by Luke Butner

On Thursday, October 26, the Ward Lecture series celebrated its 60th year. The Ward lecture series concerns itself with issues of faith and higher education. Last year, speaker Amy Peeler gave an outstanding lecture on “Women, God, and The Benefits of Theological Education for All.” Her lecture was on the topic of the roles of strong women in the bible. 

This year, the theme of women continued into speaker Dr. Beth Allison Barr’s lecture on “The Cost of Christian Patriarchy.” Her lecture, however, discussed mainly how Christian patriarchy affects women in society today. 

She began with a story of her trip to Italy, where she was on a senior trip with her son and his classmates. As a historian, she wanted to visit the catacombs of Priscilla, which held many vital people’s bodies to the Christian faith. She also made an interesting point that these particular catacombs where owned and named after a powerful woman. She also drew particular attention to a painting on the wall, depicting three women, who were all the same woman doing three different actions. On the left side, the woman sat between two ministers, seeming to pray with them. On the right, the woman was sitting by herself, holding a baby. In the middle, however, the same woman was in the “orans” prayer position, arms reaching strongly toward heaven.  

Dr. Barr drew extra attention to the middle woman. She claimed that the orans is a powerful prayer position, one used by many powerful preachers. She claimed that there were many such paintings, just as the one she showed us, depicting numerous different powerful women in early Christian ministry. She added the interesting fact that many women in early Christianity actually owned the house churches and shared God’s word.  

Next, Dr. Barr delved into the main topic of her lecture: the cost of Christian patriarchy. To define patriarchy, Dr. Barr included a quote that read, “A society is patriarchal to the degree that it is male dominated, male identified and male centered.” Therefore, patriarchy is the term used to describe a society in which males dominate. Dr. Barr applied this definition of patriarchy to the Christian community and the implications it has for females in Christian communities.  

Dr. Barr made three overall arguments to the cost of patriarchy to the Christian community. Her first argument applied directly to the church. She claimed that women in patriarchal Christian communities are less likely to have a leadership role or even be paid in ministry. She displayed a single set of statistics that showed that one out of six women in ministry are paid. This means that a whopping majority of women— 80% to be exact— are not paid in ministry.  

Next, Dr. Barr argued that these communities influence both genders, man and woman, to behave patriarchally outside of Christian communities. Dr. Barr further added that women in these patriarchal societies have a more challenging time obtaining leadership roles simply because they do not feel they belong in those positions. Likewise, men treat women in a manner that aligns with this claim. She claimed men treat women like they do not belong and therefore, give women less leadership roles than men.  

Lastly, Dr. Barr argued that the influence of patriarchy in Christian communities can turn dangerous for women, both inside and outside of the Christian sphere. To back this claim, Dr. Barr displayed one of the numerous cases of sex crimes that took place inside the church between a male pastor and a female church member. Not only is it extremely easy and common for these sorts of situations to occur, but it is also easy for pastors to limit the amount of criticism they receive from this behavior because of their position in the church. Dr. Barr said that in the situation she studied, the preacher repeatedly said that God had forgiven his actions, and that the church should do the same. This was a profoundly tragic and disturbing case, which is far too common in the Christian community. 

Overall, Dr. Barr’s lecture was a very brief introduction to how Christian patriarchy affects society. Although Dr. Barr made a few good points, such as giving the history of powerful women in the church and the case study, her lecture was made for an audience that was not familiar with patriarchy. For members of the audience who are familiar with these incidents, Dr. Barr did not make enough exciting points to hold their attention. She essentially stated the obvious, not delving too deeply into the problem or what causes it or how the audience can combat the effects of patriarchy.  

However, another observation I made attending her lecture is the lack of statistics and real-world examples. For example, as stated previously, Dr. Barr used a singular set of statistics to point out how many women are unpaid in ministry. Although this statistic is alarming, her argument would have been much stronger if she displayed the statistics showing how many men are paid in ministry, or perhaps showing leadership role statistics for both sexes in ministry so that the audience could actively see how large the discrimination is in these environments.  

To sum things up, Dr. Barr’s lecture is excellent for someone unfamiliar with patriarchy in the church. It was easy to see Dr. Barr’s passion for the topic and how much it meant to her. She was a very charismatic speaker and broke her arguments down very well for the general audience. I do recommend her book “The Making of Biblical Womanhood,” of which the lecture was written about, so you can experience the wonderful way Dr. Barr explains everything.