Why the Greatest Weapon Against Christian Patriarchy Is the Bible

In her new book ‘The Making of Biblical Womanhood,’ history professor Beth Allison Barr reveals centuries of women that modern leaders keep trying to erase

I was seventeen years old in 1997 and thought I might be receiving a call to the ministry. The places I felt safest were in prayer, head bowed over my Bible, or in church, considering this precious, complicated world as a gift and thanking the God who I thought gave it to us.

I even had a good role model, a witty, vibrant associate pastor who told stories that wove together her gentle humor and a faith I saw as beautiful. But as I began exploring what Christian faith might look like, I expanded out away from her curious, humble leadership to attend Bible studies with evangelical friends and their pastor. I grappled with the restrictive, rule-obsessed God I heard about there, started watching The 700 Club, dated a Pentecostal preacher’s son — and discovered, when they laid hands on me, that I had never been saved in the way people in his youth group believed I should be. They all believed the Bible, a mess of history and stories as I understood it, was actually something a good Christian must take literally. I absorbed a grain of doubt — had I been doing…