Beth Allison Barr, "Are Women Human?" Medieval vs. Evangelical Ideas about Women (ASA 2024)

‘ARE WOMEN HUMAN?’ A MEDIEVAL CATHOLIC PERSPECTIVE ON MODERN EVANGELICAL IDEAS ABOUT WOMEN

On June 12, 2024, a denominational amendment that would have declared a woman serving in any pastoral role as an automatic reason to disfellowship a church from the Southern Baptist Convention almost received the 66% vote it needed to become constitutional. Instead of expressing victory over the failure of this amendment, Baptist Women in Ministry expressed “grief” that the vote took place at all because it reveals a devaluing of women as compared to men. Despite claims to the contrary, I argue that modern gender theology arguing “complementary” roles for women and men is rooted in Aristotelian misogyny that was less present in medieval Christianity. Using the biblical example of the Syrophoenician woman, this lecture compares how medieval sermons preached to ordinary people presented women as compared to the increasingly restrictive complementarian theology now dominating modern evangelicalism. It also will consider the impact of this increasingly narrow gender theology on the dignity and personhood of women.

Beth Allison Barr (PhD, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) is James Vardaman Professor of History at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. She specializes in medieval history, women’s history, and church history. Barr is the author of the bestselling book The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth (Brazos Press, 2021). NPR and The New Yorker have featured her work, and she is a regular contributor to The Anxious Bench, the popular Patheos website on religious history, and has written for Christianity Today, The Washington Post, Religion News Service, The Dallas Morning News, Religion & Politics, Sojourners, and Baptist News Global. She is also a Baptist pastor’s wife and the mom of two great kids.

0:00 Intro
0:13 Janel Curry, Speaker Bio
2:19 Main Lecture
38:33 Q&A

ABOUT ASA 2024
Conference site: https://network.asa3.org/mpage/ASA2024

Video Intro Song: Inspiration by Rafael Krux
Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/5493-inspiration-
License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license