Her ongoing research agenda expands her attention to the intersection of religion, gender, and culture to a global frame with a project interrogating faith-based humanitarian work in southeast Asia.
Weaver-Swartz applied the “Page 99 Test” to her new book, Stained Glass Ceilings: How Evangelicals Do Gender and Practice Power, and reported the following:
Page 99 of Stained Glass Ceilings summarizes the symbolic construction of gender at the evangelical Asbury Theological Seminary. Paradoxically, Asbury invites women into all levels of leadership but also resists the language and logics of feminism.Visit Lisa Weaver Swartz's website.
Advancing its analysis of what I call “genderblind egalitarianism,” page 99 reads, “Rigorous academic work, much of it emerging from Asbury’s own scholars, has yielded robust biblical support for women in ministry. Official policy ensures that contemporary practice can follow suit. Women can be, and indeed are, ordained, hired, and promoted. All that needs to be done, according to Asbury’s genderblindness advocates, is to proceed with the business of genderblind unity.” The page also describes students’ ambivalence showed toward feminism: “[The students I interviewed] often mentioned women’s right to vote, for example, as a positive contribution. Quick and emphatic qualifications, however, nearly always followed. In fact, many expressed overt hostility.” Indeed, many within the community perceive feminism as inappropriately divisive.
The Page 99 Test works moderately well for this book. It succeeds in representing the book’s primary task: a critical yet empathetic analysis of gendered evangelical culture. Moreover, the page highlights the term “genderblind egalitarianism,” which is a key construct within the book. Where the Page 99 Test is weaker, however, is in its ability to reflect the book’s overall shape. The page falls near the middle of the third chapter, one of two devoted to Asbury Seminary. The book’s other two major chapters highlight another seminary community, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, which takes a strikingly different approach in its construction of gender, barring women from most leadership roles. One phrase, near the beginning of the page, saves the test. Nodding briefly to the book’s comparative shape, it begins, “In striking contrast with Southern’s discourse of male headship...”
Another weakness of page 99 as a representation of the whole is that it is almost completely analytical. It does not include the stories, extended quotes from interviews, or descriptions of material culture that give this book its texture.
--Marshal Zeringue
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