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1.35k reviews for:
The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth
Beth Allison Barr
4.39 AVERAGE
1.35k reviews for:
The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth
Beth Allison Barr
4.39 AVERAGE
challenging
informative
medium-paced
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
There was a lot of putting the cart before the horse here. While she did make a lot of interesting and substantial claims, I don't think I agree with her entirely. The tension between this being historical and also being a memoir was working against her a lot, and I truly think the church history part was the more interesting and more strongly written of the two.
challenging
informative
sad
medium-paced
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
challenging
informative
medium-paced
Just finished “The Making off Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth” by Beth Allison Barr. If you want to save time, just go get this book. Read it together with “Jesus & John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation,” by Kristin Kobes Du Mez. Taken together, they are a one-two punch taking down Christian patriarchy. They both are well-researched, historically substantiated, and Biblically astute. They are both written by people who love Christianity and thus not only function as historical expose but also as prophetic call for Christians to more faithfully live out their faith in Jesus. Get them. Read them. Share them. Go.
At the heart of so many of the failures of modern Christianity, we find a similar seed: collective ignorance of our past. Most Christians know little to nothing about theological history, assuming that the framing of the Christian message they hear each week in church is precisely what they would have heard if they’d been able to sit under the teaching of Peter, Paul, or John in a 1st-century house church. Some think they know church history, but in fact, learned it via a structured presentation meant to show how “our special thing” is just the final and inevitable conclusion of God’s work in the history of the church. (I grew up with this kind of presentation as a Seventh-Day Adventist. Church history was a central part of substantiating the unique doctrines of this denomination, so we learned it as children. Only as an adult, when feeding my interest in theological history, did I discover that the history I was taught was not the whole story.)
This historical illiteracy has two significant problems. First, when we don’t know what happened in the past, we assume the past was very much like our time, just less convenient. Same concerns, same vision of culture, same expectation of roles, but without light switches and the internet. When we read old documents (like Scripture!) with this assumption, we can’t help but misread. We assume the authors were answering our questions rather than their own.
Second, when we don’t understand the theological discussions of the past, we leave space for teachers and preachers today to fill in the missing meaning. Many good church people assume that their pastor understands the text accurately because of their training. When a pastor makes a claim like, “If you don’t accept the literal historicity of the Genesis creation account and the flood, you may as well throw the whole Bible into the trash,” most Christians don’t know that there are many, many orthodox Christian thinkers over the past two thousand years who disagree. Many present the Christian message as monolithic with phrases like, “the early church believed...” or “the Bible clearly says,” when history is unapologetic about the plurality of readings and interpretations that have existed in dialogue for nearly two thousand years.
Barr, a historian who focuses on Medieval Christianity, cuts to the heart of these issues. Today a particular notion of the God-ordained role of women is being taught. Major theological influencers within Evangelicalism (such as John Piper, Wayne Grudem, and the whole Gospel Coalition crew) say their view on this matter is THE historical Christian view because it is THE literal scriptural view that goes back to the very origin of the church. Because many of us don’t know our history, we assume these guys must be right. They are not. They are profoundly wrong.
With very accessible prose, Barr walks through the historical development of the idea of “Biblical womanhood.” She shows (perhaps to our surprise) that the modern view of “Biblical Womanhood” is a relatively recent development, drawing on several historical threads. Rather than being rooted in Christian doctrine, it is simply a spiritualized version of historical patriarchy, starting with Greco-Roman patriarchy, but always drawing in elements from the then current cultural conversation. She even demonstrates how the Protestant Reformation had the tools necessary to provide freedom and equality to women, but instead of applying the “priesthood of all believers” to women, constrained that authority to men only, a direct betrayal of its core theological premises.
But this historical evolution has always had an opposing voice, rooted in the teaching of Jesus and an understanding of the Gospel’s work of setting the oppressed free. The early church, and even the western church in the Middle Ages, was attractive to women precisely because it was a place they were valued as human beings, endowed with spiritual gifts, and able to lead, in contrast to the secular culture of the time. Barr points out how, at critical historical points, men banded together against the movement of women’s autonomy in order to maintain their shared authority, justifying it as the will of God.
It’s ironic to realize that those Christian leaders today who claim that the movement toward the autonomy and liberation of women results from the dangerous encroachment of secular culture into the church have it precisely backward. Jesus’ message brought freedom, and historically it has been patriarchy that has crept from culture into the church. That battle has been fought over and over again and is raging today.
(An interesting side note: Barr brings clear receipts that show how the ESV, one of the current most popular English translations of the Bible, was explicitly envisioned to counteract gender-inclusive and egalitarian readings of scripture. While I knew from my own study that it was a heavily slanted translation, I did not realize that it is not even a translation at all, but simply a theological revision of the 1971 RSV.)
I think it’s also important to note that Barr also makes the connection that patriarchy walks hand in hand with racism (racial hierarchy.) While this book is not about individual or systemic racism, she notes how patriarchy of necessity defines people according to worth and dignity, which always means that it generates hierarchies of race and gender. (I’d agree and add that it also adds hierarchies of class, ability, and sexuality as well.) Her historical study demonstrates how these kinds of discrimination evolve, taking on different forms precisely so that those who benefit can avoid the spotlight of individual culpability and take shelter in the “this is just how it is” quality of systemic injustice.
Barr ends the book with a clear and simple statement: “Biblical womanhood is Christian patriarchy,” and she leaves no margin for the kinder-gentler version either. “Complementarianism is patriarchy. Patriarchy is about power. Neither have ever been about Jesus.”
Followers of Jesus are called to join Jesus in his mission. Jesus defined his mission for us in Luke 4:18. Whatever else we envision as the impact of the Gospel, this must guide. If our message and action don’t bring good news to the poor, freedom to prisoners, sight to the blind, and freedom to the oppressed, then we are off track. History shows that Christians have often participated in the oppression, marginalization, and silencing of women, but when we do so, we are betrayaing of our Lord and his mission.
At the heart of so many of the failures of modern Christianity, we find a similar seed: collective ignorance of our past. Most Christians know little to nothing about theological history, assuming that the framing of the Christian message they hear each week in church is precisely what they would have heard if they’d been able to sit under the teaching of Peter, Paul, or John in a 1st-century house church. Some think they know church history, but in fact, learned it via a structured presentation meant to show how “our special thing” is just the final and inevitable conclusion of God’s work in the history of the church. (I grew up with this kind of presentation as a Seventh-Day Adventist. Church history was a central part of substantiating the unique doctrines of this denomination, so we learned it as children. Only as an adult, when feeding my interest in theological history, did I discover that the history I was taught was not the whole story.)
This historical illiteracy has two significant problems. First, when we don’t know what happened in the past, we assume the past was very much like our time, just less convenient. Same concerns, same vision of culture, same expectation of roles, but without light switches and the internet. When we read old documents (like Scripture!) with this assumption, we can’t help but misread. We assume the authors were answering our questions rather than their own.
Second, when we don’t understand the theological discussions of the past, we leave space for teachers and preachers today to fill in the missing meaning. Many good church people assume that their pastor understands the text accurately because of their training. When a pastor makes a claim like, “If you don’t accept the literal historicity of the Genesis creation account and the flood, you may as well throw the whole Bible into the trash,” most Christians don’t know that there are many, many orthodox Christian thinkers over the past two thousand years who disagree. Many present the Christian message as monolithic with phrases like, “the early church believed...” or “the Bible clearly says,” when history is unapologetic about the plurality of readings and interpretations that have existed in dialogue for nearly two thousand years.
Barr, a historian who focuses on Medieval Christianity, cuts to the heart of these issues. Today a particular notion of the God-ordained role of women is being taught. Major theological influencers within Evangelicalism (such as John Piper, Wayne Grudem, and the whole Gospel Coalition crew) say their view on this matter is THE historical Christian view because it is THE literal scriptural view that goes back to the very origin of the church. Because many of us don’t know our history, we assume these guys must be right. They are not. They are profoundly wrong.
With very accessible prose, Barr walks through the historical development of the idea of “Biblical womanhood.” She shows (perhaps to our surprise) that the modern view of “Biblical Womanhood” is a relatively recent development, drawing on several historical threads. Rather than being rooted in Christian doctrine, it is simply a spiritualized version of historical patriarchy, starting with Greco-Roman patriarchy, but always drawing in elements from the then current cultural conversation. She even demonstrates how the Protestant Reformation had the tools necessary to provide freedom and equality to women, but instead of applying the “priesthood of all believers” to women, constrained that authority to men only, a direct betrayal of its core theological premises.
But this historical evolution has always had an opposing voice, rooted in the teaching of Jesus and an understanding of the Gospel’s work of setting the oppressed free. The early church, and even the western church in the Middle Ages, was attractive to women precisely because it was a place they were valued as human beings, endowed with spiritual gifts, and able to lead, in contrast to the secular culture of the time. Barr points out how, at critical historical points, men banded together against the movement of women’s autonomy in order to maintain their shared authority, justifying it as the will of God.
It’s ironic to realize that those Christian leaders today who claim that the movement toward the autonomy and liberation of women results from the dangerous encroachment of secular culture into the church have it precisely backward. Jesus’ message brought freedom, and historically it has been patriarchy that has crept from culture into the church. That battle has been fought over and over again and is raging today.
(An interesting side note: Barr brings clear receipts that show how the ESV, one of the current most popular English translations of the Bible, was explicitly envisioned to counteract gender-inclusive and egalitarian readings of scripture. While I knew from my own study that it was a heavily slanted translation, I did not realize that it is not even a translation at all, but simply a theological revision of the 1971 RSV.)
I think it’s also important to note that Barr also makes the connection that patriarchy walks hand in hand with racism (racial hierarchy.) While this book is not about individual or systemic racism, she notes how patriarchy of necessity defines people according to worth and dignity, which always means that it generates hierarchies of race and gender. (I’d agree and add that it also adds hierarchies of class, ability, and sexuality as well.) Her historical study demonstrates how these kinds of discrimination evolve, taking on different forms precisely so that those who benefit can avoid the spotlight of individual culpability and take shelter in the “this is just how it is” quality of systemic injustice.
Barr ends the book with a clear and simple statement: “Biblical womanhood is Christian patriarchy,” and she leaves no margin for the kinder-gentler version either. “Complementarianism is patriarchy. Patriarchy is about power. Neither have ever been about Jesus.”
Followers of Jesus are called to join Jesus in his mission. Jesus defined his mission for us in Luke 4:18. Whatever else we envision as the impact of the Gospel, this must guide. If our message and action don’t bring good news to the poor, freedom to prisoners, sight to the blind, and freedom to the oppressed, then we are off track. History shows that Christians have often participated in the oppression, marginalization, and silencing of women, but when we do so, we are betrayaing of our Lord and his mission.