Beth Allison Barr's Blog

Seventeen years ago I stood in this exact spot–only then, the gate was locked.

I was 25 years old and working on my dissertation. I had been in England for about two months when I decided to find Lilleshall Abbey. I knew only ruins remained, courtesy of Henry VIII’s dissolution (1538) and the aftermath of the Civil War (1645), but the pastoral literature of John Mirk (the sermon collection Festial and pastoral handbook Instructions for Parish Priests) had become central to my research and Lilleshall Abbey had been Mirk’s home. He served there as a canon and later prior in the late fourteenth-century, and it was undoubtedly through Lilleshall Abbey that he had preached (possibly served as a vicar) at St. Alkmund’s parish church in Shrewsbury.

Of course, this was before we all carried internet search engines and google maps in our pockets. I somehow confused the opening hours so that after a two hour train ride followed by a 40ish minute bus ride that dropped me at a lonely village bus stop (the bus came by once an hour) followed by a 1.2ish mile walk down a very quiet and very deserted country road, I found only a locked gate. I stood there for quite a while, peering over the fence and hoping for a miracle. None came, and I had to eat my sandwich at the bus stop instead of sitting on the walls of the abbey as I had planned.
This time my visit was quite different. I am 42 now, well past earning both my doctorate and tenure, and (after double checking the entry times) I found the gate wide open.

It was worth it, even with the seventeen-year wait. The magnificent arched doorway framed by one remaining tower beckoned me into a world that most modern Christians have forgotten.

Lilleshall Abbey was founded in the mid-twelfth century by a group of Augustinian (Austin) canons. These priests followed a monastic rule (including living together in a community) but focused on preaching and pastoral work. Although we don’t know much about the circumstances, we do know that Lilleshall Abbey became closely connected to St. Alkmund’s parish church in Shrewsbury. St. Alkmund’s was struggling financially and lacked a priest. When it was appropriated by Lilleshall Abbey, the abbey helped provide pastoral care and preaching in exchange for the use of the church endowment. The arrangement seemed to work very well for both parties. The granges (farmland) from St. Alkmund’s, the watermills, the tolls for the use of Atcham Bridge over the river Severn, and even a grant for a 3-day market fair all combined to provide Lilleshall Abbey with a comfortable and regular income. Indeed, the canons seem to have done quite well for themselves, at least during the 12th and 13th centuries. The richly car
ved 12th-century processional doorway leading from the cloisters into the choir attests to the wealth and prestige of the abbey. Those travelling around Wales and western England, merchants and traders and pilgrims, found Lilleshall a welcoming and hospitable community. It apparently could afford to host travelers as the late medieval Gough map (housed today in the Bodleian Library) included it as an option for the road-weary. Twice the canons at Lilleshall abbey even entertained a king (Henry III around 1240).

Despite its former glory, only a shell of the abbey remains. Only the sacristy (where liturgical vestments and vessels were kept) and parlor have managed to keep their roofs intact, and only one winding staircase climbs to the second floor, hinting at the many lost hallways and rooms. The towering fourteenth-century window on the east end provides a breathtaking view of trees and blue sky. With just a little imagination, it isn’t hard to glimpse the former glory of the church when sunlight would have streamed through the costly glass and illuminated the high altar below. I braved the surprising darkness of the one remaining staircase to find a lovely view from above of the abbey landscape. For an added bonus, I got to read the 18th, 19th, and early 20th century graffiti carved into the stone walls. Apparently John Admead in 1815 and H.P. in 1890 were inspired enough by the abbey ruins to permanently add their names to its edifice.

Today Lilleshall Abbey is just a ruin—barely a shadow of its former self. Yet its historical footprint can still be felt in the surrounding community. Along my way to the abbey, I travelled down Winifred’s Drive, a local saint spotlighted by Lilleshall Abbey’s own John Mirk in his sermon collection. I walked past the town of Lilleshall (clearly the namesake of the abbey) and I even found, along that quiet country road, a house named Abbot’s Way. Of course, I know how all these place names connect. But I don’t think the three kids on bicycles riding so fast past me that a rock spins up and hits my ankle have any idea what an Augustinian canon is much less who Winifred was. If historical footprints leave only vague impressions of the past, do they really matter to the present? If no one understands the meaning of Winifred’s Drive, does it mean that Winifred no longer matters to our modern world?

I sat at that quiet bus stop again, only for about 20 minutes this time. I don’t remember what I was thinking seventeen years ago (aside from mentally kicking myself), but I can tell you what I was thinking about this time. I was thinking hard about Lilleshall Abbey, historical footprints, and an open letter recently sent by The Medieval Academy of America.

Here is an excerpt from the letter (posted June 25, 2018):

The Medieval Academy of America (MAA) and especially its K-12 Committee urges the College Board to reconsider its recent decision to revise the Advanced Placement (AP) World History exam to “assess content only from c. 1450 to the present.” As the largest organization in the world dedicated to the study of the Middle Ages, we have noted with alarm a clear decline in representation of this important epoch in core standards at the secondary school level. This trend has reached a tipping point with the College Board’s decision to begin its AP World History curriculum at the year 1450…There are several further problems with this strategy. By beginning “world history” in 1450, the College Board is essentially sending the message that premodern culture and events are unimportant. It is impossible to make sense out of the political and historical climate of the mid-fifteenth century without a grounding in what came before……

In other words, Advanced Placement tests will only cover history since the Reformation era and European colonialism. Schools can keep teaching ancient and medieval history, but the incentive is now clearly gone. Why would students who struggle with understanding the value of history anyway, opt to take history classes that won’t prepare them for Advanced Placement? Why would they bother? Is the vibrant world of medieval Christianity destined to become like the ruins of Lilleshall Abbey?—mostly forgotten with only a few traditions and placenames that, like a face we can’t quite recall, vaguely trouble our subconscious….

As a medieval historian and an evangelical Christian, I have been writing about how so many problems in the modern church stem from our lack of understanding church history. Our ignorance about both the biblical and medieval world have paved the way for a few loud (and mostly white masculine) voices to distort ideas about male and female roles. Recently I confessed how I was complicit in the oppression of women mostly due to my inaction and silence as a pastor’s wife. I received more emails and messages from that article than any other post I have ever written. Women who feel just like me—undervalued, silenced, even abused and oppressed. Women who, just like me, are so frustrated by Christian men and evangelical churches who privilege gender hierarchies and power over the teachings of Christ.

As a Christian woman who has seen first hand the damage wreaked by historical ignorance, the decision by the College Board to only test Reformation-era and post-Reformation history terrifies me. Evangelical ignorance of only some aspects of church history has grossly distorted how modern evangelicals understand gender roles. Real women, like those at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and Rachel Denhollander, have already paid too high of a price. What will happen when the entire next generation of American children lack all knowledge about church history predating Martin Luther? What will the impact be on women’s history, when our understanding of it starts with the early modern era?

Like R.E.M. in 1991, we really do seem to be losing our religion—at least, our historical understanding of pre-Reformation religion. I can’t even fathom the cost.

Losing Our (Medieval) Religion? The Cost of Not Teaching History…..

The post Losing Our (Medieval) Religion? The Cost of Not Teaching History….. appeared first on Beth Allison Barr.

From the Anxious Bench Archives

I went to a perfect wedding last weekend.

It was deep in the rural heart of Central Texas. Wide open fields dotted with cattle and the occasional John Deer tractor were broken by scattered farm houses. The roads were narrow and dusty; population signs for the small towns counted inhabitants by the hundreds; and notices posted at the reception (held in one of the nearby small towns) warned guests to keep all alcoholic beverages inside the church fellowship hall instead of the other way around.

The ceremony itself took place at a historic 19th-century church—Little River Baptist Church. With its bright white beaded wood and tall Gothic windows, the 1873 church building still looks today much as it did at the turn of the century. A true communal effort, the church was built during the spare time of dedicated congregants working with the local Masonic Lodge. In 1906 the building was expanded to accommodate the largest congregation in Milam County.

A tombstone for Delilah Morrell, 1804-1883, stands tall in the cemetery surrounding the church. It isn’t the oldest grave marker. A few other tombstones date from 1866, some perhaps earlier. But Delilah Morrell’s stone marks more than a memorial to her life. It also testifies to a fascinating event from the early history of Little River Baptist Church: the divorce of a pastor’s wife.

Delilah Harlan, a widow, married Z.N. Morrell, a widower, on October 27, 1845. Delilah then helped her husband found Little River Baptist Church in 1849. Morrell became the first pastor of the new church and, hence, Delilah became the first pastor’s wife. In 1857 Delilah gifted several acres of land to the church, including the site for the first church building (a log cabin) on which the historic church today still stands. When she died in 1883, Delilah Morrell’s grave was marked prominently in the cemetery of the church to which she had dedicated more than 30 years of her life.

Delilah’s dedication to her husband, Z.N. Morrell, proved less enduring.
Of course, for both Texas historians and Texas Baptists, Z.N. Morrell is a legend. J. L. Walker and C. P. Lumpkin wrote, in their History of the Waco Baptist Association of Texas, that when “Elder Morrell” sold his land in Mississippi and moved to Texas, “no grander man ever came.” Known as the “Wildcat” preacher, Morrell planted churches in Mississippi, Texas, and Honduras; fought as a frontier soldier (including against the Mexican army); raised funds for a Baptist university close to my heart (Baylor University); rode as a circuit preacher; and even wrote a full account of his work as a Baptist missionary–Flowers and Fruits in the Wilderness (1872). Indeed, one modern columnist has called Morrell “a pioneer Indian preacher who could quote scripture while loading his rifle.” Possibly enamored with his impressive reputation and probably confident in his husband-quality (as he has been married to his first wife for 22 years before she died in 1843), Delilah Harlan married this Wildcat Baptist preacher.
It was shortly after their marriage in 1845, however, that Morrell accepted an appointment as a state missionary by the Domestic Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention. His job included church planting (hence the founding of Little River Baptist Church), organizing Baptist associations (including the first Texas convention of Baptists in 1848), and regularly making the long and arduous 300-mile round-trip (circuit) on horseback from Cameron to Corsicana–preaching and policing Baptist beliefs. Morrell preferred this peripatetic, unpredictable, and potentially-dangerous lifestyle of a circuit-preacher to that of a settled pastor. As Baptist historian Steve Sadler wrote in his 1980 thesis, “Morrell succumbed to the personal habit of leaving a status quo environment for one that was unsettled, new, and capable of offering personal excitement.”

In other words, he was rarely at home with his wife.

When he did return, it was usually because he was sick and needed Delilah to nurse him back to health. After 15 years of this, of never knowing when (or if) her husband would come home, Delilah called it quits. She asked Little River Baptist Church to allow the termination of her marriage. As she wrote to the church disciplinary committee, she considered herself “parted” from her husband. Modern members of the church still whisper that it was the extreme distress Morrell’s long absences caused Delilah that convinced Little River Baptist Church to help her, despite the non-scriptural basis of her request. So, in 1860, they allowed Delilah Morrell to divorce their church founder and first pastor. Z.N. Morrell was also exonerated of wrong doing (i.e. he could still preach), but he ended his membership with Little River shortly after.

This story fascinates me.

First, it fascinates me because of the larger historical context. Baptists in 1860 were at the cusp of a crackdown on divorce laws. As historian Rufus B. Spain has written, “Baptists considered marriage an institution of divine origin, initiated by God in the Garden of Eden and validated by Christ at the marriage feast in Cana. The increasing divorce rate in the late nineteenth century was therefore of grave concern to Baptists. To combat this trend they stressed the absolute necessity of strict compliance with God’s marriage laws.” Some baptists in 19th-century Texas practiced “churching” (exclusion from membership and access to ordinances) against immoral members-drunkards, criminals, and those who got divorced. Indeed, churching was enforced at the First Baptist Church of Dallas in 1877 when a woman divorced her husband for “lunacy” and then remarried; she was excluded from the church. A meeting of the San Antonio Baptist Association in 1898 affirmed an equally rigid position on divorce, stating that “ministers and members of Baptist churches…forbid divorce for any other cause than adultery or fornication, and do not authorize remarriage of the divorced.” Contemporary Baptist attitudes towards divorce seem clear–it wasn’t allowed, except for sexual sin.

Yet, Delilah Morrell–wife of the 4th Baptist preacher in Texas–was granted a divorce by the 4th Baptist church established in Texas for reasons other than biblical exceptions.

Which is the second reason why this story fascinates me: because of how Little River Baptist Church responded to a woman in need. A woman whose situation had a ready answer in scripture (Matthew 5 and 19). The leaders of Little River Baptist Church, however, didn’t limit their response to Delilah to rigid interpretations of scripture. They didn’t condemn her. They didn’t ignore her. They didn’t even dismiss her. Rather, they heard her story. They allowed her divorce.

Recently I read a dissertation about how rigid interpretations of scripture affect women. You know, those easy-to-interpret passages about wives being submissive and women not holding authority over men. The results disturbed me. Women in this study who accepted complementarian teachings (that they were divinely ordained to be submissive to men and under male authority) had lower self-worth and more feelings of inadequacy than women who leaned toward egalitarian readings of scripture. As the abstract states, “the data demonstrates that women with higher patriarchal attitudes have lower capacity for normal, healthy openness and self criticism and lower personal self-worth.” These findings correlate with other research about highly conservative women manifesting lower self-esteem and lower educational goals.

Despite the Baptist stance on divorce stemming from Matthew 5 and 19, Little River Baptist Church didn’t condemn Delilah Morrell’s request for a divorce. They understood her story and responded with grace. This is actually the model given us by Christ. Despite rabbinic law, he didn’t condemn the adulterous woman in John 8. He understood her story and responded with grace.

I can only wonder what might happen if modern evangelicals approached the plight of women’s roles in the church the way that Little River Baptist Church approached the plight of Delilah Morrell–with the understanding and grace of Christ.

The Divorce of a Pastor’s Wife in 1860 Texas

The post The Divorce of a Pastor’s Wife in 1860 Texas appeared first on Beth Allison Barr.

Today we welcome Paul Gutacker (M.A. and Th.M. Regent College; Ph.D. Baylor University) to the Anxious Bench. Paul’s research focuses on religion and historical memory, particularly nineteenth-century American Protestants’ memory of the Christian past. In addition to teaching at Baylor, Paul and his wife Paige direct Brazos Fellows, a post-college fellowship centered on theological study, spiritual disciplines, and vocational discernment. They enjoy life in East Waco with their son James, daughter Marianne, and spaniel Lila.

A few months ago, I sat in a church classroom with a group of young adults, Dr. Bruce Hindmarsh, and a big pot of coffee. After leading us in a visual exploration of the Christian catacombs of Rome, Bruce, professor of the history of Christianity at Regent College, discussed with us the remarkable cultural and social significance of early Christian burial practices. Several weeks later, in the same room, Dr. David Bebbington asked this same group of students to consider the question: how did eighteenth-century evangelicals draw on early Christian practices? Not long after, Dr. Natalie Carnes, professor of theology here at Baylor, came by the this classroom to help us understand the complicated and fascinating history of iconography and iconoclastic controversies.

I get to be in this classroom for these conversations because I serve as director of Brazos Fellows, a nine-month fellowship for college graduates. Brazos Fellows helps young adults explore their vocation in a community that studies, works, and prays together—while aiming to bring together the life of the mind and the life of worship by situating serious theological and historical study in the local church. As you can imagine, this is immensely rewarding work for a religious historian such as myself. If you’d like to read more about the intellectual community Brazos Fellows seeks to cultivate, you can check out my recent post at the Baylor Graduate School blog.
In addition to directing Brazos Fellows, I teach as an adjunct in Baylor’s history department, where last year I received my PhD. My wife Paige and I hope that Brazos Fellows grows, becomes sustainable, and keeps us in Waco for the foreseeable future. But as we do this work and keep an eye on the academic job market, I often wonder what is at stake in the vocational choices we’ll make during the next few years.

On the one hand, I find myself drawn to the intersection of the academy and the local church—precisely where Brazos Fellows sits—and love the work I do helping young adults locate themselves in the story Christ is telling through his church. On the other hand, I want to continue to develop and publish my research, which I believe has something to add to present-day conversations both among scholars and in the church.
Can these things go together? Is it possible to do the work of a historian—to research, to publish, to belong to the guild—while teaching in a non-traditional academic setting? This question, it seems, will only become more pressing as the educational landscape continues to shift. As last year’s news from Gordon College illustrated all too well, the outlook for the humanities in general and history in particular is, well, quite grim. The bottom line is that there are fewer and fewer history jobs and more and more qualified applicants for those jobs. (But hey, at least we’re not English.)
At the same time, new possibilities are emerging for Christian scholars willing to teach in institutions other than the traditional college—from classical schools, to the Christian study center movement, to innovative programs at traditional seminaries, to the emergence of local, cohort-sized seminaries. This is to say nothing of the wide variety of opportunities opening up internationally, or work in areas other than education. As we like to remind our students, historians do all sorts of things, from policy research, to journalism, to social work, to church ministry. For reasons both of opportunity and calling, many with graduate-level historical training will choose to work elsewhere than the academy.

Assuming these trends continue, what will this mean for individual historians and for the guild? What unique challenges and opportunities exist for historians who work outside traditional academic settings? Will those in alt-academic jobs do their work at the expense of their scholarship? Or are there alternatives?

I know I’m not alone in asking this question—in part because I’ve sat across tables and put it to other historians in alt-academic careers. It seems that it’s time to invite others into this conversation. Perhaps I can offer here a few questions as an invitation, a starting point for a broader discussion:

How do those who teach and work in non-traditional academic institutions cultivate their scholarship? How might they maintain their scholarly interests and productivity?Specifically, when it comes to research, what difficulties do alt-academics face in terms of access, funding, and support? What about in publishing? What doors open and close for them given their job title and institutional standing?How can historical organizations, conferences, and publishers create space for historians who don’t have the same degree of institutional backing and support? What room is there for well-trained, serious scholars who aren’t full-time or tenured faculty?How can we conceive of these historians as still belonging, in an important sense, to our scholarly community? What might these alt-academics contribute to the guild? What might they notice, what might they bring to the conversation, that would otherwise be missed?

I’d love to see these questions explored in conversions online and in person—perhaps even becoming a regular topic at conferences. I think these should be seen as hopeful questions, questions that invite us to consider anew what possibilities and opportunities might emerge for the guild amidst (or perhaps even because of) otherwise bleak trends.
And, as I’ve realized through my work with Brazos Fellows, these are hopeful questions because of our Christian understanding of calling. As the fellows often remind me, a Christian view of vocation teaches us that our identity is not found in our C.V., our job title, our productivity, or our prestige, but fully and fundamentally grounded in Christ. This is a truth that frees all Christians to hear and respond to God’s call—and a truth that frees up us historians to more creatively imagine and embark on our work in the rapidly changing world of higher education

The post Reimagining a History PhD–Doing Academia outside of Academia appeared first on Beth Allison Barr.

The chair scraped next to me. It was 2:30 on Friday afternoon—time for our scheduled break. For three years I have been writing every Friday afternoon with a group of faculty women, blocking our calendars and ignoring emails. For three years I break with them for 15 minutes, pulling our chairs into a small circle. For three years we have been working together, encouraging each other and motivating each other, as we all work toward full professor.

I confess I didn’t really want to stop for a break. Sand trickles all too fast from my hour glass. I am working to complete a book manuscript while continuing as a full-time academic dean. Fridays are precious to me. I don’t always feel I have time for 15 minute breaks.

So I wasn’t paying close attention to the conversation. I was thinking hard about my next paragraph—until I heard a familiar name.

“Wait,” I asked, “Kaitlin Curtice was at Baylor?”

What came next caught me completely off guard. Not only had I missed hearing Kaitlin Curtice speak during chapel, but a student had disrupted her talk, just like a student had disrupted Kathy Khang. And then I learned that the disruption had come when Kaitlin Curtice said, “the work of telling women that we do not matter as much as men do in society is dehumanizing. It is damaging to the soul..” The student reportedly shouted, “No one even thinks like that.” And then I learned that a student group posted a call for Baylor to formally and publicly apologize for bringing Kaitlin Curtice to the chapel service, calling her a “speaker with pagan sympathies.”

I sat in silence.

Shocked.

My computer screen stared back at me. Our 15 minutes was up. It was time to start writing again. But my focus was gone. Words ran through my head, too fast to pin down with keystrokes. Too jumbled to make sense. Too raw to show others.

Have we made God so small, I thought, that we cannot conceive of prayer language different from our 21st century words?

Kaitlin Curtice didn’t pray to “Mother Mystery,” as she was accused. But if she had, she would not be the first Christian to reference God as Mother—a historical reality I know all too well as a medievalist. Julian of Norwich, a devout anchoress who dedicated her life to prayer and devotion, did so in the fourteenth-century. “As truly as God is our Father,” Julian wrote, “so truly is God our Mother.” Just as Christians pray to God as Father, encouraged Julian, Christians should also pray to God as Mother. “Our Father wills, our Mother works, our good Lord the Holy Spirit confirms. And therefore it is our part to love our God in whom we have our being, reverently thanking and praising him for our creation, mightily praying to our Mother for mercy and pity, and to our Lord the Holy Spirit for help and grace. For in these three is all our life: nature, mercy, and grace…”

So – do we call Julian of Norwich, a medieval Benedictine nun who recognized salvation as coming through Christ alone, as having “pagan sympathies”?

Caroline Walker Bynum, in Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages, argued that the “’mother Jesus’ of medieval religious writers” did not begin with either Julian of Norwich in the fourteenth-century nor even with women. A tradition of using maternal imagery for God existed among male monastics like Anselm of Canterbury and Bernard of Clairvaux since at least the eleventh century. “But you, Jesus, good lord, are you not also a mother?” asked Anselm in his prayer to St. Paul composed around 1070. “Are you not that mother who, like a hen, collects her chickens under her wings? Truly, master, you are a mother. For what others have conceived and given birth to, they have received from you. . . .You are the author, others are the ministers. It is then you, above all, Lord God, who are the mother.” By the way, Anselm drew his feminine imagery for Jesus directly from the New Testament (Matthew 23:37). Paul also inspired Anselm to use feminine imagery (1 Thessalonians 2:7 and Galatians 4:18-19).

So, again, are these devout male monastics “pagan”? Have we made God so small that there is no longer space in our American Christian world for these medieval brothers and sisters in Christ?

Or what about Hildegard of Bingen, a twelfth-century poet, author, musician, preacher, theologian, physician, and Benedictine nun who lived over 800 years ago in Germany? If we are concerned about Kaitlin Curtice’s nature references, what do we do with Hildegard’s explicit descriptions of mother earth? Listen to how Hildegard, so long ago, wrote a very Christian praise for mother earth.

The earth is at the same time
mother,
she is mother of all that is natural,
mother of all that is human.
She is the mother of all,
for contained in her are the seeds of all.
The earth of humankind
contains all moistness,
all verdancy,
all germinating power.
It is in so many ways
fruitful.
All creation comes from it.
Yet it forms not only the basic
raw material for humankind,
but also the substance
of the incarnation
of God’s son.

Will we call Hildegard of Bingen pagan? Will we question her Christianity, even though she wrote that “Believing persons should never cease to direct themselves and others to God”? Will we accuse her cry from more than 8 centuries ago, “The earth should not be injured. The earth should not be destroyed,” as political, leftist ideology? Or should we realize that Christians throughout history have called for humanity to take seriously our divine charge to care for the earth? As Hildegard pleaded, warned:

The high,
the low,
all of creation.
God gives humankind to use.
If this privilege is misused,
God’s Justice permits creation to
punish humanity.

Have we made God so small? That nature imagery and recognizing God as the life breath of creation sounds non-Christian to us?
Have we made God so small? That we reject feminism and racism as inappropriate topics for a university chapel forum?

The student in chapel allegedly shouted, “No one even thinks like that,” when Katilin Curtice mentioned the reality of Christian patriarchy. But Kaitlin Curtice is right. Throughout Christian history women have been considered less than men. Even the highly revered Augustine, Bishop of Hippo and author of the beloved Confessions and City of God, argued that women do not reflect, separate from men, the image of God. Building on Aristotelian philosophy that women were imperfect men, and fueled by the patriarchy of the Roman empire in which he lived, Augustine argued that women’s physical condition barred them from imago dei. “The woman together with the man is the image of God, so that the whole substance is one image. But when she is assigned as a helpmate, which pertains to her alone, she is not the image of God; however, in what pertains to man alone, he is the image of God just as fully and completely as he is joined with the woman into one.” He did concede it was possible for women to transcend their physical state, and reflect the image of God, but men always were imago dei.

And, for a modern example, John Piper’s evangelical empire is built on his belief that men are created to lead and women are created to follow. Piper does disagree with Augustine, arguing that women are too created in the image of God. But he also agrees with Augustine (and Aristotelian philosophy) that women are created to be subordinate to men. As he writes, “Paul would say a female is not a proper extension of male leadership…A woman teaching men with authority—week in and week out or every other week or regularly in an adult Sunday School class or whatever—a woman teaching men with authority under the elders is not under the authority of the New Testament. She may be under the authority of the elders, but she is not under the authority of the New Testament, and neither would they be for putting her in that situation.”

Oh, the student was wrong. Lots and lots of Christians, from the ancient world to our present world, believe that women are less than men (although I suspect modern folk will dislike my phrasing). Lots and lots of Christians also, often using the same verses that subordinate women, have supported slavery and racism

Just last July, Brantley W. Gasaway tweeted a long twitter response to Denny Burk. Burk had shared a criticism of women preaching in the early 20th century by Southern Baptist theologian A.T. Robertson. Burk called Robertson “one of the greatest scholars of New Testament Greek.” Gasaway countered that “Robertson was also a white supremacist.” Indeed, Gasaway recognized a continuity that historians have long understood—hierarchies of power that subordinate women walk closely beside narratives that support slavery and racism.

The New Testament household codes, for example, have long been used to enforce masculine authority over women as well as legitimize slavery in the American South. As Clarice J. Martin writes, “Authors of proslavery tracts appealed particularly to six New Testament texts to buttress their arguments: 1 Corinthians 7:20-21; Eph 6:5-9; Col 3:33, 4:1; 1 Tim 6:20-21; and Phlm 10-18. Stressing that since the biblical writers expected the dutiful obedience of slaves to masters, and that the slaveholders in the biblical texts were, after all, members of churches founded by Paul and other apostles, the defenders of human bondage contended that slaveholding was quite consistent with biblical teaching.” Christians who argue for biblical support of patriarchy must grapple with how these same texts have been used to support racism. Martin drives this point home for us in her groundbreaking article “The Haustafeln (Household Codes) in Afro-American Biblical Interpretation”: “How can black male preachers and theologians use a liberated hermeneutic while preaching and theologizing about slaves, but a literalist hermeneutic with reference to women?”

Racism and patriarchy have long been problems throughout Christian history, which makes them entirely appropriate for a chapel conversation.
Have we made God so small? That we refuse to recognize the dangerous realities of oppression that haunt our white Christian churches? That we refuse to even consider how we might be complicit in that oppression? (BTW have you read Jemar Tisby’s The Color of Compromise: The Truth About the American Church’s Complicity in Racism? It might change your perspective….)

But, at the end, I think what grieved me the most was the disrespect shown to Kaitlin Curtice by some of our students.

Have we made God so small that we cannot extend Christian hospitality to those who believe differently from us? Have we made God so small that we have become noisy gongs and clanging cymbals, forgetting that God calls us always to love?

I have been both a professor and a pastor’s wife for more than twenty years. I am solidly evangelical, solidly Baptist, solidly Nicene in my beliefs. Rather than be afraid of different perspectives and new ideas, rather than reject outright the different theology and practices of the people I study, I have learned that God can always handle my questions; I have learned that God’s love has always been big enough to include late medieval Christians as well as my Baptist faith.

Kaitlin Curtice, I apologize that you did not experience the love of Christ when you visited Baylor last week. I apologize that a small group of our students were so busy trying to discredit you, that they did not remember to listen to you. I thank you for having the courage to come, and I pray that our students will come to realize that the God we serve is bigger than they have imagined.

The images are from one of my favorite parish churches in Shropshire–St. Bartholomew’s, Tong. The substantial patronage of Lady Isabel, wearing the roses, built the present structure of the church in the fifteenth-century.

Because We Have Made God Too Small: A Baylor Professor’s Apology to Kaitlin Curtice

The post Because We Have Made God Too Small: A Baylor Professor’s Apology to Kaitlin Curtice appeared first on Beth Allison Barr.

This is from my Anxious Bench archives. I am working hard on book chapters, but never fear I will be back soon. I wanted to post this again for two reasons.

First – it is one of my favorite local history posts (that probably many of my readers haven’t seen, since it is from 2016), and I thought it was poignant given Wayne Grudem’s recent public change on his stance on divorce. He just admitted that divorce is probably okay in the case of abuse. Delilah Morrell’s story shows us how differently protestants have regarded topics like divorce over time. I don’t think we would accuse the nineteenth-century Baptists at Little River Baptist church of not taking the Bible seriously or not being the “true church” (as Owen Strachan recently seemed to declare was accurate only for those who agreed with him). Yet they thought rather differently about divorce than Wayne Grudem.

Second – I wrote this literally the week before our world shattered. Just one week after this in 2016, my husband was suddenly fired from the church he had served as youth pastor for almost 15 years. For those of you who don’t know this story, you can read about it here and here. I remember being so careful in this post, as I was writing it, to make sure that I told the historical truth but also trying to make sure I wouldn’t say anything that would jeopardize our ministry. We have a much better perspective now, over three years later, and I am grateful to be free as a writer.

I went to a perfect wedding last weekend.

It was deep in the rural heart of Central Texas. Wide open fields dotted with cattle and the occasional John Deer tractor were broken by scattered farm houses. The roads were narrow and dusty; population signs for the small towns counted inhabitants by the hundreds; and notices posted at the reception (held in one of the nearby small towns) warned guests to keep all alcoholic beverages inside the church fellowship hall instead of the other way around.

The ceremony itself took place at a historic 19th-century church—Little River Baptist Church. With its bright white beaded wood and tall Gothic windows, the 1873 church building still looks today much as it did at the turn of the century. A true communal effort, the church was built during the spare time of dedicated congregants working with the local Masonic Lodge. In 1906 the building was expanded to accommodate the largest congregation in Milam County.

A tombstone for Delilah Morrell, 1804-1883, stands tall in the cemetery surrounding the church. It isn’t the oldest grave marker. A few other tombstones date from 1866, some perhaps earlier. But Delilah Morrell’s stone marks more than a memorial to her life. It also testifies to a fascinating event from the early history of Little River Baptist Church: the divorce of a pastor’s wife.

Delilah Harlan, a widow, married Z.N. Morrell, a widower, on October 27, 1845. Delilah then helped her husband found Little River Baptist Church in 1849. Morrell became the first pastor of the new church and, hence, Delilah became the first pastor’s wife. In 1857 Delilah gifted several acres of land to the church, including the site for the first church building (a log cabin) on which the historic church today still stands. When she died in 1883, Delilah Morrell’s grave was marked prominently in the cemetery of the church to which she had dedicated more than 30 years of her life.

Delilah’s dedication to her husband, Z.N. Morrell, proved less enduring.
Of course, for both Texas historians and Texas Baptists, Z.N. Morrell is a legend. J. L. Walker and C. P. Lumpkin wrote, in their History of the Waco Baptist Association of Texas, that when “Elder Morrell” sold his land in Mississippi and moved to Texas, “no grander man ever came.” Known as the “Wildcat” preacher, Morrell planted churches in Mississippi, Texas, and Honduras; fought as a frontier soldier (including against the Mexican army); raised funds for a Baptist university close to my heart (Baylor University); rode as a circuit preacher; and even wrote a full account of his work as a Baptist missionary – Flowers and Fruits in the Wilderness (1872).

Indeed, one modern columnist has called Morrell “a pioneer Indian preacher who could quote scripture while loading his rifle.” Possibly enamored with his impressive reputation and probably confident in his husband-quality (as he has been married to his first wife for 22 years before she died in 1843), Delilah Harlan married this Wildcat Baptist preacher.
It was shortly after their marriage in 1845, however, that Morrell accepted an appointment as a state missionary by the Domestic Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention.

His job included church planting (hence the founding of Little River Baptist Church), organizing Baptist associations (including the first Texas convention of Baptists in 1848), and regularly making the long and arduous 300-mile round-trip (circuit) on horseback from Cameron to Corsicana – preaching and policing Baptist beliefs. Morrell preferred this peripatetic, unpredictable, and potentially-dangerous lifestyle of a circuit-preacher to that of a settled pastor. As Baptist historian Steve Sadler wrote in his 1980 thesis, “Morrell succumbed to the personal habit of leaving a status quo environment for one that was unsettled, new, and capable of offering personal excitement.”

In other words, he was rarely at home with his wife.

When he did return, it was usually because he was sick and needed Delilah to nurse him back to health. After 15 years of this, of never knowing when (or if) her husband would come home, Delilah called it quits. She asked Little River Baptist Church to allow the termination of her marriage. As she wrote to the church disciplinary committee, she considered herself “parted” from her husband. Modern members of the church still whisper that it was the extreme distress Morrell’s long absences caused Delilah that convinced Little River Baptist Church to help her, despite the non-scriptural basis of her request. So, in 1860, they allowed Delilah Morrell to divorce their church founder and first pastor. Z.N. Morrell was also exonerated of wrong doing (i.e. he could still preach), but he ended his membership with Little River shortly after.

This story fascinates me.

First, it fascinates me because of the larger historical context. Baptists in 1860 were at the cusp of a crackdown on divorce laws. As historian Rufus B. Spain has written, “Baptists considered marriage an institution of divine origin, initiated by God in the Garden of Eden and validated by Christ at the marriage feast in Cana. The increasing divorce rate in the late nineteenth century was therefore of grave concern to Baptists. To combat this trend they stressed the absolute necessity of strict compliance with God’s marriage laws.” Some baptists in 19th-century Texas practiced “churching” (exclusion from membership and access to ordinances) against immoral members-drunkards, criminals, and those who got divorced. Indeed, churching was enforced at the First Baptist Church of Dallas in 1877 when a woman divorced her husband for “lunacy” and then remarried; she was excluded from the church. A meeting of the San Antonio Baptist Association in 1898 affirmed an equally rigid position on divorce, stating that “ministers and members of Baptist churches…forbid divorce for any other cause than adultery or fornication, and do not authorize remarriage of the divorced.” Contemporary Baptist attitudes towards divorce seem clear – it wasn’t allowed, except for sexual sin.

Yet, Delilah Morrell – wife of the 4th Baptist preacher in Texas – was granted a divorce by the 4th Baptist church established in Texas for reasons other than biblical exceptions.

Which is the second reason why this story fascinates me: because of how Little River Baptist Church responded to a woman in need. A woman whose situation had a ready answer in scripture (Matthew 5 and 19). The leaders of Little River Baptist Church, however, didn’t limit their response to Delilah to rigid interpretations of scripture. They didn’t condemn her. They didn’t ignore her. They didn’t even dismiss her. Rather, they heard her story. They allowed her divorce.

Recently I read a dissertation about how rigid interpretations of scripture affect women. You know, those easy-to-interpret passages about wives being submissive and women not holding authority over men. The results disturbed me. Women in this study who accepted complementarian teachings (that they were divinely ordained to be submissive to men and under male authority) had lower self-worth and more feelings of inadequacy than women who leaned toward egalitarian readings of scripture. As the abstract states, “the data demonstrates that women with higher patriarchal attitudes have lower capacity for normal, healthy openness and self criticism and lower personal self-worth.” These findings correlate with other research about highly conservative women manifesting lower self-esteem and lower educational goals.

Despite the Baptist stance on divorce stemming from Matthew 5 and 19, Little River Baptist Church didn’t condemn Delilah Morrell’s request for a divorce. They understood her story and responded with grace. This is actually the model given us by Christ. Despite rabbinic law, he didn’t condemn the adulterous woman in John 8. He understood her story and responded with grace.

I can only wonder what might happen if modern evangelicals approached the plight of women’s roles in the church the way that Little River Baptist Church approached the plight of Delilah Morrell – with the understanding and grace of Christ.

The Divorce of a Pastor’s Wife in 1860 Texas

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It was Christmas, 1388, in Shrewsbury, a bustling market town far in the west of England. Winter frosted white the new timbers of the Bear Steps Hall, sparkling on the new glaze of the abbey’s west window, making even the centuries-old streets look new and fresh.

Not much else was new in this old town, so early on that Christmas day in 1388. Neither the coming of Richard II’s Great Parliament in 1398 (the second parliament hosted by Shrewsbury) nor the Lollard heresy (sparked by the teachings of the recently deceased John Wycliffe) would significantly impact Shrewsbury until the 1390s. The great Battle of Shrewsbury, which helped solidify the throne of Richard II’s usurper (Henry IV), was still in the future while the Black Death, which killed 30-50% of the European population, was safely in the past.

1388, historically speaking, was a quiet year for Shrewsbury.
Indeed, for those townsfolk living in the small parish of St. Alkmund’s (the western half of Shrewsbury’s Castle Foregate, Hencot, Abrightlee, Harlscot, Dinthill, and Preston Monford), continuity more than change would have marked their Christmas morning. They would have done as those in Shrewsbury had done since before the Norman Conquest, gathering at their local church to celebrate the birth of Jesus. No gothic spire, as later praised by A.E. Housman, yet soared from St. Alkmund’s nave, and no stained glass Virgin, as she would by 1795, yet ascended to glory in the east window. But solid walls of a church had stood in this spot since the early 10th century, and “Cristes maesse” (Christmas) had been celebrated in England since at least the early 12th.

One thing was new that Christmas in England, and it certainly might have showed up at St. Alkmund’s.

Sometime during the 1380s, John Mirk, an Augustinian canon from the nearby abbey of Lilleshall (about 15 miles from Shrewsbury), wrote what would become the most popular English sermon collection in late medieval England. Mirk’s abbey at Lilleshall had a long history with St. Alkmund’s, and Augustinian canons like Mirk were licensed to serve as parish priests. Indeed, we know that Mirk intended his sermons to be preached by parish priests, and he even specifies the church at St. Alkmund’s in one of his sermons. Chances were good that Festial was preached in the old church of St. Alkmund’s, perhaps even by Mirk himself. (See Susan Powell’s introduction, xx-xxv, as well as my co-authored Oxford Bibliography with Lynneth Miller on John Mirk.)

John Mirk wrote his sermons to help priests teach people what they needed to know about their medieval faith, especially the saints who had gone before them. As he explained his purpose in the prologue, “to teach their parishioners of all the principal feasts that come in the year, showing them what the saints suffered and died for God’s love, so that they should have more devotion to God’s saints and a better will to come to church and serve God and pray to the holy saints for their help.” I know my Evangelical Protestant audience will balk at Mirk’s emphasis on devotion to saints, but just think about it for a minute. By emphasizing the belief of Christians in the past, Mirk hoped to strengthen the faith of believers in the present. Yes, medieval Christians did believe in the intercession of saints, which meant that they would pray to St. Peter or St. Mary Magdalene, asking the saints as “friends of God” to intercede with God on the penitent’s behalf. But the Nicene Creed formed the foundation of their Christianity, and what they believed about Jesus is the same as my Baptist faith teaches me: the miraculous birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God in flesh, brings salvation to all who will repent and believe.

John Mirk’s sermons were new in the 1380s, but what they taught was very traditional. Mirk was helping reinscribe orthodoxy in late medieval England, making sure everyone understood the basics of their faith. He may have been innovative with his methodology, stuffing his sermons full of entertaining stories to better keep the attention of his audience, but he wasn’t innovative with his theology.

The essence of his Christmas sermon was simple: the birth of Jesus made redemption possible, giving humanity hope for salvation from the Fall. As he wrote: “Good Christian men and women, as you see and hear, this day all Holy Church makes melody and mirth in mind of the blessed birth of our Lord Jesus, very God and man, that was this day born of his mother Saint Mary for the great help and deliverance of all mankind.” Jesus, Mirk continues, “made peace between ‘God’ and man” by becoming a true mediator–both God and man–so that his holy blood could redeem humanity and restore “the joy of paradise that man lost by covetousness and pride.”
The beauty of the gospel shone brightly through this medieval sermon, preached so long ago. But something else shone brightly through it too; something that I think is often missed by modern evangelicals.
It is the significance of Mary.

When a medieval audience heard Mirk’s Christmas sermon, they heard something amazing about women. You see, in their world, women’s bodies were cursed to be weaker, to be more prone to sin, to be unworthy of approaching the altar, to be subservient to the authority of men.

Yet, in Mirk‘s Christmas story, Mary became something more. Instead of unworthy, she was deemed worthy enough to carry the son of God. Instead of dependent on men, she was empowered by God to be independent–giving birth to Jesus without assistance from either Joseph or the midwives (they arrived to late to help). Indeed, Mirk pointedly writes that “our Lady was delivered and wrapped her Son in clothes and laid him in the cradle before the ox and the ass” well before Joseph finally appears on the scene. Instead of her weak status disempowering her, it is what Mirk argued made her perfect to bring Jesus into this world. As Mirk wrote, “though he himself were Lord of all Lords, he was born of poor station, and of a poor maiden, and in a poor place…giving example to all men to set naught by worldly riches nor by the pride of this world.” Because he came from such humble beginnings, a babe in the arms of a woman, “all men and women for love should have boldness to come to him to seek grace.” The lowly status of both Mary and Jesus, argued Mirk, made Jesus accessible to ordinary people.

For Mirk’s medieval audience, God not only used a woman to bridge the gap for Him to come to us, but God used a woman to bridge the gap for people to have the courage to come to God. It is telling that Mirk concludes his nativity sermon with the story of an ordinary woman overcome by shame from a sexual sin. She was too afraid to confess it, believing that she was unworthy. Mirk records that she almost fell into despair. Finally, she remembered that Jesus had come not as a powerful man but as a lowly child. This emboldened her to cry out to Christ for mercy, and she was rewarded by Jesus speaking directly to her from heaven, “your sins are forgiven.” This woman did not relate to Jesus as a man or even as a suffering God; she related to him as a child, born of an ordinary woman just like herself.

In a world that told women they were less than men, the Christmas story told medieval women something different. As another late medieval preacher wrote, “The daughter of Eve was the beginning of damn
ation for mankind; [but] the faith of women in the new law was the beginning of salvation for mankind. The faith of Our Lady Saint Mary was the beginning of salvation for our world,” (Longleat House MS. 4, folios 35v-37v). For medieval people, a woman was not only part of God’s salvation plan; she was crucial to its success.

Christmas tells the story of God’s gift of salvation for the whole world. As John Mirk wrote, “light shall shine this day upon us. For the Father of heaven sends grace of ghostly light on all men that believe that Christ was this day born, very God and man.”

Christmas also tells the story of God’s gift to women. Like the medieval world, the modern evangelical world tells women that we are less than men; it tells us that we are designed to submit to masculine authority; it tell us to “go home” because we cannot be vocationally called like men. It even characterizes Christianity as having a “masculine feel.”
But the Christmas story tells women we are more. Because God used Mary to be the mother of Jesus, God made sure that women would always have a seat at the Christian table. Because of Christmas, women can never be written out of God’s story.

Merry Christmas, y’all!

(The images are from our recent family trip to San Antonio. We visited St. Joseph’s parish church on East Commerce Street.)

The post God’s Christmas Gift To Women appeared first on Beth Allison Barr.

Today I am pleased to welcome Anna Wells to the Anxious Bench. Anna is a second-year Ph.D. student in the Religion department at Baylor University working with Dr. Carlos Cardoza-Orlandi. Her research focuses on the way culture influences the development of Christianity and looks specifically at female hagiographies from medieval Europe and Ethiopia through a comparative lens. I have to add I had the privilege of directing Anna’s Master’s thesis, which I featured in my 2018 post The Myth of Biblical Womanhood. Her post today provides a more in-depth look at how medieval Ethiopian Christianity matters for women.

In 2011, the Pew Research Center published a study titled “A Report on the Size and Distribution of the World’s Christian Population” that gathered demographics about the world’s Christians. One of the key findings regards a shift in the majority of Christians from the Global North to the Global South. In 1910, there were four times as many Christians in the Global North (typically defined as North America, Europe, Australia, Japan, and New Zealand) than the Global South. Today, however, more than 1.3 billion Christians live in the Global South, and that number is projected to continue to grow.

Scholars frequently discuss the global reach of Christianity today, as evidenced by studies like the one conducted by the Pew Research Center. This global perspective contrasts sharply with how we imagine the history of Christianity. Today–Christianity is global. But in the past, especially the medieval past, Christianity was European (and maybe the shrinking Byzantine empire). Yet, in his book Lost Christianities, Philip Jenkins explored the existence of Christian communities in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East prior to the spread of Islam beginning in the seventh century. Christianity in the past was just as global as Christianity in the present.

It is time for modern Christians to understand the significance of our global history.

Ethiopia is a great place to start. According to the historian Rufinus, King Ezana of Aksum (Axum), an early kingdom that preceded Ethiopia, converted to Christianity in the mid-fourth century. Christianity has been entrenched there since this early date. We have lots of evidence showing this, including coins bearing the image of the cross from King Ezana’s reign. He intentionally placed the cross on the coins he minted–denoting “the importance that Christianity had in the kingdom.” Yet, because of theological differences and the rapid spread of Islam across northern Africa, Ethiopian Christianity developed in relative isolation from other Christian communities.

Western Christians often forget this. We forget that Christianity has existed in Africa for even longer than it has in much of western Europe.
But just because we forget about it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.

Christianity had a significant presence in Ethiopia in the medieval period and a wealth of literature exists beginning in the thirteenth century. Most of these documents were written in Ge’ez, the liturgical language of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. (Think Latin for the Roman Catholic Church).
One of these documents contains a collection of saints’ lives known as the Book of the Saints of the Ethiopian Church (also the Synaxarium or Ethiopian Senkessar). Originally copied from Coptic sources, the Book of the Saints included saints from the Bible and the earliest days of Christianity as well as Coptic holy men and women. As the text made its way into Ethiopian churches and monasteries, local scribes added the stories of Ethiopian saints and holy men and women to the text. The resulting document quickly gained a distinctly Ethiopian viewpoint. Priests typically read the saints’ lives for a particular day from the work at the end of the liturgy, making the stories familiar and available even to those who did not have access to the text. The daily saints’ lives presented in the Book of the Saints served as examples of holy living and devout faith to Ethiopian Christians.

I’d like to share one of my favorite stories from the Book of the Saints found on the twenty-fifth day of the month of Miyazya. It is about a woman named Sara, and I doubt it is a story familiar to very many of you.
Saint Sara and her husband Socrates both believed in Christ. Socrates served as the governor of Antioch during the reign of the emperor Diocletian (r. 284-305). Out of fear of Diocletian, her husband denied his faith, but Sara remained a Christian. The couple had two sons, and Sara wanted them to be baptized. She was unable to baptize them in Antioch because of her husband and the emperor, but she was willing to go to any lengths to have her children baptized due to her love for Christ.

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Sara boarded a ship bound for Alexandria with her two sons so that the Archbishop Peter could baptize them. According to the text, God caused a violent storm to blow up in order to display her faith for future generations. The ship was about to sink and Sara feared that her young children would drown without baptism. After a long prayer, she cut her breast and, using the blood from her wound, made the sign of the cross on her sons’ foreheads, hearts, and backs. Then she dipped both of them in the sea three times in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Almost instantly, the storm dissipated and the family arrived safely in Alexandria. Sara took her sons to the archbishop to be baptized with the other children from the city. And then something amazing happened. When Archbishop Peter attempted to baptize her sons, the water congealed on the boys’ foreheads and fell off. He tried to baptize another child and the water remained liquid, so he tried to baptize Sara’s sons again. The archbishop tried three times to baptize Sara’s sons, but the water congealed each time. He couldn’t baptize them. He then questioned Sara, and she confessed everything she had done on the ship during the storm. She asked him to forgive her sin, because she was afraid that she had baptized her sons herself.

After listening to her story, the archbishop realized what had happened. He couldn’t baptize her sons because they had already been baptized. So the archbishop comforted Sara, telling her that when she baptized her children in the sea, it was truly Christ who baptized them. The baptism that she, a woman, had performed was efficacious.

When Sara and her sons finally returned to Antioch, her husband was furious because she had baptized their children. He reported her to the emperor who questioned her about her trip to Alexandria. Sara refused to answer him and he martyred her along with her sons.

A few things make this story remarkable, especially to Western Christian ears.

First, Sara chose to remain faithful to her beliefs in the face of persecution even though her husband denied Christ. She considered obedience to Christ as more important than obedience to her husband.
Second, the archbishop recognized Sara’s baptism of her sons as valid, especially after he was unable to baptism them himself. Only those ordained by the Church had the authority to perform the sacrament–which Sara was not. Despite this, the archbishop acknowledged that Sara’s baptism was efficacious. Christ worked through her female body to baptize her sons.

Yet, I would argue that none of these things are the most remarkable part of the story.

The most remarkable part of the story is buried in a small detail. A small detail that holds great significance.

Let’s look at the story again.

According to the text, God caused a violent storm to blow up in order to display her faith for future generations. The circumstances of the story had not been not an accident. They were ordained by God. Sara’s defiance of her husband, the storm which led her to baptize her children, and the archbishop upholding the baptism as valid had all been by God’s design. Despite the ecclesiastical structures of the time, God allowed Sara to baptize her sons and made her faith stand as a witness for future believers, both women and men.

So much of the controversy regarding women and their role in the church focuses on the Western context. In a similar collection of saints’ lives from medieval Europe, Jacobus de Voragine’s Golden Legend, almost every female saint is a virgin. The text presents only one option for what it means to be holy as a woman. Yet when we expand the narrative geographically, we find a different story. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church in the medieval period still operated with a highly patriarchal system, but the stories it tells about women allow for them to participate in the faith through a variety of roles.

Saint Sara was a wife and mother and the story of her faith served as an example to other Christians. Indeed, the Ethiopian text tells us that God wanted us to know her story–to display her faith for future generations. God wanted us to know that this woman defied both her husband and ecclesiastical structures to carry out the will of God.

As Beth Allison Barr continues her Disrupting Christian Patriarchy series (you can read the latest installment here), let us keep in mind the evidence from Christian communities outside of the West. Because it isn’t only western Christian history that disrupts Christian patriarchy; global Christian history does it too.

Because Global Christian History Disrupts Christian Patriarchy Too–Evidence from Medieval Ethiopia

The post Because Global Christian History Disrupts Christian Patriarchy Too–Evidence from Medieval Ethiopia appeared first on Beth Allison Barr.

I almost didn’t write this post. After all, what more could I say? Sarah Bessey already voiced my outrage. The scoffing laughter of John MacArthur’s audience echoed in my head as I read her words. “It’s a sin to quench the work of the Holy Spirit in and through the lives of women. Repent, the kingdom of God is at hand!”

Kate Bowler already spoke up for the “precarious power” of evangelical women leaders like Beth Moore. “Unfortunately,” she told us in a spot-on instagram post, “this reaction to women leading, serving, and teaching is nothing new. While Beth Moore routinely outsells and outperforms her fellow evangelists, her power can never lie in the wooden pulpit of a brick-and-mortar church. She rules a theological kingdom that hates to need her.”

Todd Still already reminded us that “biblically” women did preach, teach, and lead, undermining John MacArthur’s claim that no biblical case can be made for women like Beth Moore. “As it happens,” he reminds us, “women have been preaching on mission fields, during Sunday gatherings and in various other Christian contexts ever since Mary Magdalene first declared to the disciples, ‘I have seen the Lord’ (John 20:18).”

Kristen DuMez already made it clear that John MacArthur doesn’t represent Christianity; he represents “white (Christian) patriarchy”–which, I think both Kristen and I agree, isn’t very Christian at all.

And Beth Moore herself, the woman who was so churlishly abused, already told us it was time to move on.”Hey, y’all,” she tweeted, using my favorite gender-inclusive word, “Let’s cool it on the slander toward JMac et al. Doesn’t honor God. Let’s move on.”

So what more could I possibly say?

Two pastors changed my mind. The first was my husband. He was loading the dishwasher. I watched as he shook the water from his hands and dried them. “For people so concerned about following the Bible,” he said, closing the dishwasher as he straightened up to face me (and I paraphrase his remarks from both of our memory), “I don’t know how they can focus on such a small number of New Testament verses about women and completely ignore the much larger amount of biblical text–both Old Testament and New–condemning arrogance and mockery.”

Mockery?–like John MacArthur’s “uncharitable admonition” for Beth Moore to “go home!” Mockery?–like the smug laughter of the audience following John MacArthur’s words. Arrogance?–like MacArthur’s boast, “There is no case that can be made biblically for a woman preacher. Period. Paragraph. End of Discussion.”

Or is it just pride? As Proverbs 8:13 states, “The fear of the Lord is hatred of evil. Pride and arrogance and the way of evil and perverted speech I hate.” Or as Isaiah 16:6 describes, “We have heard of the pride of Moab–how proud he is!–of his arrogance, his pride, and his insolence; in his idea boasting he is not right.”

Do you know how often the Bible warns us about pride? Just go to Bible Gateway and click on the ESV (one of the Bible versions used for the John MacArthur Study Bible). You will get 51 hits for the word pride, including Proverbs 16:18–“Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall”–and 1 John 2:16–“For all that is in the world-the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life-is not from the Father but is from the world.” Not all of the verses characterize pride negatively (such as 2 Corinthians 7:4), but most of them do. Expand your search to include “proud” and you will get another 43 hits–such as James 4:6, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” Again, not all of these verses use “proud” in a negative way, but, again, most of them do. Pride appears alongside arrogance, haughtiness, rebellion, evil, sin. If you remove the overlap verses between “pride” and “proud” as well as the verses that use “proud” positively, you are still left with roughly 80 specific condemnations in the ESV of “pride” and the “proud.”

Indeed, if you compare how many times the Bible condemns pride as compared with how many times it (potentially) prohibits female leadership and/or teaching, the numbers are striking–like 80 to 2.

John MacArthur’s teachings against women in leadership focus on two scripture passages: 1 Corinthians 14:33-35 and 1 Timothy 2:11-15 (see his sermon, the discussion of women’s roles in his church, and his blog posts here and here as just some examples). He does argue that other scripture supports his interpretation of these verses. But, even taking together all of the verses routinely used to emphasize women’s subordination (Ephesians 5:22-24, Titus 2:5, 1 Corinthians 11:3, Colossians 3, 1 Peter 3), to emphasize male headship in the creation and fall (1 Timothy 2:14, Genesis 1-3), and to admonish women preaching and teaching (1 Corinthians 14:33-35, 1 Timothy 2:11-12), the number of verses used to prohibit female leadership in the church (10ish) still fall way short of the number of verses condemning pride (80ish).

I think my husband’s observation was solid. Evangelical leaders are so concerned about enforcing women’s “biblical” roles yet so unconcerned about following the far more plentiful biblical warnings against pride, arrogance, and mockery.

Is this being biblical? Or is it just selective biblicism?

As a medieval historian, I find it really interesting to compare the biblical priorities of medieval preachers with modern evangelicals. The verses typically used to prohibit female leadership and enforce female submission are extremely scarce in late medieval English sermons–only 5 manuscripts contain sermons that directly reference these verses (out of approximately 160 catalogued manuscripts in the Repertorium of Middle English Prose Sermons). And even the number of actual sermons that reference these verses is very small–less than 10 total sermons out of only 5 total medieval sermon manuscripts. In contrast, at least 18 medieval sermon manuscripts contain 45 sermons which focus on the sin of pride. Biblical text focused on the sin of pride are scattered regularly throughout late medieval English sermons. James 4:6, for example, which warns that “God opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble,” appears in 22 sermons found in 13 manuscripts. Likewise 1 John 2:16–“For all that is in the world-the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life-is not from the Father but is from the world.”–appears in 23 sermons found in 14 manuscripts.

And etc.

While evangelical pastors focus on limiting women’s leadership, preachers in late medieval England focused more on warning their congregants about the sin of pride. I find this medieval perspective so interesting…..

Which brings me to the second pastor. This one is a friend, an ordained youth pastor. I saw her post on Instagram and asked if I could quote her. She, like me, is a Baptist woman. She, like me, was shocked by the John MacArthur interview. The arrogant laughter, the self-righteous posture, the flippant use of harsh words like “heretic” and “narcissist” …. She, like me, realized that when John MacArthur told Beth Moore to “go home,” he wasn’t just talking to Beth Moore. As this young female pastor wrote, “I’ve listened to the John MacArthur audio and have read endless twitter debates and articles but haven’t been able to articulate the emotions and frustration I’ve been feeling as a woman in ministry…..” John MacArthur’s words were aimed at all of us–evangelical women called by God to preach, teach, and lead. He told all of us to “go home.”

Did you know a medieval priest once said something similar to a fifteenth-century preaching woman? When Margery Kempe refused to go home (literally) from the medieval city of York and stop teaching (essentially preaching), a priest dragged out his Pauline scripture to try and force her silence (you can find this in chapter 52 of The Book of Margery Kempe). But Margery would not be silent.

She told a parable to all the clergy examining her, including the Archbishop of York himself. Once upon a time there was a priest who dreamed of a pear tree–a beautiful pear tree blossoming with fruit. But then a great vulgar bear appeared. He greedily ate all of the beautiful blossoms before turning his fat body toward the priest and defecating almost in the priest’s face. The priest is totally grossed out. He is also confused. He finds someone to interpret the dream. He learns that he is the pear tree, beautiful and fruitful when following his pastoral calling. But because he has allowed sin to corrupt him, he has become the vulgar bear who defecates on the work of God. One of the priests who hears this story repents and confesses to Margery. Margery offers him absolution, “God forgive it you,” she told him. The man was so impressed with her that he came later, privately, and asked her to forgive him for how he had treated her; he–a priest–also asked her–an ordinary woman–to pray for him.

Margery Kempe, in short, turned the table on the masculine clergy. When they told her to go home, she refused. When they told her to stop street preaching, she argued that Jesus gave women the right to teach the word of God. When they called her heretic and swore at her, she drew on “the strength of Jesus” and rebuked them until they left ashamed. When they told her to be silent, she told a story about a hypocrite priest who defiled the work of God. And, believe it or not, this fifteenth-century preaching woman won. Even though she was shaking so hard from fear (she hid her trembling hands under her robes), she held her ground against her clerical accusers. She does eventually go home, but she (mostly) does it on her own terms. And she does it without compromising what she believes God has called her to do.

Isn’t the medieval perspective interesting?

What if evangelical leaders took a page from medieval sermons? Instead of focusing so much effort on silencing women, what if they focused on practicing humility? After all, the ESV reminds us so much more frequently that “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble” than it reminds us that women should be silent…..

Likewise–What if evangelical women took a page from the book of Margery Kempe? When Margery Kempe was told to go home, she didn’t let it worry her. She believed what God had called her to do, and she believed that God would be with her. In one of my favorite prayers ever, she cried out to God, “Lord, you brought me to this place for love of you. Have mercy on me, and help me.” Instead of going home, what if evangelical women, even more conservative Baptist women like me, followed the lead of Margery Kempe. What if we stood our ground? “Lord, you brought us to this place for love of you. Have mercy on us and help us.”

Indeed, John MacArthur not only showed us exactly what Christian patriarchy looks like (arrogant and demeaning toward women), he practically gave us a new hashtag–#notgoinghome. Sarah Bessey has already sounded the call, as has Megan Severns Huston. Christian patriarchy only works because women support it.

Isn’t it about time we stopped supporting it?
#notgoinghome

The post Pride and Preaching: A Medieval Perspective on John MacArthur appeared first on Beth Allison Barr.

I am so pleased to welcome back Lynneth Miller Renberg. Lynneth is an assistant professor of history at Anderson University in Anderson, SC. She teaches a range of courses, including classes on medieval Europe, Europe in the Reformation, and the history of women in the church. She is currently working on a monograph on dance, sacrilege, and gender in late medieval England and an edited collection on the tale of the cursed dancing carolers.

I have been thinking a lot about words lately.

Perhaps it’s the quickly approaching start of the fall semester and the lecture writing that comes with that. Perhaps it’s spending (far too much) time following recent events on Twitter. Or perhaps it’s all the time I’ve been spending in revising a chapter for my monograph that contains a sermon tale, one that appears in Robert Mannyng of Brunne’s fourteenth-century Handlyng Synne.

14th century tracery window from St. Nicholas parish church at Stanford-on-Avon, Northamptonshire. It shows three women talking while surrounded by demons.

In this exemplum, the tale of the devil’s disappointment with the chattering women, a priest is standing at the altar conducting mass and reading the gospel to the congregation. Much to his surprise, he suddenly hears laughter coming from the congregation. Looking confusedly around, the priest notices that a man in the congregation is laughing for no apparent reason. After the mass comes to an end, the priest asks the man about his inexplicable laughter, and the man gives a very good reason for it: two women sitting beside him were jangling (gossiping) throughout the gospel reading. Distracted by the women, the man looked over and saw a demon sitting between them, frantically writing down every word they said. At one point, the demon ran out of parchment and, in an attempt to roll out more to keep up with the women, tore the parchment, fell, and hit his head. The moral of the tale, as expressed by Mannyng, is not for the man who laughed in church, but for the jangling women: hold your tongues in church, so that God will hear your prayers. The alternative? The devil will record your words. (Mannyng 290-293)

It’s probably too strong to compare Twitter threads to the devil’s roll. But, especially in an age in which almost every word is somehow preserved and recorded, the idea of a roll of speech holds weight, no matter who is doing the recording.

What we say matters.

Words doesn’t just disappear the instant we finish talking, especially in a social media age. They live on after we say them and continue to affect our lives. A record of our words lingers on long after we finish talking, and often in spaces and mediums we didn’t expect. Our words don’t just affect our lives, though. What we say matters, and, maybe more importantly, what we say about others matters. We see this in a slightly later version of this tale, found in Peter Idley’s fifteenth-century Instructions to His Son. Idley’s version of the tale presents pretty much the same thing as Mannyng’s: a man laughs during the church service, prompted by the sight of a demon recording the words of gossiping women. But Idley gives a much longer moral to his story, one that focuses in less on the dialogue between the priest and the laughing man and instead zooms in on the gossiping women:

And specially these women, as I dare say
Have busy talking of housewifery
Jangle as a goose and jangle as a jay
And how their husbands be full of jealousy.
Some set their minds gallants to spy
Beholding the short garments round all about
And how the stuffing of the codpiece bears out.
Some come to church to show fair bodies
Some come also the boroll for to show
Some tell the council of their husbands’ deeds
Some how their husbands is a crooked shrew
Some seem holy, if there be a few
Thus with diverse things occupation they find
As for God and our lady, they are little in mind. (Idley, p. 210)

In Idley’s version, the problem isn’t so much the jangling in church as the janglers– the women. This fits into a trend in the late middle ages of associating women’s voices with sin and with problematic speech. Jangling, or gossip, has been the focus of several excellent works on late medieval transgression. Sandy Bardsley’s Venomous Tongues notes that although dangerous and excessive speech had a long historical association with women, “this association grew both more intense and more tangible in its consequences” in the late Middle Ages. Ina Habermann, Laura Gowing, and Karma Lochrie make similar arguments in their work, pointing to the ways in which the sins of the tongue like slander, defamation, and gossip became sins of female tongues. Through repeated association in texts, sermons, and court cases, transgressions like “jangling” became transgressions associated almost exclusively with women– in short, transgressions gendered female.

By repeatedly talking about women as the possessors of problematic voices, as the causes of dissent within a society, as disruptions to proper speech, women’s voices were increasingly marginalized. Punishments like cucking stools and scolds’ bridles became increasingly common in the early modern world. Less dramatically, courts issued fines. And women labeled as scolds were increasingly disregarded as untrustworthy, while women in general were pushed towards silence. (Bardsley 141-151)

And, did you notice the other shift that took place in Idley’s text ? While in Mannyng’s version, the only sin the women are accused of is that of gossiping in church, in Idley’s version, there’s a whole laundry list of sins women in general are accused of: gossip, lust, vanity, betraying their husbands, and paying little attention to God in general. Talking about women as the source of one specific problem in Mannyng’s text, and the continuation of this discussion about women for the 150 years afterwards, led to Idley’s conclusion that there were indeed very few holy women and many more sinful ones.

We might be wise to, as Mannyng advises his readers, take care in what we say. Not because of a demon writing down our every word, but because, devilish intervention notwithstanding, these words last far longer than we realize.

How we talk about people matters. How we talk about people has the power to shape how our churches, schools, societies, and communities function.

I don’t know about you, but that gives me reason to continue to think carefully about words as this coming semester unfolds.

The post The Weight of Words–Medieval Jangling to Modern Tweeting appeared first on Beth Allison Barr.

Today we welcome Otis W. Pickett and his colleague Brian Franklin as they share their thoughts on a history panel held at the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America. Otis is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History and Political Science at Mississippi College. Brian Franklin is Associate Director of the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University.

Historians have long engaged in spirited discussions about the ways in which we interact (or fail to interact) with our broader communities. These discussions have picked up considerably since the election of Donald Trump in 2016, as historians and the public alike have sought to make sense of seemingly unprecedented times. Historians have met this public hunger for historical understanding in all sorts of venues. From Twitter, to podcasts such as Ben Franklin’s World, Backstory, or Footnotes to series like Made By History at The Washington Post, historians have purposefully and regularly brought their expertise to bear on American politics and society. This drive toward engaging with our communities has further increased amid a crisis in the profession, as opportunities for traditional tenure-track opportunities have shrunk, and the importance of work in the public spheres of journalism, museums, libraries, and historic sites has seen some increase.

We were excited to bring this same spirit of public engagement with history to a specific religious community when the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America met from June 25 to 28 in Dallas, TX. Direct engagement with religious communities—especially the governing bodies of those communities—has not been a prominent feature of the recent resurgence of historians’ public engagement. There are some good reasons for this: many religious groups require membership (or some leadership status) in order to gain a platform, while some religious governing bodies eschew outside critical evaluation altogether, especially while conducting official business. But there are other reasons why historians have failed to engage with religious communities as well including: doctrinal disagreement, dismissal of religious bodies, or sheer lack of forethought or potential interest.

After the two of us met at the biennial meeting of the Conference on Faith & History in October 2018, we brainstormed: what would it look like for us as historians to engage more with our own religious denomination? We quickly identified an opportunity: submitting an application to lead a seminar at the Presbyterian Church in America’s General Assembly. General Assembly convenes annually in June, with the primary purpose of denominational leaders gathering to discuss matters important to the life of the PCA, and to make decisions that affect the whole denomination. During each annual meeting, the General Assembly provides Seminars, which they describe as “expert-led, in-depth training on topics that are relevant to…life, work, church and community.” We submitted an application, and received an encouraging word back. Not only had the committee accepted our application, but they were excited about it.

The PCA—and its Presbyterian denominational ancestors—has certainly reckoned with history during its annual meeting before. The PCA’s mother denomination—the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (PCUSA)—met for the first time in Philadelphia, during the Summer of 1789. The attendees knew that their meeting coincided with the historic first meeting of another national body of representatives: the First United States Congress in New York. Aware of their “consequence in the republic,” the Assembly approved an address to send to President Washington which affirmed both their aim to function as a “worthy…Christian denomination” and their role in promoting “truth and virtue…[as] important service to the republic.” Washington was all too glad to reply, thanking the Assembly for their “laudable endeavors to render men sober, honest, and good Citizens.”
The PCA has engaged with politics and society in various ways since its founding in 1973 (when it split from the PCUSA), perhaps never as critically as it has over the last several years.

In 2014, at the prompting of the Presbyterian Historical Center and Archives in St. Louis, MO and its director, Wayne Sparkman, a pre-GA history conference was held at the General Assembly in Houston, TX. At that conference, professional historians and scholars of historical theology presented research on a variety of topics from the denomination’s theological foundations and development to ways in which Presbyterians have dealt with issues of race over the last several years. Sean Michael Lucas and J. Ligon Duncan III, along with Carl Ellis, Bobby Griffith and Otis W. Pickett presented papers to commissioners on how the history of the denomination spoke into issues of race, racial division, multiethnic worship, segregation and how the Presbyterian church dealt with racial issues from the nineteenth century up to the Civil Rights movement.

At the 2015 General Assembly, Lucas and Duncan proposed a personal resolution confessing the sins of racism in the denomination in the 1960s and 70s. Several elders, including Jim Baird (founding member of the PCA in 1973), spoke to the denomination’s failure to display unity in Christian brotherhood as well as the body’s general lack of engagement and interest in Civil Rights activities. That same year, Lucas’s important book For A Continuing Church appeared and provided historical depth to the discussion and making important connections of the PCA as a “continuing church” of the old PCUS (the southern branch of Presbyterianism which formed along sectional lines just prior to the Civil War largely over issues connected to slaveholding). Over the next year, several churches spent time examining session records, archives and brought further evidence of racism in PCA churches to light. Many of those church sessions brought these findings to presbyteries, which then sent overtures to General Assembly in hopes of creating a process for genuine racial and ethnic reconciliation throughout the denomination.

In 2016, over forty overtures related to this issue appeared at the General Assembly. That assembly published a statement of repentance and appointed an ad-interim committee to examine the depths of racial division in the PCA and to report back to the assembly with recommendations on how to move forward. The report, which included a nation-wide survey of more than five thousand elders in the denomination, was submitted to the 2018 General Assembly in Atlanta and adopted. This report, along with a simultaneous assembly-wide discussion of race and ethnic reconciliation were encouraging steps and pointed to the important ongoing work that the PCA must commit itself to over the next several decades.

We hoped to build on this momentum within the denomination with our 2019 seminar, entitled “Presbyterians, Politics and American Society: A Conversation with Historians in the PCA.” Our motivation was straightforward. First, we are convinced that Christians in our denomination should be engaging with politics and society. Second, we believe that an understanding of history is critical for helping people engage in thoughtful, hospitable, and loving ways. With these convictions in mind, we brought a group of historians (all of whom were officers or members in good standing in PCA churches) together with a simple prompt: speak about a moment in American Presbyterian history, and reflect on how that story can and should influence how Presbyterians interact in politics and society today.

Our group included:

Malcolm Foley (Baylor University, Ph.D. Candidate) – An exploration of Francis Grimke’s prophetic response to the lynching of African Americans at the turn of the 20th century, and the role of Christians in speaking out against injustice.Dr. Brian Franklin (SMU Center for Presidential History) – On how Presbyterian minister Samuel Miller focused much of his attention on courting political favor at the turn of the 19th century, and what Christians can learn about their involvement in partisan politics.Dr. Otis W. Pickett (Mississippi College) – On how 19th-century Presbyterian missionaries from South Carolina dealt with issues related to race through mission churches in the antebellum South, their role in promoting the Lost Cause during Reconstruction and what their experience teaches twenty first century Christians.Dr. Bobby Griffith (Ph.D. University of Oklahoma) – On the conspiracy theories related to the Apollo 8 commemorative postage stamp of the late-1960s, and the importance of Christians carefully discerning media.Dr. Nicholas Pruitt (Eastern Nazarene College) – A look at how Presbyterians in the mid-20th century navigated their beliefs about politics and missions amid their considerations of immigration and refugee policy.Dr. Ansley Quiros (University of North Alabama) – On how the political and cultural divisions of the 1960s reveal that the roots of such controversies—then and now—are often rooted in racial animus.

Pastors seek to guide their congregations through tumultuous times of political, racial, gender and socio-economic division. We hope that this panel provided Teaching and Ruling Elders in the PCA, as well as visitors who attended, with a historical lens to help steer their churches through this cultural turbulence with wisdom, openness, and thoughtfulness. All of these issues are complex and cannot be solved with simple statements or solutions. But a historical framework can help them process denominational history and societal change over time in complex and nuanced ways. Furthermore, being well versed in the history and experiences of women, African Americans, Native Americans, immigrants, along with a larger understanding of social, political and economic history, will help pastors, staff, elders, the diaconate and membership as they seek to engage their communities and come alongside diverse people groups in their own neighborhoods.

Presbyterians, Politics, And American Society: A Conversation With Historians In The PCA

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