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We are Alyssa and Bri, two sisters who believe God wants more for women than we've been taught. Join us as we dive into the intersection of faith and feminism, learning together as we go.
To the We Are More Pod cast. My name is Alyssa. And my name is Bree. We're two sisters passionate about all things faith and feminism. We believe that Jesus trusted, respected, and encouraged women to teach and preach his word.
Speaker 1:And apparently, that's controversial. Get comfy. Good evening. Welcome to We Are More, an episode where Brianna has had no caffeine all day. Today's gonna be
Speaker 2:a slow one, guys. I'm feeling a bit sluggish.
Speaker 1:And she looks it too. Hey. That's really rude. So, if you notice that Brie is dull, uninteresting, sort of a blob.
Speaker 2:If you notice Brie being tired, run down, listless, does she poop out at parties?
Speaker 1:Very few people are gonna get that reference.
Speaker 2:Vitamin E to Vegemite.
Speaker 1:That's from I Love Lucy, which is long, long, long before our time. However, as good
Speaker 2:little Christian children, we weren't allowed to watch regular TV. We watched Nick at Night, and we watched Pax. Pax. Oh my gosh. I I think we only watched, like, a couple of shows on Pax, but it was like, it's a miracle.
Speaker 2:You remember that? Yep. With that guy with the ugly mole. Oh, yeah. Forgot about that.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. There were a few there was doc. Sue Thomas FBI, but I don't think we ever watched Doc. No. Don't Because it was too achy breaky for us.
Speaker 2:It
Speaker 1:definitely did have Miley Cyrus dead. Yeah. With the mullet. Yeah. Was frightening times for us all.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And Sue Thomas FBI. That we watched a lot of. I loved Sue Thomas FBI.
Speaker 1:I actually went back the Hallmark Channel's app, I don't know if it still does, but it used to have that show on it. And it I mean, it doesn't all hold up,
Speaker 2:but it's like 60% holds up. I haven't seen that in so long.
Speaker 1:It's so good. It's a show that you can watch. It's actually, it had more seasons than I thought it did.
Speaker 2:Really? Mhmm.
Speaker 1:But so now you know what we were allowed to watch. And also PBS. Watched off a lot of PBS. But Nick at Night was like the thing where you'd watch like Andy Griffith, I Love Lucy.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I Love Lucy, Green Acres, Brady Bunch.
Speaker 1:What I find absolutely hilarious about all of those shows is they were supposed to we were allowed to watch them because they're supposed to be wholesome. Right? Like, nobody's cussing. Nobody's sleeping around. Maybe.
Speaker 1:Maybe.
Speaker 2:Sort of. Depends on the show.
Speaker 1:But it's just so funny to me because if you look at all those shows, I can't watch most of them anymore because and, you know, to get right on theme here,
Speaker 2:the misogyny. You know? When I go back and watch Green Acres, I'm like, I can't. And most of
Speaker 1:you anybody who's, like, our age, we're in our Yep. Exactly. Any of you millennials out there, we're, like, younger millennials. But this was so far before our time, but I do think it's a common Christian kid experience to have watched all these shows. And at such a young age, you're exposed to misogyny that wasn't necessarily religious based, but was definitely, like, of the forties, fifties in The United States.
Speaker 1:And that was just, like, presented as normal, like, leave it to Beaver. You know, like, that kind of vibe? It was presented as normal as what to expect, and that was wholesome. That was, like, the good TV.
Speaker 2:It's, like, what you should aspire to be. Yes. You should want to be Leave It To Beaver's mom.
Speaker 1:I think back on, like, I Love Lucy was one that we watched. We didn't watch Leave It To Beaver quite as much, but we watched I Love Lucy on repeat. Forget it. And I think about the, like, she is hilarious and, like, Lucille Ball is she's an icon. Right?
Speaker 2:A national treasure.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. But you say that a lot. Many a thing are a national treasure, Sabrina.
Speaker 2:What what else should I say? A Nicholas Cage
Speaker 1:of their A national treasurer?
Speaker 2:Yeah. She was a Nicholas Cage of her time.
Speaker 1:Oh, please. Good heavens. Let's go back to national treasure. But you look at how she was spoken to in that show. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:And I think that's probably reflective of their real real life also. But she was spoken down to. She was given an allowance, which was all fairly normal for the time. But as Christian kids in the nineties, that was what we were presented with as this is what you should aspire to. Even if our parents didn't necessarily mean for that to happen,
Speaker 2:it's just the media that you consume. Right. You know, it's like today, when the music that you're listening to, the shows that you're watching, they're influencing you whether you like it or not. And that was influencing us at
Speaker 1:the It seeps into your person, into who you are. That's the hard thing for me is I look back on a lot of those influences, whether it was that, whether it was like the books that I read, which were all I've been going through this journey as Brie and I are readers now. We're readers. I've been going through this journey of, oh, hey, I don't have to read only Christian historical fiction romance. Because really, like, when I was younger and I was reading, that's all I was reading for the most part.
Speaker 2:I feel like that's probably a good reason why I did not read. Growing up, I just had no interest in it because those stories did not interest me.
Speaker 1:They're not interesting. I'll give you that much. One iota. There's like one story and they just keep telling
Speaker 2:it over and over and over. If that's your bag, great for you. If you enjoy those books, good for you. Mhmm. But right now, I'm reading about ghosts.
Speaker 2:You're reading a great book. Soon, I'm gonna be reading Olivia Atwater's one of her more recent books. I'm excited to read that one next. It's I read the first chapter. I have this habit of reading the first chapter of many different books to see which one I want
Speaker 1:to read. That blows me away. She will sit there and she will read a singular chapter and then just just not read that book.
Speaker 2:She just picks up a different book. I want to see if it's my vibe like if, you know, I'm in the mood to read something like that.
Speaker 1:Okay. But we're not talking about books she picks up at Target and then puts back down. We're not talking about books that she picks up at the library and then, like, leaves at the library. We're talking about books that are on her shelf. And she's like, do I wanna read this?
Speaker 1:Do I know I wanna read this? What's the back of the shelf?
Speaker 2:I would say, like, most of those books over there I've read the first chapter of.
Speaker 1:I just don't know. I don't know how to handle that. Readers out there support me on this. I find this a bizarre habit and perhaps you should be burned at the stake for it by the readers.
Speaker 2:Oh, no. No. They all agree. This is normal. I just in fact, I just asked everybody here.
Speaker 2:They said they said, no. This is good.
Speaker 1:Listeners note. There's no one else in the room. Except the dog. Dogs. Maybe some ghosts.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. Unknown. Ghosts? Hello? Definitely the ghosts of some ladybugs we killed the
Speaker 2:other day.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah. Not a spider. Those are plentiful. So on the vein of books and misogyny, we are finally, finally talking today about Beth Elsinbahr's newest book, Becoming the Pastor's Wife. And we have referenced it probably a thousand times.
Speaker 2:We've referenced it, but we're also, like, surrounded by it. Just in this room alone, I have one, two, three, four. Do we have five copies in here?
Speaker 1:We have Four. Four in this room. There's one out in my room. And Brie's book came with a magnet, so we've got a magnet now. Awesome.
Speaker 1:We've also each got a copy of Beth's last book. Yeah. So, I mean, it it's we're one step from a shrine at this point.
Speaker 2:I'm considering putting up a floating shelf. Just for Beth's books? With like a candle, her books, her picture, a rosary. Oh, good. I don't know what goes in a shrine.
Speaker 1:Not a rosary. I don't know. We're not Catholic. I'm confused. You might notice that as we talk through this book.
Speaker 2:So I finished this book a while ago, but I'm looking back through all, like, my highlights and my dog eared pages, and I'm just like, oh, that's so good. Oh, yeah. Oh, get it, Beth? Yep.
Speaker 1:Uh-huh. See, my problem is so I will highlight things. I love to dog ear a book. I know that's a controversial take, but I love to dog ear a book because I love to look at it and be like, look what I read. It's amazing.
Speaker 1:And then I do that to keep my page. But then whenever I find, like, a quote or something that I particularly like, even though even though I'm actively highlighting throughout, if there's one that's like, oh, that hit, then I dog ear it. Here's the problem, boys and girls. I have dog eared so many pages in this book that it is actively expanding the book. I had to dog ear on
Speaker 2:the bottom and the top because To even it out. Yeah. Because otherwise, the book was too large It was just on the bottom. Becoming a triangle.
Speaker 1:It was a problem. So I'll I should post a picture of this It's a wild time here for Beth. But Brie wanted to approach this book in a little bit of a different way. She wanted to kinda start at the
Speaker 2:end Mhmm.
Speaker 1:And then circle back to the beginning.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Work our way a little bit backwards. But what I really liked about the last chapter of her book was it was kind of like an inspirational message. Mhmm. Pause while I flip.
Speaker 2:Pause. Pause. She just has so many freaking references. I It's hard to get And acknowledgements. I'm not kidding you guys.
Speaker 1:The last 37 pages of this book are acknowledgments for all the people that helped her get here, helped her write this book, helped her read the 50 books. And then a chronological list of the books and references that she gave, and then notes on the pages from the boys and girls. It's extensive, and it's in point five font. 37 pages? I've never experienced this in my life.
Speaker 1:It's massive. Yeah. So I don't think I'll be dog earing those pages. I think you should. I I'm maybe deeply overwhelmed by those pages, frankly.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I think you're only a true fan if you really have dog eared the index.
Speaker 1:Oh, sorry. Sorry, Beth. Do we get to be best friends still?
Speaker 2:No. She only signed my book
Speaker 1:as her best That's true.
Speaker 2:She did. But only because you asked. I told one of the doctors I work with the other day, he's like, oh, how did that book signing go? Did did you get arrested yet? I was like, well, I asked her to sign my book.
Speaker 2:It's my best friend. And he goes, you did not.
Speaker 1:Said I did. Hasn't nudged you
Speaker 2:for long enough. No. Anyways, I really like these two quotes here. She says, what if instead of fighting against one another, women encouraged one another and their callings, whatever their callings may be? What if our churches made room for both pastors, wives, and female pastors for those who have happened to marry pastors and those who have chosen to be single?
Speaker 2:Or she actually says, those who chose not to marry at all. I just ad libbed. But I love this like little message of hope at the end. Because as you're reading through here, like, especially right now, I feel like women are more oppressed than they almost ever have been, the church.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And the church, I think you're seeing it in a scary, scary way.
Speaker 2:It's hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel right But like she says, history shows us the way that women have been oppressed, but history also shows us that it's not always been this way. Right. And that's what I really like about this book is her historical references to like, look, We've had female pastors in, like, the early, early, early times. Your great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandparents.
Speaker 1:Well, one of the things she talks about in early in the book, and again, we'll circle back, but she references this several times that Al Moeller, who is one of the heads of the Southern Baptist Convention.
Speaker 2:This is he only have molars?
Speaker 1:Yeah. That's No premolars?
Speaker 2:No premolars. No anterior laterals.
Speaker 1:Can you tell that she works for a dentist? No, but she says that he says that for the last two thousand years of the church, it's always been this way, in reference to women not being able to lead. Men leading the church, men leading their homes, etc. And he harps on that point kind of all the time. I think in the last episode, or whenever we talked about this last, I mentioned that at the talk we went to, the Kelvin professor said we are an ahistorical people, which means we just don't like to look at history as a group.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And this is a perfect reference of that. If he can seriously sit there and say, Oh yeah, for the last two thousand years, since Jesus was alive,
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:We have not allowed women to lead in the church. And then you read Beth's book and you're like,
Speaker 2:For everyone's sakes, read the Bible.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly. Come on. Well, you've got Deborah, you've got Priscilla, you've got Phoebe, you've got so many people. You've got Mary Magdalene, who I'm sure many of us will hear about on Easter as a prostitute. Quick note, wasn't.
Speaker 1:That's not a thing. But you'll hear your pastor say it from the pulpit. But you're talking about someone who's called the apostle to the apostles.
Speaker 2:I wanted to talk about here, she says she's talking about Jimmy Draper, and he didn't see the consequences of a theology that rendered women's spiritual calling only through their role of help meet to men. He didn't see how rendering women to subordinate in both marriage and ministry rendered women's voices voices, contributions, and values as less than those of men. He didn't see how removing women from leadership roles equal to those of men removed women's ability to advocate effectively and be heard when speaking against male predators. Said that
Speaker 1:in a really creepy way.
Speaker 2:Predators. Who is that? Jimmy Draper was the he's like the head of the SBC, if I'm remembering correctly. But I want to talk about like historically importance of knowing the consequences of our actions. Right.
Speaker 2:The more that we oppress women
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And lift up the glory of man, you know? The more we're saying, women, you don't have a calling. Right. God hasn't given you a calling. Your calling is to support men.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. And we're limiting ourselves so much.
Speaker 1:Well, to go back to the last book that we reviewed, and we referenced this several times throughout that podcast, but Beth Moore, in a forward to Your Jesus Is Too American, which we did last week, said, Where you sit determines what you see. And that thought process right there, to me, says, I am a man. Mhmm. And I have never considered what it might be like to be less than.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Because all of those things that you're saying are less than. You can serve in a church, you just can't serve as any of the leadership positions. Mhmm. Not just lead pastor, but also elder, also deacon, also anything really with a title. Now, you can serve behind the scenes.
Speaker 1:You can do all the same jobs, but you can't actually get any of the acknowledgment. You can't actually hold the title. And somehow we're gonna pretend that's just as important and not understand why women would have a problem with that. Same thing in their marriage, that you're telling me the man is the head of the household, and yet you're saying, I can't begin to understand why that would oppress women.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Gee, because perhaps you just told them that they're secondary and that's oppression.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I think something that I think a lot of things, I guess. I think I think I think I think
Speaker 1:Actually, I think you think very few things in this particular moment.
Speaker 2:Oh, mashed potatoes. I feel like there's one goldfish floating around up there and the rest is empty. So many women have kind of slid into this idea of saying like, no, this is good and I'm gonna encourage all the other women to follow my lead in this, and here's why. But it's like a survival technique. Right.
Speaker 2:In the wild. Out there. Or I think when you hear about women getting kidnapped or something. Mhmm. And their attitude isn't total fear, even though it is.
Speaker 2:They kind of
Speaker 1:They adapt. They'll start to I mean, anyone in that situation will start to cater to their abuser almost. Right.
Speaker 2:No, this is okay. Or a good example of this is that movie with Anna Kendrick that she just came out with. Dating Game, right? The Dating Game Killer
Speaker 1:or something like Something like It was on Netflix, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So this, I forget what the, it's based off a real serial killer. But one of his last victims, he tried to unalive. Sure.
Speaker 1:So says the TikToker.
Speaker 2:Out in the desert, but she didn't die. And when she woke up, she acted like, Oh, everything's fine. Like, I don't want other people to find out about this. Can we just keep this a secret between you and I? And it was a survival technique.
Speaker 2:Right. How can I get out of this situation alive? I'm gonna pacify this guy. And that's what women today, maybe not all women, but definitely some women are doing. Well, and
Speaker 1:you're not just talking about a specific scary moment. Like, in that situation, she's just trying to survive a moment. I think I see a lot of women in these types of marriages that so fiercely defend complementarianism, that so fiercely defend submission, that so fiercely defend a lack of women in leadership. They're not just trying to survive a scary moment. They're trying to survive a partner that often doesn't value them as an equal.
Speaker 1:Well, that's the issue with lifting up men so much
Speaker 2:and oppressing women is that it just directly leads to abuse.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And she talks about several situations of abuse in the Christian church and that she talks about the SBC or the Southern Baptist Church. That the Southern Baptist Church just totally swept under the rug. Yep. Because it's more important for them to not have the men in power look bad than to protect these women.
Speaker 1:Well, it's bad press. It's like, well, if we let the world know about this, then we'll look bad. And they hide it under this guise of, then God will look bad. This will reflect poorly on god, and then we won't be able to minister to people and who won't come to Christ because of it. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:And if you're a woman in the church who's ever been in a situation like this, where someone has come after you or has harmed you in some way, that's the message a lot of times, like, that you're getting to. It's not just the message that the church pushes out, it's the message that you personally get is don't say anything because you are going to harm the faith of others.
Speaker 2:Right. And they really push this forgiveness agenda. Oh, yeah. And like Christ died for you, so you must forgive too. Forgive and forget.
Speaker 2:Forgive and forget. And she talks about that in her book. And it's dangerous to women. Mhmm. Because you just keep it just keeps happening.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. Well, it's a lack of accountability too. You're not just you know, I think forgiveness is for yourself, and no one should be able to tell you when and how to forgive someone else. But at the end of the day, that forgiveness is for your own soul so that you can let go of some of that pain if you choose to do it. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:What the church should be doing instead of demanding forgive and forget is demanding accountability. Yeah. And within sweeping these issues under the rug, oftentimes, and you can see it in many of the examples that she brings up, not only are they sweeping it under the rug publicly, there's no accountability. These men stay in their positions of power because the power is the most important thing.
Speaker 2:She talks about a pastor's wife named Tamaria Acacia, I believe is how you say that. Could be dead wrong. I'm probably wrong. But she was a pastor's wife back in the sixties, I believe. And she talks about her husband and herself.
Speaker 2:They were pastors in another country. They moved over here, popped around to a bunch of different churches. They couldn't stay in one place too long. And there wasn't really a rhyme or reason to it. People didn't really know why.
Speaker 2:The churches that he was pastoring really didn't see any growth. And it turns out that not only was he having several different affairs, he was also severely abusing his wife. And she would paint. She was a painter. And she would always paint the patron Saint Fabiola.
Speaker 2:Who, come to find out, is the patron saint of difficult marriages and divorce. But you don't really know that, and it was just like a woman in a red veil. And you look back on all those times that she was painting these and giving them away and painting these and giving them away. And it's like she was asking for help as much as she could. And it just breaks my heart.
Speaker 1:One of the things we certainly do to women, and in the case of this book as she talks through the expectations put upon pastors' wives, as she talks through literally the 50 books that she read about pastors' wives. And she also is a pastor's wife, just in case we haven't brought that point up recently. Her husband is a pastor, but she does not while she fully supports his ministry Mhmm. She says that she is not, like, called into ministry in the same way that he is. Like Mhmm.
Speaker 1:So whereas a lot of pastors' wives, the expectation is you're going to teach Sunday school, you're going to do the bake sales, you're going to whatever.
Speaker 2:You're going fill in
Speaker 1:all the gaps. Yeah. We'll get into it. She does a chapter in the beginning called the two for one special, I think. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And we'll talk about that. But I think one of the points that she does make throughout is how isolating these positions are for women. You look at some of the history, and we talked, I think, about Hildegard when we talked about Beth's chat that we went to. And she also references a woman called Milberga, both of whom were abbesses in the early Catholic church. And in being in a position of public leadership like that, there is community.
Speaker 1:Now I'm not I don't want to make a point of like, Oh, they were never lonely. They had people around them at all times. No. But there's community there. There's there can be openness there.
Speaker 1:There can be other people experiencing the same things, and you can there's not this isolation. Whereas what we've done to the traditional pastor's wife, and she makes this point, is to kind of make her the first lady of the church so her house always has to look just so. She has to have a special box with things to make cookies in case people come over unexpectedly and whatever. And she has to kind of like paint on this face. This fake face.
Speaker 1:Passade. Yeah. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And how incredibly lonely. Well she talks about when she was her husband was going through Seminary? Seminary. That's the word. I was like, Ministry school?
Speaker 2:No. That's not right. Technically it is. Seminary. But they had their own little house.
Speaker 2:And there was another One of his friends was in seminary school, I believe. And she invited the wife and her couple of kids over for lunch or something. And once the lady stepped through the door, she just broke down and cried because she felt like a failure as a pastor's wife because her house didn't look as perfect and put together as Beth's did. And Beth sat with her while she was crying and was like, Listen, we don't have the same situation. I don't have 14,000 children that I'm trying to run after.
Speaker 2:Two children. All my furniture is from my grandma. And just the pressure that you must be under to walk into literally a stranger's house and break down in tears over just being like, I'm not enough. Right.
Speaker 1:Well, and think of this poor woman that you referenced, Maria.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. Maria.
Speaker 1:As many churches as she went to, because she's the first lady, because she's held apart, she never found community enough to trust them with the fact that she was being abused. What's frustrating is someone did report her husband. It was another man,
Speaker 2:I believe. Several letters to the SBC, to the head of the SBC, saying, Look, these things are happening. Here's another instance. Here's another instance where he left the church. And every time it just came back, Well,
Speaker 1:we're looking into it. We're looking into it. Don't worry, we're looking into it. Meanwhile, her life's a living hell. Right.
Speaker 1:And I know we've made this point before, but if you are going through something like this, whether you're a pastor's wife or not in any situation, whether it's within the church or outside of the church Is it important to report these things to your church if it's someone in church leadership? Yes, it absolutely is. But also, in addition to that, it's important to report this to the police. I totally agree. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Because I can't tell you how many times I have seen this happen. You cannot depend on your church to do the right thing in these scenarios. You just can't.
Speaker 2:Because at the end of the day, in the church, a lot of the times, unfortunately, there is an agenda. Right. To keep those people in power or to not make a big deal about something because you might hurt the faith of someone else.
Speaker 1:Or the church is gonna get in the news and get a bad reputation.
Speaker 2:If someone is being hurt, forget all that. Get the law involved.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Go get actual serious help. Don't just go to your pastor.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:If it is going on in the church, have that be step five. Like, it's step down the road. Step one is report to the police. And then, you know, then you go down the road of whatever needs to be done next. Step one doesn't need to be reported to your church.
Speaker 1:Eventually, you can get there. Little tangent. If you're in an abusive situation, report it to the police. Yeah. If you see someone in an abusive situation, please do the
Speaker 2:same thing. When you see something Say something. Say something. Don't just be silent, and don't assume that someone else has already reported it or dealt with it. Don't be a bystander.
Speaker 1:Brie has a friend.
Speaker 2:Hello, friend. Her name's Lydia.
Speaker 1:She has the very bestest stories. Hi, Lydia.
Speaker 2:Hi. And she you have
Speaker 1:to tell this story because it's one of my favorites. All my favorite stories are Lydia's stories.
Speaker 2:My friend Lydia absolutely refuses to be part of the bystander effect. And so in college one time, she heard someone screaming out the window and ran out of her room with, like, a kitchen knife ready to take on Darth Vader. I don't know. But I've learned a lot from her. I feel like Oh, she's the best.
Speaker 2:I love the best.
Speaker 1:No. But I I mean, I think that's it it's hilarious because I can absolutely picture that. But it's also such, like, a good example. Mhmm. Because so many of us are a part of the bystander effect.
Speaker 1:How many people in Maria's church knew what was going on? Oh, absolutely. And just stood by and said, Well, someone else will deal with it. Well, it's not my place.
Speaker 2:It's not my place. I don't want to cause a scene. I don't want to make someone uncomfortable, which is something that women do all the time. We're so afraid of making people uncomfortable. Right.
Speaker 2:Some people need to be uncomforted.
Speaker 1:We're gonna circle back to the front the front of the book, the beginning of the book. And here's the problem, guys. I have so many highlights, and they're all in various colors because I at no point in my life am I a responsible enough human to have the same highlighter on hand.
Speaker 2:Which is absolutely bizarre to me because it seems like I should be the person like that. And all of my highlights in this book are from one highlighter. Alright. I needed them all to match.
Speaker 1:Here's the thing. I have now half of these are Breeze. So I have sort of a sage green, which should confuse everyone how we got a sage green highlighter. I have aesthetic. A lovely burnt orange.
Speaker 1:I have a very bright orange. I have pink. I have purple. There's blue in here somewhere. Chaos.
Speaker 1:It's chaos absolutely everywhere.
Speaker 2:And mine are all a nice pale pink. Well oh, everybody hated that. I just asked everybody. They said they hate it.
Speaker 1:So let's see. Circling back. Circling back. One of the main points that she makes throughout the beginning of the book is that pastors' wives in modern day kinda don't get a say in things. They are called to ministry because their husband was called to ministry, and their calling kind of just doesn't matter.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Now if if their calling is to ministry, that's great. If they if that's what they want to do is to work alongside their husband in a ministry, that's totally fine. But many a pastor's wife gets flung into this role. And she talks about when she was, like, early on in, like, her husband I'm not sure if he was already preaching or if he was in seminary still.
Speaker 1:And she had someone tell her, like, oh, yeah. So and so is only gonna do the bulletins for so long, and so you're gonna have to come in and do them because you're the pastor's wife.
Speaker 2:Yep. Because you're the pastor's wife.
Speaker 1:Is role. Yep. But what she says is that despite the fact that there are countless books on this topic if you're a pastor's wives out there, you may know this. But did you guys know that there would be a 50 books worth of information for pastor's wives?
Speaker 2:Probably more than a 50.
Speaker 1:I am overwhelmed by that. Like, never in my life would I have thought there was such a selection.
Speaker 2:Is there one for a pastor's cousin? Maybe.
Speaker 1:We could get that. I could write it. Despite the fact that there is that amount of information out there on the proper pastor's wife, exactly the role that a pastor's wife is supposed to play. And not all of them outline it the same way, but she says that despite that, this isn't a role that the Bible expressly spells out. The types of roles that the Bible does describe for women are those of collaboration alongside male not those contingent on being a wife, is a quote from her.
Speaker 1:Now she talks about one of the chapters is called Where is Peter's Wife? And apparently, Peter's wife is used as an example for pastors' wives, which is fascinating because Peter's wife is only referenced one time, and it's only said like, dude has a wife. Yeah. She's here, I guess. She's not really talked about, but the fact that she's not talked about apparently is critical to the overall pastor's wife culture.
Speaker 1:And I'll tell you, we Christians, we can make a mountain out of a molehill.
Speaker 2:Oh, buddy. Yeah.
Speaker 1:We can. And so her absence
Speaker 2:Makes the heart grow fonder.
Speaker 1:Maybe. The lack of, like, ever saying anything about her, too many of these people that Beth references, one of whom we'll talk probably a good bit about, is Dorothy Patterson. She is, like, the queen of the pastor's wives, I think. Like, she was married to who was the head of the for a while. She also taught classes for pastor's wives on how to pack your husband's suitcase when he travels.
Speaker 1:And he can never have there can never be dirty dishes in this thing because that will stress him out while he's trying to plan a sermon. And here's how to bake the perfect cookie. These were classes. Literal classes.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And books and manuals that were given to these women Mhmm. Saying, oh, you feel like you're called into ministry? Do you know how to hand out Kool Aid and lemon cookies? Like, that's your role.
Speaker 1:Yep. In her book she says In Dorothy's book?
Speaker 2:Well, I guess it could be a quote from Dorothy's book. But this is on page 26 of Beth's book. Oh, sorry. It says, Dorothy Patterson, who uses the term first lady. That's really cool.
Speaker 2:Acknowledges that a pastor's first lady has no job description, yet she walks into a role with amazing expectations and sometimes overwhelming responsibilities. It is a dependent role. She is her husband's wife, thus, according to biblical mandate, his helper. Now that part
Speaker 1:is a quote from Dorothy. Yes. It's so funny how we pull from different parts of the bible to just, like, fit whatever narrative we want. We pull this random verse about Peter's wife that, like, she existed, but we didn't talk about her. Obviously she was behind the scenes, constantly working for his ministry and building him up, and doing we wow.
Speaker 1:I know. Beth says, do you find it unsettling that they have so much certainty about the ministry calling of a
Speaker 2:role that is so unclear in biblical texts, especially the confident claims that it is a subordinate role?
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:There's nothing in the Bible No. That talks about a pastor's wife's role. Yet there's over 150 books telling them exactly what it is.
Speaker 1:And basically saying, if you don't do this, you're not just sort of a failure. Like, when I first got married and I still was trying to live this, like, submissive lifestyle, which was never worked out for you. Was never going to happen. But because I was raised in this, that's what I thought I was supposed to do. And when I couldn't manage it, because I am violently Look at you.
Speaker 1:My hair is green. When I couldn't manage it, I felt like a failure. So I can't imagine the pressure of also thinking the entire church will see this. This will impact my husband's job, my husband's ministry. I mean, for heaven's sakes, Beth is a pastor's wife, and at one point, her husband and I she talks about this in The Making of Biblical Womanhood, that her husband was fired from a job because of her and her choices.
Speaker 1:Like, she taught a Sunday school class that had boys that were teenagers, and so now they were men, and they couldn't be taught by a woman because men can't be taught by women. Mhmm. Which we've talked about that verse before. But She's a professor.
Speaker 2:She's studying the bible. She studied all kinds of things. She's so educated. And they were like, no. No.
Speaker 2:No. No. You can't teach our 13 year old boy bible stories.
Speaker 1:Unqualified. Absolutely not. What are you thinking? I mean, the woman is a professor of medieval history and feminist studies and has been around the world studying this stuff. And you're gonna tell her she can't teach teenagers?
Speaker 1:Not only that
Speaker 2:she can't, but, like, biblically, she is not allowed Right.
Speaker 1:And I imagine if she's dealing with this, someone who is so educated, someone who's clearly very independent, someone who is now writing books on the subject, I just imagine what all the others other pastors' wives are sitting there feeling like if they can't hold this up. If their house isn't always perfect, if there aren't always cookies on the table, if their children aren't perfectly well behaved in every single service, all of this stuff, you would feel like you failed god himself.
Speaker 2:Yeah. You would. And you're split in so many different directions because, really, like, ideally, right, she's supposed to be a stay at home mom.
Speaker 1:Right. Oh, yeah. And she talks about how she's also supposed to homeschool. She's supposed to homeschool.
Speaker 2:She's supposed to pop out 17 children, but she's also supposed to fill in all these gaps that are missing in the church. Mhmm. So Sunday school teacher, bible study leader, snack maker, worship pastor playing the piano. Not not pastor. My bad.
Speaker 2:No. No.
Speaker 1:No. Never pastor.
Speaker 2:But special music? Sure. Playing the piano. She's supposed to be a friend to everybody, a role model to everybody. She's supposed to be everything, but not given the title, not giving the payment, and I don't know how one person does it.
Speaker 1:I think you're set up to fail.
Speaker 2:And you're right. You're totally alone. You're isolated because you are supposed to be the leader in that situation. Who else do you look to?
Speaker 1:One of the things that I wanted to read too, and this is not, like, some huge historic point that she makes. I can't begin to recommend this book enough because it's it's a little bit textbook like. And she's a fantastic writer, so it's not dull like a textbook,
Speaker 2:but the amount of information. I recommend audiobook and physical copy. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I like that too. That's how I did it as well. But one of the things she says in chapter two of and it's when women were priests, and we'll talk a little bit about Melberga in just a minute. But she's talking about when she was a kid. And she went to this church that had, like, a room with all of the pastor's pictures in it for the last however many years that the church was in existence.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. And every single picture was a white man in a suit. Every single one. She's got, like, a funny story of how the kids thought the pictures were haunted, and I think that's hilarious.
Speaker 2:I think
Speaker 1:they were. But she says, but let's imagine that growing up, I had been able to recall photographs of a more diverse set of leaders. What if, say, there were 20 photos on that wall and 12 of them depicted women as both pastors and deacons? If some of those leaders, both male and female, were brown as well as white. If the women depicted just like the men stood alone, their leadership independent from that of a spouse.
Speaker 1:And that, like, really hit me as I was reading it. How would that have impacted me as a child? To see someone that looks like me up on those walls? Because we went to those churches that had I remember those pictures. And what would that do to you as a kid to say, I have a distinct place in God's kingdom.
Speaker 1:God has a use for me. Not just a use for me when I get married. Not just a use for me as an addition to my spouse, but for me.
Speaker 2:A calling for me independent of any male relationship that I have. I think that would
Speaker 1:be incredibly impactful. And that's not even talking as she talks about people of different races because our churches and we read a quote from Martin Luther King Jr. Last week that said Sunday morning is essentially the most segregated hour in The United States. And you can see that as she talks about this, that every pastor, not only male, but white. And it's just it's alarming.
Speaker 1:But she also says so this chapter is all about how despite this fact, despite the fact that the American church has, like, thrown women out the window. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Oh, that hurt.
Speaker 1:This was not how the early church was.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:And, again, we've tried to separate ourselves as the Protestant church from the Catholic church, but we can't because it's where we came from. Exactly. So she goes into the story of Prisca and Aquila, who we've talked about Prisca before, so you can go back and listen to that episode. I'm not gonna go deeply into that topic since we have already talked about it. She also talks in this chapter about she's got a whole section on Dorothy Patterson.
Speaker 2:She wore very fancy hats and covered her hair as, like, an outward sign of her submission to her husband. Doesn't that make
Speaker 1:you feel ick? Like, you just cringe inside? Dorothy Patterson argues that Mary she says Patterson says that Mary let the incarnation happen to her with a quiet spirit. I hate that. Now, the incarnation she's talking about in this case is Mary is the mother of Jesus, and that Mary just sort of sat by while Jesus was implanted in her, I guess.
Speaker 1:Like, that's the image going into my head. And she says the same quiet spirit that Patterson argues is the correct posture of a godly woman in submission to her husband. So she's essentially saying Mary just sat by and did whatever. She's saying, Let things happen to you. Yes.
Speaker 1:And Beth goes into that, that an argument that has been made is that this view of Mary makes her into, and this is the quote, the total rape victim. Yeah. And I think when you follow the road of submission And I'm a proponent of if you're gonna believe in something, it's hard to believe in it halfway, you know? And if you take submission to the extent that it can be taken, this is kind of where you end up. Again, look through our history.
Speaker 2:Look through our recent history. Look how much abuse you see of women in the church. It's not okay. No. This is not what God wanted.
Speaker 2:Now, I
Speaker 1:want to end on talking about Milberga. So, Milberga and she talks about how utterly ridiculous that name is. People out there, don't name your children Milberga.
Speaker 2:Or do. Because she was a powerful lady. She was a powerful lady, but don't.
Speaker 1:So it says Milberga was born to rule politically and religiously. She was related to a religiously. She was related to a very significant royal family, but instead of just, like, sitting back and chilling, she decided that she was going to become part of the church. So part of her legend and Beth goes into how when I when we use the word legend, it sounds like a fairy tale. Right.
Speaker 1:Like, it's fake. Mhmm. And she says, that's not true. A legend in medieval Christianity is a type of sacred text often the life of a saint read aloud during a church service. So there's some parts of Milberger's story that are kind of, like, kept in the church.
Speaker 1:She's a saint, so Mhmm. Church history, things like that. But then there are also historical records that talk about her. So there's a lot of evidence that she exists. They're not one source, there's not two sources, there's like six sources that talk about her or six sources that Beth references.
Speaker 1:Milbergo was a Benedictine nun is how she started.
Speaker 2:The hills are alive.
Speaker 1:Beth goes really deep into ordination and what that means, and I'm not gonna go into that. Read the book, you'll see what she's talking about.
Speaker 2:Kind of like above a pastor.
Speaker 1:Right. So essentially, she started as a nun. She wound up as an abbess. And in this case, she's like, you know, people might argue that, well, she wasn't a pastor, though. She was an abbess.
Speaker 1:She wasn't a pastor, so women still haven't been pastors. But the funny thing is we use this word pastor so liberally now, and it really isn't a term that the bible uses very often, And it doesn't name anyone as a pastor. Beth talks about the fact that if you went into an early Christian church and you asked for the pastor, like, back in Paul's time, they wouldn't have known who to point you at because they didn't have that sort of structure.
Speaker 2:I feel like, to me, pastor means preaching and teaching the gospel. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:She was doing that. She was absolutely doing that. Very similar to Hildegard, who we referenced a few weeks ago. She would have been the head of a combined monastery.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it says it on page 56. She was charged with providing spiritual leadership to men and women. Yeah, she
Speaker 1:was the abbess of Wimnikas around June. It's a fun word.
Speaker 2:Which is in Wales.
Speaker 1:Right. So both nuns and monks would have been housed there, and she was the head over all of them. She would have had political power. She would have had religious power, much like, again, Hildegard that we talked about before. And kind of hilarious to look at this woman who would have been probably she compares her to a bishop, I believe, later.
Speaker 1:So someone who would be compared to a bishop. And for Protestants, that may not mean quite as much, but that's position in the
Speaker 2:Catholic church. She says, if you're thinking Milberger was an abbess, but that isn't like a pastor of a local church, you're right. An abbess is more authoritative. It's a more authoritative role than Milberger was more like
Speaker 1:a bishop. I love Beth. She's so sassy.
Speaker 2:She is. You're right. She was better. Good job.
Speaker 1:But no. She also talks right there about the fact that the word pastor is only mentioned three times in the New Testament, in Ephesians, in Acts, and then in First Peter. And, again, it's not something that the Bible is using a lot. The Bible uses three terms primarily. It's diakonos, presbyteros, and episkopos, which we've also done an episode on, and many of those had named women.
Speaker 1:So it's just, you look at women like this who were leading, you look at women like Deborah in the Bible who was leading. You look at Phoebe who was preaching. Even Chris, like
Speaker 2:As early as the '80s. The '80s, there were ordained women. Right. All over.
Speaker 1:The Southern Baptist Convention even had ordained women that were were preaching and teaching up until relatively recently in history as we've all kind of gotten cut out.
Speaker 2:It's a power move. Right. They're realizing that they can get more power if they replace the ordination of women with this other role of a pastor's wife. And so that's where you're seeing the leadership of women in the church. But it's under men.
Speaker 2:One
Speaker 1:of the last points I kind of wanna make too as we run right out of time, and there's no way to get through this whole book in I I could do 12 episodes on this book, and we still wouldn't hit all the points. There are so many dog eared pages. So definitely pick up a copy. It's on Amazon. It's on Baker Books.
Speaker 1:There's many a place you can pick it up. We're doing a giveaway, though. We are doing a giveaway. You can find it on TikTok, on one of our TikTok posts, on one of our Instagram posts. We are gonna close that up in the next couple of days.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So go on there, like, comment, subscribe to both of those channels, and we are giving away a signed copy of Becoming the Pastor's Wife. And then you can read right along with us. We might even do some highlighting in it before we send it to you.
Speaker 2:I am willing to highlight many of things for
Speaker 1:willing to dog ear some pages?
Speaker 2:There's, like, several spots, like, right here where I just wrote, I'm
Speaker 1:one to part all sorts of things. Mhmm. I think I wrote ick at one point.
Speaker 2:I said, mhmm.
Speaker 1:But one of the points that I think we wanted to bring up real quick is that all of this doesn't function unless women support it. The patriarchy, the suppression of women
Speaker 2:I'm sorry, nothing gets done without women.
Speaker 1:Right. So we're doing it. She talks extensively about Dorothy Patterson in here. And how the woman has written books, she's done she's preaching and teaching
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Men and women about submission, which is But women have to support this to keep it going. Without us, it falls apart.
Speaker 2:If we all decided one day to say, You know what? I think God has a better calling for me. Mhmm. And I don't think this is what he intended for his people. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:The people that he loves so much, I don't think that he chose a certain group of people that was better than the other. If we all decided that one day, what a wonderful world it would be.
Speaker 1:I saw a comment on one of the very many, many Christian feminist pages that I am on. And the woman said it was I don't remember what the original post was but she said, I'm new to this world and discovering it, but what if my husband doesn't agree with me? He's still very much complementarian. What am I supposed to do? And there were some helpful comments, and I'm not gonna, like, speak to her specific situation because I don't know what it looks like.
Speaker 1:But the moment that you start to value yourself fully, one of two things is going to happen. Either A) that other person, your partner who's supposed to love you and cherish you, and B) your biggest cheerleader. Your partner is gonna either see that and say, oh my gosh. Yes. My eyes are becoming open because you are so valuable to me.
Speaker 1:You must be so valuable to God.
Speaker 2:Open the eyes of my heart, Lord. Or or
Speaker 1:they're going to do the opposite, and they're going to try to enforce more control.
Speaker 2:And
Speaker 1:if you see yourself in that situation, now you have to take some steps back. You have to reevaluate the relationship. You have to say, Is this where I want to be? Do I find myself more valuable than my partner does?
Speaker 2:Love doesn't mean control. No. Especially in a partnership, you guys should be both on equal footing. Mhmm. It's not a parent child relationship.
Speaker 2:No. You didn't marry your father. Thank goodness. Unless you're in the Deep South.
Speaker 1:Editing this is gonna be so much fun. But you're right, if we one day decide that we're valuable, if all of us together could decide that we're valuable, or if just some of us could decide it.
Speaker 2:I think it's also on us to build each other up. It's so easy for us to look and I think we spent maybe a whole podcast judging, you know? Other people but like we talk about this all the time, building each other up with outrageous confidence. We all have a calling. Not sure what that is.
Speaker 2:It doesn't have to be a huge calling. It could be crocheting. Or it could be being a pastor. Like, I don't know what your calling is, but if we all just built each other up and encouraged each other to move towards those callings, we would be in a much better spot than we are right now where it's just how can individuals get more power. Right.
Speaker 2:We need to
Speaker 1:start thinking more collectively. When we're operating alone, it's really hard to get anything done. And especially when you've got women turning on women, it doesn't benefit us. When you've got women supporting the suppression of women, we're not doing great, guys.
Speaker 2:Because it only gets them ahead. Right. That is why, like, we talked about it. It's a survival technique for you and you alone. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:To survive in this world that, unfortunately, you've kinda helped build.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:We all need to stand together and move against it. Well, mean,
Speaker 1:I think that's what you're seeing in The United States right now, is that we've all kind of thought individually. Mhmm. Whether that's in the political sphere or the religious sphere, we've all thought about ourselves. Yeah. And if we could think collectively, that changes the world.
Speaker 1:It changes our world, for sure. Mhmm. And I think it can change the broader world.
Speaker 2:And I think to myself, why am I surrounded by trees?
Speaker 1:Are you surrounded by trees?
Speaker 2:There was a TikTok once, and it was like, I see trees of green. Oh, there's trees there too. Look over there. There's trees there too. And I think to myself, how the heck do I get out of these woods?
Speaker 2:I don't know.
Speaker 1:So next week, we are gonna be going a little bit lighter, I think. I wanna do another talk about one of the women in the bible. Ah, the ladies. The ladies of the bible. I would actually love to do Mary Magdalene because we're approaching Easter, and I think you are gonna hear quite a lot about her, and you may hear quite a bit of misinformation about her.
Speaker 1:The apostle to the apostles Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Of the apostles. To the apostles.
Speaker 1:To the apostles.
Speaker 2:Your mother's apostles. Your father's apostles. That can't be it. Alright. Then that's that.
Speaker 2:We'll see you next
Speaker 1:week for that. We're gonna talk about her. We're gonna talk about who she might have been as sort of a real person as we like to do, kind of make the biblical characters seem more real
Speaker 2:to us. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So we will talk to you then. Go on our TikTok and Instagram and enter that giveaway so that we can give one of you a really truly life changing and amazing book.
Speaker 2:It's gonna change your whole brain chemistry. Wow. It's quite a claim.
Speaker 1:Well, it's true. I'm gonna put a medical disclaimer at the top of this episode. You hate when I whisper. Thank you.
Speaker 2:Okay. Now you go. Bye. Love you.