Stained Glass Ceilings speaks to the intersection of gender and power within American evangelicalism by examining the formation of evangelical leaders in two seminary communities.Southern Baptist Theological Seminary inspires a vision of human flourishing through gender differentiation and male headship. Men practice “Godly Manhood," and are taught to act as the "head" of a family, while their wives are socialized into codes of “Godly Womanhood" that prioritize prescribed gender roles. This power structure privileges men yet offers agency to their wives in women-centered spaces and through marital relationships. Meanwhile, Asbury Theological Seminary promises freedom from gendered hierarchies. Appealing to a story of gender-blind equality, Asbury welcomes women into classrooms, administrative offices, and pulpits. But the institution’s construction of egalitarianism obscures the fact that women are rewarded for adapting to an existing male-centered status quo rather than for developing their own voices as women. Featuring high-profile evangelicals such as Al Mohler and Owen Strachan, along with young seminarians poised to lead the movement in the coming decades, Stained Glass Ceilings illustrates the liabilities of white evangelical toolkits and argues that evangelical culture upholds male-centered structures of power even as it facilitates meaning and identity.

LISA WEAVER SWARTZ holds a PhD from the University of Notre Dame. She lives in the bluegrass region of Kentucky where she teaches sociology and writes about gender and religion.
 

— Kristin Kobes Du Mez, author of Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation

— Beth Allison Barr, author of The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth

— Nancy Ammerman, author of Baptist Battles: Social Change and Religious Conflict in the Southern Baptist Convention