Women Deacons in the Orthodox Church: Called to Holiness and Ministry - Church History - Book

Paperback 227 pages

Women Deacons in the Orthodox Church is a patristic, historical, and liturgical study of the deaconess in the Church. It includes the stories of the women deacon saints, the decline of the order, and the attempts at its restoration by St. Nektarios of Aegina, Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow, and a close examination of the 1988 Consultation in Rhodes. An essential read regarding the role of women in the church and their ministry, it is "a significant and thought-provoking study which will contribute positively towards the future of our Church."

(Patriarch Ignatius IV of Antioch)

The role of women in the Church has been hotly debated by all Christian Churches, especially as it relates to ordained ministry. In the Orthodox Church, this conversation has focused on the existence of women's ordination to the diaconate. This book traces the development and growth of this ordained expression of ministry in the Christian East. By examining scriptural, patristic, and liturgical evidence, as well as the lives of the women saints identified as deacons, the author demonstrates that women were ordained as deacons to dynamic and evangelical ministries of prayer, teaching, pastoral care and social concern.