This is a thought-provoking book which is worthy of being engaged with by evangelical Christians. I didn’t agree with every point, but in other ways, I found the book persuasive and eye-opening.
The first thing I would say is that Barr argues from an objective standpoint, in which she seeks to understand historical context and author intent in Scripture interpretation, which I appreciate. This is not a deconstructivist kind of book, with lots of subjective argumentation, and Barr is not losing her faith. My sense is she would still call herself an evangelical and is making a case for true faith, rather than deconstructing it.
Next, I want to explain honestly where I’m coming from. My initial reaction to a book such as this is to think, “What’s the problem?” In my opinion, women in America today are more free to do anything they want, than any other women at any other time in history, and this is largely due to the influence of Christianity on the culture (although the world will never admit this), which begins with the way Jesus valued and gave dignity to women. Also, Christianity’s emphasis on freedom of conscience essentially formed the basis for love (as opposed to arranged) marriage and the concept of consent in relationships. Not that there isn’t much more work to do, with regard to the pay gap, abuse, and other significant issues. But I lived several years in a conservative Middle Eastern country where women face huge daily barriers merely to survive, and in light of that, hearing people in America talk about microaggressions, sometimes strikes me as whining about first world problems.
Further, I’ve been part of evangelical churches for 35 years, and I myself have not experienced patriarchy in the ways Barr describes it. I’m not minimizing her experience, just adding my testimony. I have been in theologically conservative, complementarian churches in several different countries, and I can’t recall ever hearing a sermon on biblical womanhood, or a sermon saying that women should only work in the home. I know several pastors who consider themselves complementarians (in the basic way they relate to their wives; and what I mean by that is Jesus-shaped, nourishing, defending, loving, collaborative, empowering, foot-washing, self-sacrificial, servant leadership that sets the tone for the family’s spiritual life), whose wives are medical doctors and the main breadwinners for their families. I know several missionary families who consider themselves complementarian, and the women have doctoral degrees, speak multiple languages, and are some of the strongest people I’ve ever met. There are many women in my theologically conservative church who are very well educated and advanced in their careers, and I’ve never heard a sermon suggesting that there is any problem with this. So the picture of pastors continually pounding this issue and saying that women have to stay at home, is something I don’t relate to at all, but maybe if I were in a different denomination, my experience would be different.
Maybe I’m just lucky. Based on the experiences Barr describes, unbiblical patriarchy IS a bigger problem than I realize, and I’m glad to be made aware. I don’t know who needs to read this, but I just have to add my testimony that the situation is complex and we theologically conservative Christians aren’t all a bunch of boorish misogynists.
I also have to say I was surprised to learn that there have been biblical womanhood seminars in churches going back to the 90s and beyond. I never even heard of it until the past 5 years, and I honestly thought it was just a response to the current cultural tides which are seeking to eliminate gender entirely. When I first heard the term biblical womanhood, it struck me as a quiet, reasonable, minority voice in response to these massive cultural shifts. I stand corrected in that regard, so Barr’s book definitely helped me to understand a bit of that history better.
There were several times in the book where I thought, “A true complementarian (as opposed to a straight-up misogynist who is just using a veneer of Christianity as an excuse for it) would agree with 95% of what Barr is saying.” I thought there was a sense in which the patriarchy Barr described represented nominal, cultural Christianity only, and that for true believers who are earnest about the Bible, complementarianism must surely look very different. Sometimes I thought, “The people who will be earnest enough to actually engage with this book are not all that bad to begin with. And the misogynists Barr describes, more than changing their theology, primarily need to encounter Jesus and have their hearts transformed by His Spirit.”
In that sense, sometimes I felt we were talking about different things, and maybe a clearer definition of “biblical manhood and womanhood” early on would’ve been helpful. Sometimes Barr, for example, in the first chapter, quotes a few sentences from John Piper in his book “Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood”, and then cites examples of appalling misogyny in churches, sexual abuse, and blaming victims. . . and seems to conflate those two things. One can certainly make an argument that complementarian ideas can lead to those abuses (which Barr does make that argument later in the book), but sometimes I felt Barr didn’t fairly represent what theologians like Piper believe. Because I know he would condemn those abuses also, and in fact he does so in his book. Elsewhere, Barr talks about microaggressions towards single people (which I’ve definitely experienced). I wonder how many people reading Barr are aware that Piper’s book has a massive 12-page foreword about the beauty of singleness?
This is a bit of an aside, but it makes me a little sad that some people will probably be turned off of Piper’s ministry, 99% of which is not gender-specific. Piper isn’t perfect, but he is a kind pastor who is deeply earnest about the Bible and really loves God, and I know many women who have been blessed by his ministry, most of which is aimed at helping people, regardless of gender, to enjoy God more. Later in the book, Barr seems to lament that Piper’s Desiring God website gets so many visitors, but I’m sure most people don’t go there to read about biblical womanhood. Piper’s church has clearly done a lot of things right. I personally know several missionary families from that church, who are complementarian, and the women are some of the most educated, intelligent, strongest, toughest people I’ve ever met. They are literally risking their lives, as I type this, in some of the most dangerous countries of the world to promote women’s rights and to fight human trafficking. And they are complementarian. Piper’s church is diverse and has done a lot related to racial harmony. I’ve also never seen a church where so many families have adopted children. By and large, I have rarely seen other churches which have such a passionate spirit of missions and of self-sacrificing love. So again, to see Piper depicted as this misogynist rube and for people to be potentially turned off of his ministry, makes me really sad.
Okay, so that’s all introduction. In spite of my feeling that most true believers who are complementarians don’t represent the kinds of misogyny that Barr describes, nevertheless, I will take Barr’s point that even earnest believers can have blind spots and that many good churches need a course correction on this issue. There have been some pretty appalling examples of abuse, and things like not allowing a woman to teach Sunday school to teenaged boys is pretty ridiculous, but is not something I’ve dealt with in my churches.
Now, I think the best way to organize my remaining thoughts is just by bullet points which roughly correspond to different chapters.
- Barr devotes one chapter to discussing the key Pauline texts of Ephesians 5 (on family relationships) and 1 Corinthians 14 (on speaking in churches), which to me are the crux of the whole issue. Regarding Ephesians 5, Barr makes several excellent points, and I really enjoyed her discussion of the historical context and how Paul’s teachings radically transformed Roman patriarchy. She also makes the point that wifely submission was not at all the main point of this passage. These are what I would describe as “mitigating considerations,” which “soften”, in a sense, Paul’s words about submission and make them much less misogynistic than they might otherwise sound – and I think Barr’s arguments here are absolutely correct.
However, when it comes to the decisive interpretation of these verses, nothing Barr says changes ultimately what Paul basically says. Yes, it radically transformed Roman culture. Yes, it was radically inclusive. Yes, submission wasn’t the main point of the whole passage. And yet, Paul still talks of the spiritual leadership of husbands. Of course, OF COURSE, in Jesus’ world, everything is upside-down and all leadership, including the leadership of husbands, looks very different from the world’s understanding of it. It is loving, humble, self-sacrificing, and servant-hearted. But there is no interpretation of Ephesians 5 in which Paul actually meant the opposite of what he said, or which would totally nullify his words. Understanding historical context doesn’t give us license to ignore a verse as if it doesn’t exist. Just because something isn’t the main point of a passage, it doesn’t mean that it isn’t still a part of it, or that there isn’t some message or principle still relevant for Christians today. I would be interested to hear what Barr thinks is the application/meaning of these verses for Christians today. She talks about what the verses don’t say but doesn’t offer as much positive interpretation.
Paul makes marriage a metaphor of Christ and church, which makes me think there is something deeper, and not merely cultural or time-specific, going on. Obviously, this metaphor does not apply in every sense between a husband and wife, when you consider the context of other Scriptures, such as “there is neither male or female but all are one in Christ,” or “There is only one mediator between God and man.” But I think there is still a beauty in a husband and wife being a tangible picture on earth of Christ pursuing, loving, serving, and protecting His bride the church. It would be sad for Christians to lose their appreciation for this beautiful picture entirely. Because of this, I’m not comfortable relegating these verses to irrelevance.
Yet Barr doesn’t seem open to any possibility in which these verses retain any meaning whatsoever for Christians today (at least that was my impression), even if a husband’s spiritual leadership is defined in the most humble, servant-like, or even symbolic terms. Frankly, I’m not sure what to say to that, but it seems like an extreme position to me. I just can’t go as far as she has in reinterpreting these verses.
- Regarding 1 Corinthians 14, I think a stronger argument could be made that these verses are cultural, but Barr takes a different angle. Barr suggests that Paul was merely quoting a common saying in order to refute it (similar to how he says, “All things are lawful” in 1 Corinthians 10), but she says she is unsure about this. Part of me wants Barr to be right, but it feels like a stretch to me. To be honest, I can’t really come up with a natural reading of the text where this interpretation makes sense to me. But I’m open to further study.
- I really enjoyed Barr’s historical examples of women in ministry, particularly Margery Kempe. These stories should absolutely be valued and repeated more in churches. I totally agree with Barr that it is sad and ridiculous how little women have been mentioned in some modern church history books. Regarding Kempe, I would differ somewhat on Barr’s interpretation of the history. I’ve read pretty extensively on non-conformist medieval Christian movements, particularly in England (see “The Pilgrim Church” by E.H. Broadbent, “A History of the Free Churches of England” by Herbert Skeats, and “The Anatomy of a Hybrid” and “The Reformers and their Stepchildren,” both by Leonard Verduin). There were many men arrested and tried as heretics for doing exactly the same thing as Kempe. I would say she was arrested not mainly for preaching as a woman but for preaching outside the authority of the state-sponsored church. Her resistance was not mainly against male hegemony but against state church and crown hegemony.
But Barr’s main point is totally valid, that these stories have been undervalued in the modern evangelical church. In both the New Testament and in church history, women have been critical workers for the Gospel, not just assistants to the men, and this has been neglected in most modern evangelical churches and histories. I can personally testify that there is, today, an army of single female missionaries doing amazing things for the Kingdom around the world. It is ironic that they have perhaps found more opportunities abroad, in very difficult settings, than in churches in America. The stories of these women should be told more. By the way, John Piper’s wife has written a book about some of them. I especially recommend looking into the story of Lilias Trotter.
- I’m a little unsure about her interpretation of the Reformation as well. She makes some good points. I don’t know. I’m not anti-Catholic, but I wouldn’t really view the existence of nuns as a massive achievement for women’s rights. The medieval Catholic attitudes toward women which Barr describes, such as viewing women as temptresses without self-control, and segregating genders in church, sounds to me like the practice and attitude in some Middle Eastern countries today where the record of women’s rights is abysmal. It seems the Reformation did have some unintended consequences. I think generally, the legacy of Protestantism has been better for women in modern times, compared to historically Catholic countries. This goes back Protestantism’s emphasis on freedom of conscience and the importance of every individual truly believing (as opposed to just being a Christian because your family is Christian and because you live within a certain kingdom), which tended to promote individual liberty and women’s literacy. This is especially true in Protestant missions.
See the article “The Missionary Roots of Liberal Democracy” by Robert Woodberry in the American Political Science Review, which is a robust statistical analysis of the impact of Protestant missions around the world. You could also read about how it was Protestant missionaries who first opposed women’s foot-binding in China (see “The Art of Social Change” by Kwame Anthony Appiah in The New York Times), how Protestant missionaries first opposed the practice of widow burning in India (see “Female emancipation in an imperial frame: English women and the campaign against sati (widowburning) in India, 1813–30” in Women’s History Review), how Protestant missionaries first opposed female circumcision in Kenya (see “Women Missionaries and Colonial Silences in Kenya’s Female ‘Circumcision’ Controversy, 1906–1930” by David M Anderson in The English Historical Review), or about the Protestant roots of women’s suffrage movements (see “‘A Great and Holy War’: Religious Routes to Women’s Suffrage, 1909–1914” by Robert Saunders in The English Historical Review). I think it would be brilliant if Barr wrote a book about all of that!
- Barr has a chapter on Bible translation, and about how certain word choices or chapter divisions/headings lend themselves to certain interpretations. I think it’s a fair point in some ways. In other ways, it seems she’s looking for patriarchy even where it doesn’t exist, which hurts her credibility overall. For example, she cites as an example of patriarchy one theologian who objected to the replacement of “mankind” with “human beings” in an English translation of Genesis 1:27. However, it seems fairly obvious to me from what Barr says, that the theologian wasn’t objecting to the change from “man” to “human.” He was objecting to the change from the collective “kind” to the individual “beings.” I wouldn’t think he would have any objection at all if “mankind” were changed to “humankind.” I would think that most people understand the word “mankind” refers to both men and women. For someone to interpret this as a slight against women is mindboggling to me. Was Neil Armstrong excluding women when he said, “One giant leap for mankind”?
- Barr discusses the concept of biblical inerrancy and in my opinion confuses it with strict literalism. There is nothing about understanding historical context or literary genre, which conflicts with the doctrine of inerrancy. Some parts of Scripture are clearly poetry, metaphor, etc. and are not meant to be taken literally, but that doesn’t mean that it is errant or that the author didn’t write what God intended, or that it doesn’t teach us true things about the nature of God. It’s too bad that some people could question the trustworthiness of Scripture based on this when Barr hasn’t even defined inerrancy accurately.
- Barr recounts a conversation with a friend in which she says that complementarianism leads to the abuse of women, and the friend says there is no proof. She then says, “But there is,” and proceeds with several pieces of anecdotal evidence. I’m not unsympathetic. Evangelicals absolutely should own up to cases where abuse has been committed and facilitated. But honestly the friend is right – without some kind of statistical analysis, it is pretty difficult to identify the exact cause of something (as the old saying goes, “Correlation doesn’t not equal causation”) or to say if an issue is more prevalent in a certain community as opposed to others. If we learned anything from the “Me Too” movement, it’s that these problems cut across all areas of society, even in places where women are ostensibly very liberated (like Hollywood).
Finally, I’ll just say, whether you are inclined to agree with Barr or whether you are a complementarian, be willing to examine your own beliefs and assumptions. Christians should be marked by objectivity. If we can’t see the problems on our own side, we’re hypocrites. On both sides, let’s ask ourselves if we are mainly motivated by faithfulness to Scripture. Unbiblical cultural influences can come from both directions. If we’re complementarian, we need to face up to the unbiblical misogyny in our churches and change the ways that we have sidelined and overlooked women in unbiblical ways. If we are egalitarian, we should still be able to appreciate, for example, the other aspects of John Piper’s ministry and appreciate the good that he has done.
In conclusion, I think this is an important book, but I wish some of the emphases were a bit different. I definitely take issue with some of the book, but Barr makes some excellent points.
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