Sunday, May 29, 2022

Gary Macy: Women "Deacons" in Early Christianity Probably was not an "Order" but more of a "Job Description"

  

The Ministry of Women Deacons

 

In the early years of Christianity, women who were designated deacons probably did the same thing that men designated as deacons did. Diakonos in Greek just means “servant,” and so the “servants” of the Church did the service jobs. They took care of the poor, visited the sick and those in prison, and generally looked to the upkeep of the fabric of the Church. It probably wasn’t an “order” in the way we think of it at all. It was a job description; these were the people chosen by the community to handle what we might call “social services.” (Gary Macy, “Women Deacons: History,” in Women Deacons: Past, Present, Future, ed. Susan A. Ross [Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press, 2011], 23, emphasis in bold added)