Beyond the Stained Glass Ceiling
Women Clergy in a Still-Patriarchal Church
9780827203549
144 pages
Chalice Press
Overview
Stop just surviving the "stained glass ceiling" and start building a church where every leader is celebrated.
While the right to ordination was won decades ago, invisible patriarchal structures still force women clergy to portage around systemic obstacles just to exercise their call. It is heartbreaking to see gifted leaders leave the ministry or diminish their own voices because the institution remains stuck in the past.
You do not have to accept this as "just the way things are." In Beyond the Stained Glass Ceiling, Rev. Dr. Alina Gayeuski serves as your guide to move from survival to transformation. By naming the painful truths of sexism and sharing anonymized stories from across mainline Protestantism, she provides a roadmap to dismantle outdated barriers.
Discover how to foster a feminist church—a community that operates from a place of abundance, values relationship over hierarchy, and ensures the next generation of leaders can flourish. Join the movement to create a sanctuary that finally reflects the full, beautiful diversity of the body of Christ.
Author Bio
Rev. Dr. Alina Gayeuski is an ordained pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), the denomination that raised and formed her. With over a decade of ministry experience, she currently serves as the lead pastor of Reformation Lutheran Church in the Philadelphia suburbs. There, she leads a unique all-female clergy team serving a congregation originally founded by women who were once excluded from formal leadership.
Gayeuski is a dedicated advocate for gender justice, having served as a board member and past chair of Young Clergy Women International, a global professional organization for women clergy under forty. Her academic background includes advanced doctoral research into the intersection of theology, patriarchy, and church structure.
As a white, straight, cisgender woman married to a fellow pastor, Gayeuski draws on her "front-row seat" to church leadership to amplify the voices of her colleagues and truth-tellers. She is committed to the "hard and holy work" of dismantling sexism, helping the church become the inclusive, liberated community God desires for all people.
