For many Christians, the issue is this simple: The Church once had deaconesses, so it can have them again. The reality, as usual, is rather more complex. History is not tradition; history only becomes tradition when it is handed down.
Deaconesses have not been handed down to us. The whole Church has never had a tradition of having deaconesses, but the whole Church has had a longstanding tradition of not having them, even after having had them in some places.
Why?
The answer is the subject of a new assembly of slides available now, free of charge, on the Downloads page of this blogsite. You can view the slides online in most browsers, or you can download the slides as a pdf, also free of charge, by clicking the “Download” button at the bottom of the Downloads page.
The St Phoebe Center for the Deaconess recently distributed a slide presentation of its own, advocating the ordination of deaconess with all duties, honors, qualifications, and limitations left up to each bishop—an anything-goes approach guaranteed to make the most of deaconesses as a 21st-century innovation. The Center has also scheduled a webinar on the subject for Thursday, Sept. 1.
The slides available here—Deacons and Deaconesses: Why the Church Kept One and Not the Other—were created in response to the Center’s slides and are based on The Disappearing Deaconess, published last year by Eremía Publications and available online in hardback, paperback, and ebook versions.
Each slide provides page numbers from The Disappearing Deaconess where more information can be found, along with complete citations of ancient and modern sources. The slides also reference my doctoral dissertation, Origen’s Revenge: The Greek and Hebrew Roots of Christian Thinking on Male and Female, published last year by Pickwick Publications, an imprint of Wipf and Stock.
You can read more about both books on the Books page of this blogsite. But start with the slides. You will learn a lot. I promise.
Don’t wait until you hear others clamoring for deaconesses. Find out the truth now, and share it with your priest and your parish. Thank you!
