The role of the pastor's wife

I should go on record from the outset and state that I am neither a pastor nor a pastor's wife. I would like to think, though perhaps erroneously, this admission does not preclude me from comment. It stands to reason that if 'pastor's wife' exists as a role in the church, the average member should be au fait with the position and understand its function. Equally, if no such role exists, the average church member needs to recognise why not and the implications of that reality. That, at any rate, is my defence for discussing this topic.

There is one undeniable reality surrounding this issue - there is such a thing as a pastor's wife. Some pastors are married and, like it or not, their wives have crossed the imperceptible divide from 'wife' to 'pastor's wife'. So, we must accept that pastor's wives do exist. The issue, however, revolves around whether this label is merely a factual descriptor of an objective reality or whether it, in some way, represents a role in the church.

Let us start by tackling what I, rather facetiously, called 'the imperceptible divide from 'wife' to 'pastor's wife''. The truth is, if we are going to refer to 'pastor's wives', prior to her husband becoming pastor the woman was not merely a wife but was a teacher's wife, a lawyer's wife, an electrician's wife or whatever depending on her husband's previous job. It is, for some reason, only poignant to add the man's job to the term 'wife' upon his calling to the ministry. As an objective descriptor of reality, it seems odd to only bother with it in the pastorate. Either it is a worthwhile descriptor which should be applied across all occupations or, it is of almost no value and should be dropped (for further discussion on this point see 'Using the term pastor as a title'). It is made all the more stark for women who have careers of their own. Why is it their husband's job title supersedes their own? Such women are not only pastor's wives but may be teachers, lawyers, electricians, mothers in their own right.

Although an oddity within the working world, we must nevertheless concede that 'pastor's wife' is a factual description of a woman married to a pastor. However, how far can we say it is a specific role within the church? To put it bluntly, it isn't. There is no recognition in scripture of any such office (for those who do not recognise pastorates, these same arguments apply to the office of elder too). The wife of a pastor, or specifically elder, is only mentioned as part of the qualifications for eldership in 1 Timothy 3:2 and Titus 1:6. In each case, the emphasis is on the man to be 'the husband of one wife'. There is no instituting of an office in the church nor is there any definition of a specific role.

Why is this significant? All too often churches expect pastor's wives to carry out an endless list of duties without the benefit of contract, salary or even gratitude. It is almost as if the church sees the pastor's wage - specifically assigned to him in exchange for his pastoral work for the church - as also buying his wife's service too in some sort of a buy one get one free labour bargain. But, if pastor's wife is not an office outlined in scripture then to expect a pastor's wife to be more active, more involved and carry a greater burden than the average church member is unfair and unreasonable. It strikes me the reason church ministry is the anomaly which insists on referring to the wife of a pastor by her husband's job is specifically to encourage this sort of deal.

We may argue that part of a wife's role is to support her husband in his work and indeed it is. However, it is not the woman's role to do her husband's work. Nor is it the woman's role to do auxiliary work because of her husband's position. Nobody would expect a woman to become a TA and work gratis for a school simply because her husband was a teacher. At the very least, were she to undertake the role, the school would pay her a salary but there would be no compulsion to go for the position because of her husband. Most people would rightly agree this is appropriate. Why then do these basic principles suddenly not apply in the church? It is perfectly possible that churches may find roles which they believe are best carried out by the pastor's wife. That is fine, but she should not be expected to take the role for nothing. Equally, if she does not want the role for whatever reason, she should not be compelled to take it. 

The pastor's wife is not a role or office within the church. It is a factual description of a woman married to a pastor. Therefore, she should have no more burden or expectation placed upon her than any other member of the church. All too often pastor's wives are expected to plug all the gaps in the church and to take on all the jobs that other members are unwilling to bear. The pastor's wife must already act as a support to her husband who is unable to unload on anybody else in the church. This seems burden enough! Churches need to be sensitive to this and recognise that pastor's wives are not simply there to plug gaps in the church and act as cheap, compelled labour.

Evangelicals are not a voting bloc

O what heights of investigatory journalism! Hitherto it had been widely accepted that all Evangelicals believed the same things, voted for the same people and acted in the same ways. Was it not common knowledge that all Evangelicals are slavering right-wingers concerned with nothing other than tax reduction and vehement opposition to abortion?


Thanks be to Marcia Pally for showing us that Evangelicals 'do not vote in lock step'. Without her we would never have come to the knowledge that 'some [Evangelicals] vote on religious grounds most of the time. But most vote out of a mix of concerns shaped by income, education, and critically, local socio-political culture'. She offers searing insight into the mind of the Evangelical by observing 'if Evangelicals were motivated only by religion, their voting would be more consistent across the demographic and geographic range'. More radical still, she notes that some Evangelicals even vote Democrat and that two Evangelical ministers were involved in the writing of the Democrat party platform whilst another ran the Democratic Nominating Convention.


How is it that such banal, old hat observation is now being passed for journalistic comment? It is hardly new to suggest that Evangelicals are not a homogeneous bloc. It has long been observed that Evangelicalism is, both theologically and politically, a relatively broad church. One would be hard-pressed to find any social, political or religious group in which those who adopt the identifier hold the same views on all areas of politics, theology and ecclesiology. Why is it so hard to comprehend that Evangelicals will hold differing views and that they will place their emphases in different places?


Pally's article is particularly poor in two key regards. Firstly, despite arguing that not all Evangelicals vote the same way, she falls headlong into the erroneous view that theologically speaking they are identical. She states 'If evangelicals were motivated only by religion, their voting would be more consistent across the demographic and geographic range'. This would only be true if Evangelicals were theologically homogeneous, which evidently they are not. Secondly, she assumes all people believe that Evangelicals are homogeneous. The evidence against this is vast, the arguments well rehearsed and the best statements made some significant time ago. This is neither a new observation nor a particularly clever one.


One has to be something of an idiot to think that Evangelicals are identical in their theology, politics, emphases and voting behaviour. What is unclear is whether Pally is the idiot for thinking her statement is something new and insightful; or, whether she merely thinks everyone else is an idiot and would find her article new and insightful when she knew it was no such thing.

After-birth abortion & moral consistency

It was recently reported in the Guardian that some abortion clinics have been offering sex-selection terminations. This led to outrage from pro-life and pro-choice groups and drew criticism from the Health Secretary who condemned the actions as illegal and 'morally wrong'. At the time, I argued that the moral outrage of the Health Secretary and pro-choice groups seemed odd and misplaced. For my thoughts see 'Clinics grants sex-selection abortions'.


Since then two academics, Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva, have published a paper titled 'After-birth abortion: why should the baby live?'. They argue we should now accept the killing of newborn infants for any of the same reasons we currently accept as justifying abortion. They aver that newborn infants are not real people because an "actual person" is one capable of having plans and aims. Just like a foetus, a newborn child is incapable of making plans and aims thus it is only a "potential person". Therefore, though pain can harm the newborn, death cannot.


It is hardly surprising, given the heat generated by the existence of sex-selection abortions, that this paper has also been roundly condemned. However, as with sex-selection abortions, the condemnation of this paper seems somewhat morally inconsistent. Andrew Brown at the Guardian, argues:

The equation of abortion with infanticide is central to the rhetoric of many anti-abortionists. It is something that most pro-choicers emphatically reject. For them, the moral justification of abortion lies in the fact that an embryo is not a human being, whereas a newborn baby is. The moral status of a foetus changes over time in the womb, and while there will always be arguments about when the change should be recognised, there is wide agreement that a time limit on abortion is morally significant.

It certainly seems to follow from Giubilini and Minerva's reasoning that there is nothing wrong with sex-selective infanticide. There's no doubt that having a child of the wrong sex can be frightfully inconvenient for its parents. So if it's all right to abort a girl for her chromosomes, why not kill the newborns as well?

The truth of the matter, however, is that Giubilini and Minerva are at least being morally consistent, even if morally repugnant. If it is acceptable to terminate a foetus; it must also be acceptable to kill newborn children. As Brown states:

Some modern utilitarian philosophers have argued that there is no huge moral difference between a baby about to be born, at the top of the birth canal, and the same baby when it has emerged into the world. I first heard this from John Harris, at Manchester University. But the conclusion he drew was not that we ought to kill newborns.

But how can we argue anything else if 'moral status' is the basis upon which we justify terminations? Indeed, we recognise in law that the age of criminal responsibility is 10 (and we are considered to be harsh compared to most countries in Europe). Therefore, given that we acknowledge children under 10 cannot be legally responsible for their actions, Giubilini and Minerva could indeed extend their theory to cover all minors (certainly those under 10 at any rate).


For the Christian, the answer is clear. The moral case against termination is not based upon an ability to make plans and aims. The case for the Christian lies predominantly in the sixth commandment (Exo 20:13) for which there is no age defining cut off. Indeed, by right of being made in the image of God, all human beings are to be protected and we know that children are 'a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward (Psa 127:3)'.


Nevertheless, for a society that rejects this Christian view, how can they consistently denounce Giubilini and Minerva?