Beth Allison Barr, PhD
Beth Allison Barr – Author, Historian, and Speaker
Beth Allison Barr is the USA Today bestselling author of The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth. An academic by training and a pastor’s wife by calling, Barr brings a unique perspective to the intersection of medieval history and modern Christianity—especially concerning the role of women. Her work has been described as “smart,” “powerful,” and “a game changer” for all women of faith.
Barr currently serves as the James Vardaman Professor of History at Baylor University, where she teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses. In addition to her academic work, she is a sought-after speaker and public intellectual. Her work has been featured by NPR and The New Yorker, and she has contributed to Religion News Service, The Washington Post, Christianity Today, The Dallas Morning News, and Sojourners. She is also a regular writer for The Anxious Bench, a popular religious history blog on Patheos.
Known for her ability to connect with both academic and lay audiences, Barr has spoken at leading institutions and conferences, including Duke Divinity School, the University of Notre Dame, Sarum College (Salisbury, England), the University of Calgary, Park Cities Baptist Church (Dallas), the Evangelical Free Society of Canada, Newbigin House (San Francisco), and Brite Divinity School (Fort Worth, Texas) to name a few.
Barr earned her B.A. in History (with a minor in Classics) from Baylor University and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Medieval History from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She has held leadership roles in numerous academic organizations, including serving as President of the Conference on Faith and History and the Texas Medieval Association. She remains an active member of the International Medieval Sermon Studies Society, the American Society of Church History, the Sixteenth Century Society, and the American Historical Association.
In addition to The Making of Biblical Womanhood and her latest book, Becoming the Pastor’s Wife: How Marriage Replaced Ordination as a Woman’s Path to Ministry, Barr is the author of The Pastoral Care of Women in Late Medieval England and co-editor of The Acts of the Apostles: Four Centuries of Baptist Interpretation and Faith and History: A Devotional. Since earning tenure in 2014, she has served as Graduate Program Director in History (2016-2019), Associate Dean in the Baylor Graduate School (2019-2022), and received a Centennial Professor Award (2018).
Beyond her academic and writing pursuits, Beth is also a Baptist pastor’s wife and the proud mother of two children.
BETH’S TOPICS
The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth
Barr's historical insights provide context for contemporary teachings about women's roles in the church. Interweaving her story as a Baptist pastor's wife, Barr sheds light on the #ChurchToo movement and abuse scandals in Southern Baptist circles and the broader evangelical world, helping readers understand why biblical womanhood is more about human power structures than the message of Christ.
The Cost of Forgetting Medieval History for Modern Evangelicalism
History forgets much more than it remembers, and what it remembers is often what people have chosen to preserve. As a medieval historian and an evangelical Christian, Beth contends that evangelical amnesia has come at a great cost not only for women’s leadership in the modern church but also for human dignity.
HERE’S WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING ABOUT BETH
““Throughout this book...shakes our shallow historical foundations by revealing how much of so-called ‘biblical’ womanhood reflects the culture rather than Christ. By taking us through her own heartbreaking journey of exclusion from her faith community, she demonstrates the temerity that we need to live the simple, yet disruptive truth that all women and men are created in the image of God. The Making of Biblical Womanhood is about unmaking the harmful patterns of patriarchy in the church, society, and our own hearts.”
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““This is a book, unlike anything I’ve read before. Drawing on her extensive research into the history of Christianity, Barr upends everything you thought you knew about Christianity and gender. This fervent, bold, and sweeping history of Christianity and patriarchy is an absolute game changer. Any future debates will need to reckon with Barr’s contention that the subjugation of women has nothing to do with gospel truth.””
“This book has the power to help Christians build a faith where ‘there is neither male nor female,’ to liberate women from patriarchal hierarchies, and to heal the pain inflicted by countless churches. I have waited my entire adult life for a book like this, and I am excited that it has finally arrived.””
““The Making of Biblical Womanhood is a journey into the sometimes pained, sometimes joyous heart of Beth Allison Barr’s own story but also into the secret rooms of a conservative Christian doctrine of ‘biblical womanhood’ that is no more biblical than choir robes or three-point sermons, or Christian nationalism. The number of mistaken theological interpretations present in evangelical complementarianism Barr exposes are too many to count. Barr’s careful historical examples drawn especially from medieval history hold together a brilliant, thunderous narrative that untells the complementarian narrative. I could not put this book down.””
VIDEOS OF BETH SPEAKING
