder-suicides—not to mention the United States in which almost 25 percent of women have experienced severe physical violence by an intimate partner.

Patriarchy exists in the Bible because the Bible was written in a patriarchal world.

What if patriarchy isn’t divinely ordained but is a result of human sin?

Bennett describes this as the patriarchal equilibrium. Regardless of how much freedom women have, they always have less than men. Yet the patriarchal equilibrium is a continuum, not a fixed standard. The boundaries of patriarchy wax and wane; the size of a woman’s room—the space where she is able to make her own choices—changes. Some women have bigger rooms, such as wealthy women with husbands and fathers among the highest social classes. Some women have smaller rooms, such as poorer women from families with little political and social influence. Historical circumstances, such as the aftermath of the Black Death in Europe, temporarily expanded women’s rooms by increasing their independence as wage earners, while other historical circumstances, such as Athenian democracy, made women’s rooms smaller.

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

And then Paul intervenes: “What! Did the word of God originate with you, or are you the only ones it has reached? If anyone thinks that he is a prophet, or spiritual, he should acknowledge that what I am writing to you is a command of the Lord.

Patriarchy, for Bushnell, was not just a result of the curse; it was embedded in the fall itself. Adam’s rebellion was claiming God’s authority for himself, and Eve’s rebellion was submitting to Adam in place of God.

What if Paul was so concerned that Christians in Corinth were imposing their own cultural restrictions on women that he called them on it? He quoted the bad practice, which Corinthian men were trying to drag from the Roman world into their Christian world, and then he countered it.

These shifts started well before Luther nailed up his Ninety-Five Theses, so they were not launched by the Protestant Reformation per se. But the changing political and socioeconomic landscape of Europe found a supportive partner in Reformation theology. The language of God, argues Roper, married the gender hierarchy of early modern Europe, and subordinate wifedom became synonymous with being a godly woman. Biblical womanhood is rooted in human patriarchal structures that keep seeping back into the church, but the emphasis in biblical womanhood on being a wife was strengthened and reinforced during the social changes wrought by the sixteenth

the charts show that the Greek name Junia was almost universally translated in its female form until the twentieth century, when the name suddenly began to be translated as the masculine Junias. Why? Gaventa explains: “Epp makes it painfully, maddeningly clear that a major factor in twentieth-century treatments of Romans 16:7 was the assumption that a woman could not have been an apostle.

I kept telling myself that no church was perfect. And that the best way to change a system was by working from within it. So I stayed in the system and I stayed silent.

She [Christine de Pizan] realized that misogyny hurts all of us, whether we recognize it or not, and it especially hurts those already marginalized by economics, education, race, and even religion.

Complementarianism is patriarchy. And patriarchy is about power. Neither have ever been about Jesus.

The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.” I haven’t forgotten the line, because I disagree with it. 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.

evangelicals

it wasn’t until I began to pull on the historical threads that weave complementarianism together that I really began to doubt it. You see, I had fallen for the biggest lie of all: that adhering to complementarianism is the only option for those who believe the Bible is the authoritative Word of God. After all, Paul says clearly that the man is the head and the wife is to submit. Except now I know that when Paul’s words are contextualized both theologically and historically, they read rather differently. So while experience shapes my perspective of complementarian teachings, evidence from my research as a scholar, my teaching as a college professor, and my professional and personal study of the Bible has led me to abandon these teachings. 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.

What if evangelicals remembered women like Christine de Pizan and Dorothy L. Sayers? What if we remembered that women have always been leaders, teachers, and preachers, even in evangelical history? What if our seminaries used textbooks that included women? What if our Sunday school and Bible study curriculum correctly reflected Junia as an apostle, Priscilla as a coworker, and women like Hildegard of Bingen as preachers? What if we recognized women’s leadership the same way Paul did throughout his letters—even entrusting the Letter to the Romans to the deacon Phoebe? What if we listened to women in our evangelical churches the way Jesus listened to women?

What if we listened to Dorothy L. Sayers’s argument that she “can never find any logical or strictly theological reason against [women’s ordination]”?33 What if we realized that God has never stopped calling women to do his work—as preachers, teachers, missionaries, evangelists, and authors? What if we realized that when we look at the whole of the global world, it simply doesn’t make sense to define occupations by gender? What does make sense is Paul’s reminder that all of our work is important and that by doing what we are called to do, we build up the Body of Christ together. What if we finally stood together, united by our belief in Jesus instead of divided by arguments over power and authority? What if we followed the example of Jesus, who let Mary of Bethany sit at his feet like a male disciple and who overruled his disciples to make sure he heard the words of the woman of Canaan? What if we realized that, even when the male disciples pushed women away, Jesus always listened to women speak? Complementarianism is patriarchy, and patriarchy is about power. Neither have ever been about Jesus.

So much textual and historical evidence counters the complementarian model of biblical womanhood and the theology behind it. Sometimes I am dumbfounded that this is a battle we are still fighting.

When 1 Corinthians 14:34–35 is read as a quotation representing a Corinthian practice (which D. W. Odell-Scott argued for in 1983, Charles Talbert argued for in 1987, and Peppiatt has argued for again more recently51), Paul’s purpose seems clear: to distinguish what the Corinthians were doing (“women be silent”) and to clarify that Christians should not be following the Corinthian practice (“What!”). While I cannot guarantee this is what Paul was doing, it makes a lot of (historical) sense. First Corinthians includes several non-Pauline quotations already, and the wording of verses 34–35 is remarkably close to Roman sources. As Marg Mowczko observes, “The view that 14:34–35 is a non-Pauline quotation is one of the few that offers a plausible explanation for the jarring change of tone which verses 34–35 bring into the text, as well as the subsequent abrupt change of topic, tone, and gender in verse 36.”52 If Paul is indeed quoting the Roman worldview to counter it with the Christian worldview, then his meaning is the exact opposite of what evangelical women have been taught. Could it be that, instead of telling women to be silent like the Roman world did, Paul was actually telling men that, in the world of Jesus, women were allowed to speak? Could we have missed Paul’s point (again)? Instead of heeding his rebuke and freeing women to speak, are we continuing the very patriarchal practices that Paul was condemning? 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.53 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 (I will discuss Romans 16 in the next section). Maintaining a rigid gender hierarchy just isn’t Paul’s point. As Beverly Roberts Gaventa reminds us from earlier in 1 Corinthians (12:1–7), Paul’s “calling to service is not restricted along gender lines so that arguments about complementarity find no grounding here.”54 By insisting that Paul told women to be silent, evangelicals have capitulated to

Paul was an educated Roman citizen. He would have been familiar with contemporary rhetorical practices that corrected faulty understanding by quoting the faulty understanding and then refuting it. Paul does this in 1 Corinthians 6 and 7 with his quotations “all things are lawful for me,” “food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food,” and “it is well for a man not to touch a woman.”47 In these instances, Paul is quoting the faulty views of the Gentile world, such as “all things are lawful for me.” Paul then “strongly modifies” them.48 Paul would have been familiar with the contemporary views about women, including Livy’s, that women should be silent in public and gain information from their husbands at home.

Peppiatt has argued, that Paul is doing the same thing in 1 Corinthians 11 and 14 that he does in 1 Corinthians 6 and 7?49 Refuting bad practices by quoting those bad practices and then correcting them? As 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.”50 What if Paul was so concerned that Christians in Corinth were imposing their own cultural restrictions on women that he called them on it? He quoted the bad practice, which Corinthian men were trying to drag from the Roman world into their Christian world, and then he countered it. The Revised Standard Version (RSV) lends support to the idea that this is what Paul was doing. Paul first lays out the cultural restrictions: “As in all the churches of the saints, the women should keep silence in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as even the law says. If there is anything they desire to know, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church” (1 Corinthians 14:33–35). And then Paul intervenes: “What! Did the word of God originate with you, or are you the only ones it has reached? If anyone thinks that he is a prophet, or spiritual, he should acknowledge that what I am writing to you is a command of the Lord. If anyone does not recognize this, he is not recognized. So, my brethren, earnestly desire to prophesy, and do not forbid speaking in tongues; but all things should be done decently and in order” (vv. 36–40). I often do this as a classroom exercise. I have a student read from their own translation, usually the ESV or NIV. Then I will read from the RSV, inflecting the words appropriately. When I proclaim, “What! Did the word of God originate with you?” I can usually hear their gasp, their collective intake of breath. Once a student exclaimed out loud, “Dr. Barr! That changes it completely!” Yes, I told her, it does.

In her groundbreaking article, "The Haustafeln (Household Codes) in Afro-American Biblical Interpretation," Martin asks a provocative question: "How can black male preachers and theologians use a liberated hermeneutic while preaching and theologizing about slaves, but a literalist hermeneutic with reference to women?" I would like to ask the same question of white preachers and theologians.

The early modern world argued for women's exclusion on the basis of an emerging gender theology that emphasized differences between men and women rather than their spiritual sameness and on the basis of an expanded understanding of Pauline prescriptions and household codes.

While Paul's writings about women were known consistently throughout church history, it wasn't until the Reformation era that they began to be used systematically to keep women out of leadership roles.

The early modern English Bible was translated in a context that politically, legally, economically, and socially obscured women behind the identities of their husbands and fathers.

Early modern preachers also knew their Paul. But unlike their medieval counterparts, they preached Paul to enforce women’s subordinate role within the household. Early modern sermons emphasize godly behavior as reflective of spiritual status. Adherence to the Pauline prescriptions became a barometer for the spiritual health of families, and women as models of submission and domesticity became critical exemplars for Protestant theology. This was a departure from sermons of the medieval world.

She should be of the property of the Snail, still at home.

Medieval women had to transcend their sex to gain authority in the medieval church. But Protestant women didn’t have to do this—their bodies were not a spiritual problem

Beliefs about female inferiority haunted Christianity from the beginning, influencing early church fathers like Clement of Alexandria and Jerome to characterize spiritual maturity for women as a progression to manliness. “As long as a woman is for birth and children, she is as different from man as body is from soul,” explained Jerome. “But when she wishes to serve Christ more than the world, she will cease to be a woman and will be called a man.”34 If women are imperfect men, then only by becoming men can women achieve spiritual equality.

My modern students balk at how Babylonian law allowed husbands to drown their wives for alleged adultery, but my students are also living in the state of Texas in which women make up 94 percent of the victims in domestic partner murder-suicides — not to mention the United States in which almost 25 percent of women have experienced severe physical violence by an intimate partner.

The Reformation ushered in a theology about ecclesiastical leadership that, ironically, made evangelical women's rooms smaller.

The emphasis on masculine language continued throughout English bibles until Zondervan's attempt to restore gender-inclusive language to the text. From this perspective, gender-inclusive language isn't distorting Scripture. Gender-inclusive language is restoring Scripture from the influence of certain English Bible translations.

The early twentieth-century emphasis on inerrancy went hand in hand with a wide-ranging attempt to build up the authority of male preachers at the expense of women.

Even though Dorothy Patterson had earned a master of theology (New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary), a doctorate in ministry (Luther Rice Seminary), and a doctorate in theology (University of South Africa), she always introduced herself publicly as a wife and mother. "She was in her words, 'primarily a wife, mother, and homemaker,' with grandmother added in years to come," writes Flowers.

The heritage of Protestantism for women was deeply ambiguous," writes Roper. While it could have affirmed women’s spiritual equality with men, the Reformation instead ushered in a "renewed patriarchalism" that placed married women firmly under the headship of their husbands.

Reformation theology should have set women free, but it didn’t.

The English Bible translated more than Hebrew text; it also translated early modern English ideas about marriage into biblical text, as well as a "falsely universal language" that excluded women.

The woman saved through childbearing as an exemplar of the sanctification process for all Christians was more important to medieval theology than tethering the salvation of literal women to their reproductive capabilities.

Some of the evangelical scholars and pastors who are most vocal about male headship and female submission argue that the relationship between husband and wife models the relationship between God the Father and God the Son. Wives follow the leadership of their husbands, just as Jesus follows the leadership of the Father. The marriage hierarchy, like marriage itself, they argue, is embedded in the imago Dei.

I knew that biblical womanhood, rather than looking like the freedom offered by Jesus and proclaimed by Paul, looks much more like the non-Christian systems of female oppression that I teach my students about when we discuss the ancient worlds of Mesopotamia and Greece. As Christians we are called to be different from the world. Yet in our treatment of women, we often look just like everyone else. Ironically, complementarian theology claims it is defending a plain and natural interpretation of the Bible while really defending an interpretation that has been corrupted by our sinful human drive to dominate others and build hierarchies of power and oppression. I can’t think of anything less Christlike than hierarchies like these.