Q&A with Dr. Beth Allison Barr: how 'biblical womanhood' is a recent phenomenon

Dr. Beth Allison Barr. Photo via Baylor University.

The history of Christianity shows different and evolving interpretations on how Christian women should live. Medieval Christians for example prized joining a convent and devoting one’s life to God more than becoming a wife.

This history is the subject of a new book by Dr. Beth Allison Barr, a professor of medieval history at Baylor University. She has authored several articles and book chapters for academic journals, edited volumes and written two books: “The Pastoral Care of Women in Late Medieval England” and her most recent book “The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth.”

Religion Unplugged contributor Kenneth E. Frantz interviewed Dr. Barr via Zoom about her most recent book on how the Reformation, changing modern norms of marriage and a conservative resurgence int he U.S. have changed views in the church on women.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.  

Kenneth E. Frantz: In your book, you talk about Christian patriarchy and biblical womanhood. Would you mind describing those terms and why you thought they were important to write about?

Dr. Beth Allison Barr: They're actually both pretty new terms. Biblical womanhood is a word that really roared into existence in the late '70s and '80s and picked up speed in the '90s and early 2000s. And it came out of the conservative resurgence… [as] part of the goal of the Southern Baptist Convention… and also with the rise of a group called the Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood [CBMW] in the late '80s. So, we have the conservative resurgence in the late '70s, and then the CBMW in the late '80s.

And part of their diagnosis of what was wrong with evangelicalism is that it had been permeated by feminism, and that feminism had corrupted essentially the gospel message and ideas about what women and men are to be, and so, the idea was that we need to go back, that's actually, if you think about the book, “Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood”, we need to go back away from this dangerous influence of feminism, and return to the biblical values of what men and women are created to be. And so, that became the rise of biblical womanhood.

It became a phenomenon in the evangelical world [in the ‘90s]. And its primary purpose was to define what women are supposed to be, what's the highest calling for women. And it defined the highest calling for women as being under the authority of men. And that women are divinely ordained by God to follow male leadership within the home, within the church, and then this also spills over into the secular world.

Christian patriarchy, I'm not exactly sure when people first began putting Christian in front of patriarchy, but I do know that in the early 2000s, there began to be a conversation about it. And Russell Moore was part of that conversation. And I think the conversation stemmed from people not liking the word complementarian because it was still relatively new. And some of the folk who fully ascribed to biblical womanhood, which was then put forward as being a complementarian view that men and women have complimentary roles created by God, and that men's is to lead, and women's is to follow. And some people didn't really like that term, complementarian, and Russell Moore was one of them.

And so, he said in an article in the early 2000s, he said, "Look, let's just call it patriarchy because that's what..." And he was right, it is patriarchy, but then he tried to designate Christian patriarchy as being different from normal patriarchy. He said, "There's a long history of patriarchy," which he's right about, "that calls women to submit, to be under the authority of all men." And Russell Moore says that's wrong, he calls it pagan patriarchy. And he says, "Christian patriarchy is, women are only called to submit to their husbands." And Russel Moore argues that it's different. And my argument in “The Making of Biblical Womanhood” is that Christian patriarchy is no different from the patriarchy that has been with us from the beginning of civilization.

Frantz: In your book, you draw a lot from medieval history to explain the origins of our conception of biblical womanhood and also the Reformation. Why are those time periods important to understanding modern conceptions of gender?

The cover of “The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth”.

Barr: When I first started thinking about writing this book, and even before I started thinking about writing this book, one of the things I got irritated with about the whole complementarian debate is I felt like it had gotten really bogged down in people just arguing over interpretations of a handful of verses from the New Testament, and a little bit throwing in Genesis. But that's pretty much it. I mean, the argument boils down to a handful of verses from the New Testament, and a little bit from the first three chapters of Genesis. And that's mostly it, that's a whole argument.

It had become bogged down in people just explaining why they believed one way or the other on those verses. And it seems to me that the problem with this conversation is that it has completely unhinged it from its broader historical context about why we have selected these verses out, and why they became so important in these culture wars in the later 20th century. And as a medieval historian, when I first began, I'd read 15th century sermons, that's really my primary area of study, and one of the things that struck me when I first started reading them was how much medieval sermons, first of all, don't quote any of these passages about Paul.

I mean, they're very rare in the late medieval English sermons that I read. And they also, Ephesians 5 is not used to emphasize women's subordination. I think it only appears in one or two sermons. Even the women be silent passages are very rarely quoted in the sermons. And so, that was one of the things that struck me. And another thing that struck me about medieval sermons is that they often use gender inclusive language. When they translated biblical texts, they would use gender inclusive language.

And this always struck me as highly amusing because I remember the debates in the '90s and early 2000s over the TNIV, Today's New International Version, and the ESV, and it was the complaints about the TNIV was that it was evangelical feminism was corrupting the message of God, and I was like, "Medieval priests were doing that in the 15th century and they certainly were not corrupted by evangelical feminism." I think my medieval training gave me a perspective that is lacking in a lot of the conversations that we have. And what I saw from the medieval period is that even though patriarchy exists in the medieval world, it's different, and it uses different reasons to say why women should be under the authority of men.

What that gave me, it showed me how this idea of biblical womanhood today, even though we claim it's based on the Bible, it's really a cultural construct. It's constructed by our society, and the things that are important in our society, and even though the medieval world also had patriarchy, the way it perceived its patriarchy, and constructed it, was also cultural. And so, while even though the medieval period and our 21st century world subordinate women, and we do it in different ways, which really drove home to me that this isn't biblical, this is something that's built-in history.

Patriarchy is a part of the history of the world, and it has become a part of the Christian Church. But that patriarchy doesn't come from Christianity, it comes from the world in which we live. So, I thought the medieval angle could help me convey that message to the folk reading the book that this really is culturally constructed. And then the Reformation piece, I think, again, most of our arguments about women's roles in the church focus on translation of a few verses from the New Testament world, and what I think we don't understand is that the Reformation, the Reformation world also played a big piece in how we construct biblical womanhood today.

And before the Reformation, in the medieval world, women could be, I call it the medieval loophole, women could be preachers and teachers, and some of them even ordained, because the medieval world saw that the highest calling for both women and men was to forsake the things of this world, to forsake marriage, to forsake family, and dedicate themselves solely to God. And so, women who did this, women who became nuns and women religious and didn't have family or left their families, they were able to become preachers and teachers in various ways, very similar to men.

But after the Reformation, and it's not just because of Reformation theology, it's because of the world, the changing world of the early modern world, and marriage becomes the ideal state. And women, their highest calling, instead of their highest calling to give up their families, to give up marriage and dedicate themselves solely to God, the highest calling after the Reformation for women was to become a wife, was to become a godly wife. And in the early modern world, being a wife meant you were legally under the authority of your husband. And so, what we see happening is that this, the highest calling for women to be a godly woman, began to be associated with being a wife who was always subordinate to her husband. And so, this was a change, and it is a change that significantly influences modern Protestant theology.

Frantz: In the book, you write that you appreciate a lot of the theological innovations made by the Reformation, even though you didn't necessarily like all the changes in gender norms. I guess that's one thing I was curious about when I was reading your book, I was like, "How do you disentangle the theology of the Reformation from the Reformation's interventions in gender norms?"

Dr. Barr: I think it's helpful for me as a historian because I can see how a lot of things... how changes that happened from the late medieval to the early modern world, that a lot of these changes are historically constructed. And even though they go alongside theological changes, they're not necessarily a part… of the Christian message, they just get added to it. So, I think as a historian, it's easier for me to disentangle those things. …

As I said, I'm a Protestant, I'm a Baptist, I believe in Reformation theology. And in fact, I really think that if we took Reformation theology at its heart, that it sets women free, because Reformation theology makes it really clear that there's nothing wrong with women's bodies, that women are made like men in the image of God. And that really should free women from patriarchy. But because of the cultural changes, because of the historical circumstances of the early modern world, Reformation theology gets weighed down by the patriarchy of the early modern world. So, being a subordinate wife became part of being a Protestant, being a Protestant woman.

But as a historian, I think it's easy for me to see how that happened, and I understand, if we look at the whole history of the church, we see humans have a really hard time not bringing ourselves to Christian teachings. And so, I think for me, while I can see that, I can see how humans keep bringing things and we keep messing up. We bring harmful things to the church, but those harmful practices are not from God. And so, I think it's easy for me to disentangle those, and that also helps me not get so disillusioned, I think, because when I see problems in a church, I realize that those problems are created by people. They're not really the problems created by God. So, I think that helps give me that perspective.

It also teaches me why we shouldn't do hero worship. I think that's something about the Reformation. I talked about it a little bit in my book, but it's something I've talked about a lot before, that we do these celebrations, we replace Halloween with Reformation Day celebrations, and everybody dresses up like Martin Luther and does all of these things, which is fun and kitschy, but at the same time, it glorifies it. And it also mostly focuses on the male Reformers. And some of them, Martin Luther didn't have kind attitudes towards women. So, I think that part of it as Protestants, we need to realize that the Reformers and the Reformation were just people.

Frantz: And you mentioned in your answer and in the book, Christian views of women's bodies, both in Paul and in contemporary discourse, I think you gave this story in your book about the time you went to youth camp and the TED talks with the policing of women's bodies. Would you mind talking about that?

Dr. Barr: One of the things, when we talk about patriarchy, and we talk about what patriarchy is, and of course, patriarchy is the system that women are under the authority of men, and that also there's something about women that makes them unable to carry leadership with men, and there's something that they need to be controlled by men. This is part of the patriarchal system. And we don't know exactly, as I said, we don't know exactly, we can't pinpoint the year that patriarchy started, but we know it began to emerge with early civilizations.

And we know it began to emerge as these early civilizations began to, they began to have property ownership, and began to have lineages and pass property down through their families, and it was important to identify who your heirs were. And especially in the ancient world, the only person who really knew who the father of their children were the mothers. And so, I mean, you can see this develops in cultures throughout the world, this attempting to control women, to control to make sure who the children are, who the heirs are. And this controlling women's bodies manifests in all sorts of different ways.

I teach about, and we can think about Middle Eastern society, in which women are secluded away from... and this is also in the Greco and Athenian cultures too, in the Greco-Roman world, where women are secluded away and not supposed to interact with men outside of their family members. We can also think about, in China, the way of controlling [women’s] bodies was through their feet, and women's feet became not only a sexualized object, but they began to practice foot binding, which broke women's feet and actually made it where they couldn't walk without aid. It was a very clear attempt to control women's bodies.

Even in the modern world, we do this too, this idea that there's something about women's bodies that needs to be controlled. And whereas in the ancient world, it may have been more to do with property lineage and controlling the heirs, in the modern world, it took on a new idea, that men's sexuality is uncontrollable, and that it's part of being a man to have this uncontrolled sexual urge, but as Christian men, they're supposed to control it. But they can't really.

And so, women have to control it for them. That it's women's job to make sure that they protect men from their sexual urges. And so, women should make sure and cover up their bodies and not do things that might trigger off men's uncontrolled sexuality. And so, this is, of course, gave birth to purity culture. And it's this idea that women have to essentially manage the sexual urges of men by making sure that they protect men from being inflamed by desire.

With men, it's often written off as, "Oh, well, men do that. Boys will be boys. They'll grow up and get over it." But for women, it's almost a fatal flaw. It becomes part of who our character is, when we are seen as not being modest and not protecting men from the dangers of our bodies.

Frantz: One thing I noticed in your book is that you talk about how you compare Paul's references to the female body.

Dr. Barr: Oh, yeah. Sure.

Frantz: That it falls in line with some of the Greek philosophers.

Dr. Barr: This is something that I came to as a medievalist, really. And so, often, one of the things that we don't realize is that the Christian world, that early Christian world, the philosophy about women at the time was that their bodies were literally, they were broken, they were deformed men. There was something wrong. The idea was that the perfect human embryo was masculine, and if something happened to it, if it got damaged in some way, it became feminine, which, of course, now we know it's the opposite.

I mean, it's not that they're damaged, but we know that all embryos start off as female, then something's added to them that makes them male. But in the ancient world, they believed it was the opposite. The default was male, and then if something damaged it, it became female. Women were damaged as on birth. There was something wrong with them. And so, the ideal state, and we see this in ancient Greek philosophers, et cetera, the ideal state was to be masculine, because that was the perfect state. And what we see in Paul is so revolutionary because Paul tells husbands that they should love their wives like their own bodies.

And if the masculine body is supposed to be perfect, and the female body is not perfect, something's wrong with it. And Paul said, "Actually, you are to love and treat the female body just like yours. Your body is no different from her body." And that was a really revolutionary statement. And then of course, in Galatians 3:28, where Paul said, "There is no distinction, male or female." I mean, just think about that in the context of a world that taught that women were literally, they were monstrous even. These are revolutionary statements.

And then we see Paul also do this, and this is something that medieval monastics picked up on. One of the books I read as a graduate student was Caroline Walker Bynum's “Jesus as Mother.” And she talks about how these 12th century monastics, these male monastics, describe, talk about themselves, and talk about Jesus as a mother and in maternal terms. And they talk about Jesus as breastfeeding the church, and, I mean, these very... and even giving birth, these very maternal images. And where these monks got it from was from references in the Bible.

And in fact, Beverly Roberts Gaventa talks about how Paul seven times uses maternal references in his descriptions of himself and the church. And that this is actually more than he identifies himself as being masculine. He identifies more with female terms than masculine terms. I mean, this is just really, if you think about it in the context of a world that said women were imperfect men, and Paul is using more maternal imagery to describe the process of sanctification and of caring for the church, and of Jesus.

And then you also put that in the context of Paul saying that male and female bodies aren't any different, and that husbands are to love their wives' bodies as Christ loves the church. This is revolutionary stuff. It's saying that there’s not anything wrong with us [women]. That we are just like men in the world of Jesus. So, it's so contrary to what history then has taught us that there's always something wrong with women that have to be controlled. And Paul saying, "No, there's not. Women are just like men in the body of Jesus."

Frantz: And how would that understanding affect purity culture?

Dr. Barr: I think it shows how wrong purity culture is. I mean, purity culture is just a new form of patriarchy. It's a form of patriarchy that I would argue as a historian stems from the Scientific Revolution, and from the Enlightenment period, and from really the 19th century Cult of Domesticity or Cult of True Womanhood that says that women are supposed to be more pious than men, we're supposed to be submissive, and we're not actually supposed to be sexual creatures. That sexuality is really men’s, and women, the only reason women engage in it is to be mothers, because that's their primary calling.

And so, women have to be the virtuous ones, whereas men are the sexual aggressors. Women have to be the... we have to protect the virtue of not only ourselves, but also of our homes. And that there's even some onuses put on women. If you read a lot of those purity culture marriage books and stuff, the onus is put on the woman to keep male sexuality in the home. It's our responsibility to keep the men from straying, because men just can't help it. And so, I mean, it's just this crazy theology that has nothing to do with Christianity. It's just patriarchy.

Frantz: So your book is aimed at evangelicals, but there is this feminist critique, that's like the Bible is inertly patriarchal, and any theology based on it will inevitably become patriarchal.

Dr. Barr: Well, not exactly. I mean, the Bible's written in a patriarchal world, and so, we have to separate, what is the message of the Bible? What is the background of the Bible? Anything that's based upon the background of the Bible is going to be patriarchal, but if you base it on the message of the Bible, that's where you can break free. So, I just wanted to clarify that real fast.

Frantz: I know that's the argument of your book, but there does seem to be this feminist undercurrent in some circles. How would you respond to people who say, "You can't redeem Christian theology"?

Dr. Barr: I can understand that because Christians have done such a bad job of mixing these harmful patriarchal ideas and racism, we have mixed those in with the gospel, and we've argued. I mean, you can go back and you can read the arguments. And even Christians today, Christians who are fighting against Critical Race Theory, as if it's going to bring down the end of the world, when all Critical Race Theory is, is it says that, well, we have to take racism seriously. That this is a systemic issue, and we have to take it seriously. And it's just crazy to me why people react so negatively against that, when history shows us that it is true that racism is a systemic problem, and to overcome it, we have to treat it as a systemic problem.

So, I can understand that, and in fact, I know a lot of feminist theologians that I've read, as well as my fellow feminist historians, I understand why they would come to that conclusion, because Christians have mixed in oppression into the gospel message. And so, in fact, some earlier feminist theologians, they said, really, the problem was that in Paul, what we find is we find Jesus who's really revolutionary and is trying to set women free from patriarchy, and then Paul is sort of the first wave of patriarchy being forced back on this revolutionary message of Christ.

And I can understand why they would read it that way, and it's because we have just gotten Paul so wrong that it's very hard for people to go back and read Paul with fresh eyes and to be like, "Whoa, was Paul really saying that? Was Paul really telling women to be silent for all times?" Which sounds really harsh and oppressive. And so, I think I understand that feminist critique, because Christians have done a bad job of how we have interpreted what we are called to do as Christians. But as a Christian feminist scholar myself, I would say that if you really do go back, if we put the Bible, if we put it within its historical context, and if we read it through the lens of Jesus, we really can see this narrative of God fighting for women, of God fighting for the oppressed.

I mean, this is something that liberation theologists have picked up on for a long time. There's been a lot of pushback against liberation theology too, but, I mean, the truth is, is that God does fight for the oppressed. He always has. And in fact, He tells us that that's what we're called to do as Christians, is we need to look out for the people who are hurt by the systems of our world. And so, it's really crazy to me that Christians today don't do that or see that as antithetical to the gospel. So, I think the problem is, is that Christians have done a bad job. I think we have done a bad job reading the Bible, we've done a bad job teaching the Bible, and then we've done a bad job of admitting that we're wrong.

Frantz: And I guess also to expand on some of that, you do see this, you see a lot of anti-wokeness conferences on Twitter and all that. And like wokeness is a form of adultery. So how does the framework you're presenting in your book, how does that respond to those people?

Dr. Barr: Yeah. Well, I mean, clearly what it shows, it shows, again, Christians refusing to admit that we're wrong. And also, this attempt to maintain power. I mean, if you think about the evangelical church and the evangelical power structure, how do you get to be a pastor? How do you get to be a pastor of a significant church, of a big church, that pays high salaries, that has a good platform? The way you do it is by supporting the theology of those in power. If you think about the conservative resurgence of the late 1970s, what they essentially did is, we got the most powerful people in the SBC, who had the greatest amount of connections, got themselves voted in, and then they proceeded to go and reward.

I mean, I'm a medievalist, so, when I think about this, I always think about it as like feudalism. When William the Conqueror conquered England, this is what he did. He moved in, and conquered it, and then he started rewarding all of his best followers and the people who fought for him well by giving them land and giving them titles. That's what we did with the SBC conservative resurgence. We started handing out this sort of feudal property and titles to people, and we gave them control over our seminaries. And then we fired all of the people who taught something different from that from our seminaries.

I'm at Baylor University, and there's a lot of folk here who came to Baylor after being fired, being pushed out from the seminaries and the conservative colleges that they were working in at the time. And the only reason Baylor wasn't as much a part of that is because before the conservative resurgence could take over the Baylor's board, and you can read about this, it's been written about in several places, but Baylor essentially voted to let the denomination that Southern Baptist Convention had, they reduced the amount of regents that controlled Baylor. And so, Baylor had more power than the Southern Baptist Convention, and that's why Baylor avoided it.

So, that's interesting. But lots of other places weren't able to do that, and they were taken over by these leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention. And so, what it did is, the way then that you became important in the Southern Baptist world, or you got power and authority, was by following these conservative teachings. And if you stepped outside the bounds of it, you would get fired, you would lose your influence, you might lose your church. And so, there was a power structure literally built by these leaders, these White leaders of the conservative resurgence, who believed that women should not be in leadership, and who also were fighting for, who also were not especially interested in fixing racial problems of the past, and were not especially interested in addressing their own racism and the racism that was clearly obvious in their mostly White churches, and these were the people who took control.

I'm talking primarily from a Baptist context, but you can also see this more broadly in the evangelical world. And so, for them to admit that they were wrong, racism and patriarchy go hand in hand, the household codes that are used to uphold slavery were also used to uphold the subordination of women. And so, if you say that, if you try to disentangle racism from patriarchy, you can't do it. Both are going to fall down. So, these critics of CRT, these critics of wokeness, essentially, their power is being threatened. If they admit that they are wrong about racism, about systemic racism, then that's also going to lead to them having to recant systemic patriarchy, which means they're going to lose their power base. So, that's my cynical idea about what's going on, it's that it would undermine their power that they have been building since the late 1970s.

Frantz: One other thing that I was wanting you to get at, the critique of wokeness in social justice theology is that it focuses more on social justice, and less on saving people in the gospel of Jesus. What is your critique of that?

Dr. Barr: This is also, I think, a part of what happened after the Reformation. Now, as I said, this is broad brush here. And as a historian, I'm thinking of all the nuances in between. But what we do know is that the focus on salvation becomes more individual. Now, in the medieval world, people did have to individually come to Jesus. Okay? And in fact, I can give you a lot of examples of that, but it was also put in a more collective space for them, and it wasn't as individual-focused. After the Reformation, it becomes much more individual-focused, that it is the responsibility of the individual person, and that it's the responsibility of the family unit. Like, it's the father's job to make sure everybody in the household comes to Jesus.

We see this change where instead of Christianity being both more individual but also being more community-focused, it may be that the medieval world was too community-focused. I could see people making that critique of it. But I would say that maybe in our world, we've gone too far the other way, we've made it too individual-focused. And so, sort of the ideas, and you see this a lot, where people are like, "Well, the problem with the world is that people need to get right with Jesus." And I'm like, "Well, that's true. We do need to get right with Jesus." But at the same time, Jesus doesn't just leave us. I mean, He calls us to make disciples. He doesn't call us just to get saved, He calls us to make disciples.

And disciples are people who are called to go and not only carry the message of Jesus, but to also carry, the message is not just words, it's a lifestyle, it's hope, it's change. And the whole narrative of the Bible, God does so many things where He stops and says, "Your problem is you're not caring for the poor. Your problem is you're not caring for the oppressed. Your problem is you're not helping the widows and the children." This is a narrative that we find over and over and over again. And so, I find it, well, I do think that the heart of the gospel is knowing who Jesus is, and believing in who Jesus is.

I think when Jesus transforms us, that it's really hard for us not to become concerned about the things that concern God. And the things that concern God are the oppressed and caring for the people who are hurt and damaged by the sinful world in which we live. We're called to be stewards of this world. I mean, that's the whole Genesis, creation story. We are called to be stewards. And being stewards of this world is taking care of it for the good, taking care of the life and the people. And so, it's hard to separate social justice from how we are called to be as Christians in this new life, our new Christ-crucified world.

I think the heart of the gospel is definitely not becoming a senior pastor of a megachurch, but the heart of the gospel does point us towards caring for the lowest in our community, the people who are hurting the most. That message is over and over again in the Bible.

Frantz: Speaking of Christians admitting that they're wrong, Beth Moore recently did leave the Southern Baptist Convention because complementarianism was viewed as a first-tier doctrine. So, given the wide range of Christian views on gender norms that you present in your book, how does that fit into the literature narrative?

Dr. Barr: I think her critique is correct. On the one hand, I clearly do not believe that the Bible teaches complementarian ideas. I would say that's not actually biblical. But at the same time, I understand how people could come to that idea, and I'm not going to say that they're not Christian, or that they don't take the Bible as seriously as me, as long as they believe in who Jesus is, and they believe in the God that's presented to us in the Bible, the Trinitarian God that's presented to us in the Bible.

I think that's the core of Christianity, is the narrative that God came to save the world through His only begotten Son. And that anyone who believes will not perish. I think that as long as we agree on that, you're my brother or sister in Christ.

And in fact, Denny Burk, he recently gave an early critique of my book. I'm really not convinced he actually read my book yet. He said he did. I'm not convinced he did.

But he gave an early critique, and he said, "Look, the problem is, is that people who believe that women can be preachers, teachers, and leaders," I'm not saying exactly what he said, but this is sort of, he said that that leads to not following the Bible well, that leads you away from the gospel. And this is the argument of complementarianism is that if you are faithful Bible believers, you will read the Bible that women are called to be subordinate to men. And so, they've written that into the gospel. And what we clearly see throughout history is that the way we read women's roles today has not been consistent, by faithful Bible believers.

It seems to me that, and that what informs faithful Bible believers, that what we think about how we do our faith, how we practice our faith, is informed by the world in which we live, by our historical circumstances. So, I think if we are going to say that medieval Christians were our brothers and sisters in Christ just like we are, we have to realize that what really matters is, I would say, the Apostles' Creed, what we believe about Jesus and God, and the whole Trinitarian God. So, I think that Moore's right. And this is really what I'm trying to get across in my book.

I'm not trying to tell people that they can't be complementarianism, although I will disagree with them, but I want them to realize that they can't tell me that I am not biblically faithful because I do not agree with them. And so, that's really, it's not gospel truth. That's the subtitle of my book is that it's not gospel truth. And that's what I want people to hear. And I think, that seems to be what Beth Moore was saying, although I don't really want to put words in her mouth, but that seems to be what she was saying too, is that it's not gospel.

Frantz: And there have been hashtags of #exvangelical and #ChurchToo, where people have talked about, in part, being hurt by Christian patriarchy, like sexual abuse in the church, or emotional or physical abuse. So, I guess, how would you respond to those people?

Dr. Barr: I'm right there with you. I've been hurt by the church too. And in many different ways, I've been hurt by patriarchy, Christian patriarchy. And so, I think what I would want them to know is sort of what I realized, and that there's a difference between being hurt by the church, and God. And people just mess up. I mean, we are sinful people. It's funny to me that people who... and I'm not really a Calvinist, but a lot of people I know are. And it's funny to me that people who really believe in total depravity, although I do believe in the sinfulness of humanity, but people who believe in total depravity then are surprised when people behave depravedly. I mean, we are sinful people, we behave badly, and the church has behaved badly, but that's not God.

I think that's what we've just got to get across, and I think that's what the church doesn't really understand is that the church represents God, we represent Jesus. This is what I try to get across in my introduction, is that when the church has sinned, when we sinned against all of those women that the Houston Chronicle uncovered, all of those, hundreds of abuse cases, that when the church does that, we do it in the name of God, and we cause people to think... we hurt the gospel of Jesus, we cause people to think that this is God who's doing that. And that's why we've got to get this right, because we are damaging the witness of Jesus by our bad behavior.

And so, I think, for people who have walked away, I can tell them that I understand, because I've been hurt in many of the same ways they have, but I also would like them to realize that it wasn't God who hurt them, it was people. And that there is a path back to God. And so, I want them to have hope.

Frantz: And earlier, we talked about something being wrong with women's bodies and the policing of women's bodies in purity culture. So, how do you feel that has played into the abuse of women that we've seen being reported recently?

Dr. Barr: It's definitely connected. I mean, the evidence is so clear. I mean, history has always shown us that when women are not at the table, that's the modern phrase we like to use, when women don't have a seat at the table, when they are not part of the decision-making, when they do not have positions of authority, that it leads to women being abused, that it leads to women being oppressed, because they don't have a recourse, they don't have a way to protest what's happening to them. They don't have any ways to protect them.

You can say all you want that men are to protect women, but when men don't understand what's happening to women, and when men don't believe women, which we also know historically, men are very skeptical of believing women, they count the testimony of a man more than the testimony of women, and we see this playing out. I mean, you can even think about the Willow Creek accusations, where the Willow Creek church was like, their first response was like, "No, we're not going to believe this. We're going to accept the word of Bill Hybels over the word of these women." That was their first response.

I mean, this is a common response. So, when women don't have access, or even when they do have access to some degree, because of the world in which we live, women are not believed the way that men are. And so, it opens up the door to more serious abuse, it opens up the door to continuous abuse. It opens up the door to, even if it's not quite abuse, to very difficult circumstances for women. And they have no way to get out of it, because, I mean, you could even think about a lot of the conservative folk who counsel against divorce, who tell women that divorces never should be an option.

And it's like, well, what are you doing to women if you're telling them that they have nowhere to go, if the church doesn't provide them any sort of authority or position of power that is equal to that of men, and then you tell them that it is unbiblical for them to get out of marriages that are harmful to them and harming their children, I mean, what is left for them? I mean, they have no recourse. And you can even think about John Piper's, I really hope that he has come to rethink it and maybe regret it, but his very infamous clip on Desiring God, where he said, a woman, as long as her husband's not asking her to engage in sinful behavior, but maybe he's just smacking her, that she endures abuse for a night or so, and then she just goes to the church.

I mean, that type of thinking, that's just horrific. When your theology teaches that women are less than men, which is what complementarian theology teaches, no matter what they claim to be different, it teaches that women are less than men. Men will treat women as less than men. And so, I think that's just the reality, we have to accept that reality, and we have to realize that God never treated women as less than men.

Frantz: And earlier in the interview and in your book, you mentioned that patriarchy and racism are intertwined. Could you give a concrete example of how that plays out in the world?

Dr. Barr: Some of the books that have been very influential for me are, there was “I Found God in Me”, which is a womanist interpretation of the Bible. And womanist is the black name for feminist. And then also “Stony the Road We Trod”, which is an African American interpretation of the Bible, as well as “Daughters of Thunder”, which I talk about in my book.

And one of the scholars who's written in “I Found God in Me” is a woman named Clarice Martin, and she makes it really clear. She has an article on the household codes. And the household codes, of course, are those New Testament verses that say, "Wives, submit to your husband, slaves, obey your master." And we know that a very concrete example is that those household codes were literally implemented to uphold slavery. And if you're going to literally implement them to uphold slavery, they also can be literally implemented to uphold female subordination, when you read it.

And I would argue that's a wrong way of reading that text, but that's the way that they were read, to uphold slavery, and they were also read that way to uphold female subordination. At the same time, that in the 19th century, that slavery is being fought for in the American South, it is also when women's subordination to men is also being enshrined in laws and in culture, and we begin to see this push. And so, I think slavery and how those biblical verses were used is a clear show of how racism and slavery are linked together.

Other African American scholars, many, many of them have noted how that one of the reasons that women had to be subordinated to men within the church was to make sure that they could also subordinate Black people. Because both of those, if you're going to read one literally, you have to read the other literally. So, I mean, they're just linked. Which is also then why like Clarice Martin, and this is what she says in her article in “I Found God in Me”, she says how ironic it is that Black pastors, who fight, who say that you cannot interpret the household codes literally for Black people, for slavery, then continue to interpret them literally for women. And essentially, she says that's hypocritical, and that's not the way those are supposed to be read. So, anyway, that's one concrete example.

Frantz: And your book argues that the complementarianism and much of evangelical's interpretation of biblical womanhood is wrong. So, in your view, what would be a correct view of biblical womanhood?

Dr. Barr: I think some people are frustrated with me because they really wanted me to write a new vision for biblical womanhood at the end of the book. And by the time I got to the end of the book, I decided that part of our problem was that we keep trying to tell women how they're supposed to act and behave. And I'm just going to revert to Dorothy L. Sayers, who's that early 20th century medieval scholar, as well as theologian too. She was a very influential Christian writer, she was friends with C.S. Lewis. And she has in one of my favorite essays, Are Women Human? And she says, she has found that women and men are fundamentally the same, that we are fundamentally human.

And that when we think about what makes a woman, or what makes a man, we have to realize that before they're different, we're the same. And so, I don't really understand, it's like in our modern Christian theology, we harp on our differences, which I think also leads to racism, and we don't focus so much on our sameness, that we are all made in the image of God, that we are all human. God created human before human became divided into the male and the female. I mean, He created a human. And so, I think, I don't really want to tell women how they are supposed to be, I think maybe a correct view of what is biblical womanhood is that God has created us in His image, just like men.

And that God calls women to do all sorts of things just like men. And that women should be allowed to use their gifts and their callings however God directs them. And that while some of those may be in traditional gender paths, some of them may not be, and let's just let God use us as we have been called.

Frantz: So, instead of biblical womanhood, you would say the Bible presents a path towards biblical personhood.

Dr. Barr: Yes, I think so. I think biblical personhood. And it's funny to me as modern Americans, we're so individualistic. It's funny to me that biblical womanhood keeps trying to put women in the same mold, to be only one type of woman. And it's really crazy to me why we do that. But yes, I would say biblical personhood is more important than biblical womanhood.

Frantz: What would you say the Bible says about biblical personhood?

Dr. Barr: I think God would say that we are all, we are created in His image, and that we are all created to have a relationship with God. And that we are also all created, once we have been transformed by Jesus, our heart should be the heart of Jesus. It should be a heart towards helping other people. That one of the things that we see in the Bible is that people's hearts, our sinful hearts are always trying to look out for our own best interests, are always trying to build our own little kingdoms, and the Bible, the message of the Bible is always pushing against that.

That, I mean, when Jesus says that it's harder for a rich man to go... it's harder for a camel to go through an eye of a needle than for a rich man to go to heaven, I mean, I think this is speaking directly to this. It's not speaking against wealth per se, but it's speaking against that this prideful, this human desire to be successful and to be better than other people lead us to lose focus on God and leads us to think we can do it without the power of God. And then also, other, we can think about that even like the Good Samaritan parable, in which we have all of these religious leaders who walk by the person who needs help, and yet, they're too busy to stop and care for them.

And, I mean, Jesus is always telling us that our purpose is not the purpose of the world. Biblical personhood, biblical womanhood and manhood is going after the heart of Jesus. And that means that it's often going against the things that the world says makes us successful.

Kenneth E. Frantz is a freelance writer who has written for Sojourners, Real Clear Religion, Religion and Politics and Religion Unplugged