by Elizabeth Hawkins

Elizabeth with her husband, Charles, and Metropolitan Nicholas at the endorsement and commissioning prayer service.

On the feast day of St. Luke the Evangelist in 2013, I sat in front of a small group of my peer reviewers in New York. This was the final step of a long professional journey of becoming a board certified chaplain by the Association of Professional Chaplains. A question was asked that has become a familiar refrain throughout the years of my training and one that continues to resonate: “How does it feel to be the first woman to be commissioned and endorsed for institutional chaplaincy by your archdiocese?”

I wondered about the meaning behind this question. As chaplains, we spend a lot of time wondering along with people, finding meaning in places that seem bereft of meaning. Being unable to discern what the interviewer may have intended—rather, I didn’t seek clarification—I can confirm that having gone through this process allows me to feel loved, supported and validated by my community.

Very often I find myself alone in a hospital room with a patient and his or her family. Working in a pediatric hospital, I am frequently at the bedside of a baby or young child, engaging his or her mother in conversation. In issues of sickness and health, as we contemplate the well-being of our children, and perhaps the very things that make life worth living or that define life itself, we share the most intimate and vulnerable parts of ourselves with each other. Inevitably, a time will come when someone asks, “Well, what do you think, chaplain?” In these moments I take a breath, say a prayer and feel strengthened by the prayers of my community. The endorsement of my ecclesiastical body, having stood in front of the congregation as His Eminence Metropolitan Nicholas read prayers of commissioning and endorsement over me and the intercessory prayers of my patron saint bring me peace in the midst of chaos.

While that question has become a refrain, so has my answer. Although many of our religious colleagues, clergy and otherwise, speak of a vocation—a sense of being called out—I feel just as strongly that God sometimes pushes rather than calls. I’ve had many experiences in my life when, upon reflection, I understand how I was being prepared for things in a very wonderful way that was completely lost on me at the time.

Some chaplains have a natural inclination toward the sciences; my own clinical supervisor during my training was premed before he entered seminary. This was not the case for me. Working with patients as they receive heart transplants; learning about head injuries, seizures and heart-lung bypass machines; watching little lungs develop with the help of machines and medicine; eradicating sickness and disease—these are as much miraculous as scientific in my eyes.

Rather, while in college I studied filmmaking and sociology, wanting to make documentary films. I love learning people’s stories, listening to them and learning about our world and our functioning within it. After studying for three and a half years I had a crisis of sorts, one known to many young people on the verge of college graduation. I had spent years working toward a goal that no longer inspired me. Through hours of thought, prayer and conversation with loved ones, I decided to study theology. A constant in my life was and is a love of the Church. I didn’t have an end goal in mind—and I had never even heard of hospital chaplaincy! When I finally summoned the courage to tell my parents that I wanted to study at Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology, my mother, much to my shock, responded with, “Well, we thought you may say this.”

Maybe it was my years in camping ministries and GOYA, the conversations with priests and monastics or all those hours spent in the liturgical cycle; maybe it was the continuing work of the Spirit imbued upon me during my baptism as an infant. I can’t make any more sense of this push now than I could then.

While in pursuit of my master of divinity at Holy Cross, I learned the unique value of being a student who was not preparing for ordination into the priesthood. While we all have the same vocation as baptized Orthodox Christians, those of us non-seminarians learning about theology and the practical applications of our faith are taught by default to think creatively about how to apply the same lessons. Whether we are studying to be youth ministers or missionaries, chaplains or social workers, we are well equipped with a strong foundation in theology. And, in quite an accidental way, I found that I loved the work of chaplaincy. My first introduction to this work was during my required hospital ministry class.

Continuing in pursuit of ecclesiastical endorsement, a requirement for board certification, I didn’t realize that I was asking questions that had not yet been asked of the archdiocese. I sought to professionalize or modernize that same call that each of us receive to visit the sick, a command Christians have had since Christ walked among us. This looks very different in America during the twenty-first century than it did in the first century or in Byzantium.

This tendency to think creatively, perhaps a skill acquired while I trained as a filmmaker and then honed during my studies at Holy Cross, was beneficial throughout my training and the process toward board certification as well as the work I do in my hospital each day. I am grateful to His Eminence Metropolitan Nicholas for his support. I am beholden first to the tenets of my Orthodox faith, but also to the hospital that employs me and the professional organization I represent.

Elizabeth Hawkins received her MDiv from Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology in 2009 and then returned to her hometown of Memphis, Tennessee, to continue chaplain training. She is recognized by the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese to serve as a hospital chaplain and is board certified by the Association of Professional Chaplains. She and her husband have two sons and attend Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church in Memphis.

By Carrie Frederick Frost
May 18, 2017

Publia (Poplia) the Confessor and Deaconess of Antioch / Menologion of Basil II

I watched with interest in August 2016 when Pope Francis made good on his promise to convene a commission to study the female diaconate. I was especially attentive to this development because I am a supporter of the renewal of the order of deaconesses in my own church—the Orthodox Church. Later last year I was astonished when one of the self-governing churches of the Orthodox world, Alexandria, decided to revive the female diaconate in Africa and proceeded to consecrate five women as deaconesses this past February. These moves by the Synod of Alexandria surprised those of us in the United States working on this issue—we did not know the female diaconate was even under consideration by the African church. Rarely does anything happen this fast in the Orthodox world.

That we were unaware of support for the female diaconate in Africa is evidence of two Orthodox realities. First, our church is fragmented: we do not yet have established international mechanisms for theologians and historians, or even hierarchs, to communicate with one another. Second, the autocephalous Orthodox churches throughout the world are self-governing, which means that any one of them could decide to revive the female diaconate tomorrow and ordain a deaconess the next day.

As my Catholic sisters and brothers await the report from Pope Francis’s commission, we in the Orthodox Church are waiting to learn more about the ministry of the new deaconesses in Africa. The Synod of Alexandria has not yet published an official description of their duties, but it has informally suggested that these women will assist with missionary work, such as catechism and baptism, as well as conducting services in mission parishes that have no regular priest. We are also waiting to see if another Orthodox church will follow in Alexandria’s footsteps, and to find out what the female diaconate will look like in other parts of the world.

We know at least one thing already: it will not be a novelty. There is ample evidence of a female diaconate through the twelfth century in the Orthodox Church—a fact of great importance in a tradition that zealously values precedent. From the third century on, there are several extant texts that include or mention ordination rites for deaconesses. From these texts, we know that deaconesses were ordained at the altar during the Divine Liturgy, that they received the Eucharist with the other ordained orders and had an orarion (deacon’s stole) placed over their necks, and that their bishop laid hands on them.

There are also ample records of women who were deaconesses in the Christian East, starting with Paul’s esteemed benefactor Saint Phoebe in the middle of the first century. (Though the term Saint Paul uses to describe her is somewhat ambiguous, the Orthodox Church has long presented Phoebe as a deaconess in its prayers, hymns, and iconography, which often shows her holding a diaconal censor.) We still have detailed records of some of these women: Saint Olympias, the friend and confidant of Saint John Chrysostom; Saint Nonna, the mother of Saint Gregory the Theologian; Saint Irene of Chrysovalantou, an abbess of the ninth century. At the height of the Byzantine Empire, one could find deaconesses in many places, including Jerusalem, Constantinople, and Thessalonica.The precise historical roles and responsibilities of deaconesses are less clear. The language of a surviving eighth-century ordination rite is broad: “Bestow the grace of your Holy Spirit also upon this your servant who desires to offer herself to you and fill her with the grace of the diaconate just as you gave the grace of your diaconate to Phoebe whom you called to the work of ministry.” Deaconesses were said to serve their bishops by being available for “many things,” as noted in the third-century Christian treatise, the Didascalia apostolorum. Surviving lists of their duties include: assisting with female baptism; administrative work, such as management of church properties; processing and chanting during liturgy; and many ministries to other women, such as catechetical instruction, spiritual advising, charitable care of widows, ministry to the ill, and bearing the Eucharist to the homebound. The job description of deaconesses changed according to time and place, adapting to new needs. But then, so did the job descriptions of deacons, priests, and bishops.

‘As Catholics await the report from Francis’s commission, the Orthodox Church waits to learn about the ministry of deaconesses in Africa’

The big question about the female diaconate in the Christian East is why it diminished so rapidly in the late Byzantine era. Was it monastic influence? During this period, liturgical rites that included rubrics for deaconesses were replaced with rites from male monasteries that lacked such rubrics. Was it geopolitical forces? There was enormous pressure from the Crusades and the Ottoman Turks, and this destabilized the church, perhaps in ways that undermined the female diaconate. Was it a revival of Christian concern with Mosaic law—but only as it applied to women? During this era menstruation and childbirth were linked to impurity for the first time in the Christian East. Whatever the reasons for the decline of the order, no decree or canon law ever prohibited it.

Just as there is ample historical evidence of the female diaconate, so there are also plentiful and authoritative calls for the renewal of the female diaconate in recent Orthodox history. The Russian Church was poised to renew the female diaconate on the eve of the Bolshevik revolution. Multiple pan-Orthodox consultations have formally called for the female diaconate to be revived, including one in Rhodes in 1988 that was convened by the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople. In 2004, the Church of Greece decided to “bless” (rather than ordain) deaconesses, and has since blessed a few nuns. In the past decade or two, several Orthodox organizations advocating for deaconesses have sprung up: Saint Catherine’s Vision, Orthodox Deacons, and Saint Phoebe Center for the Deaconess (of which I am a board member). Prominent historians and theologians continue to urge the Orthodox Church to consider the revival of the female diaconate—including perhaps the most influential living Orthodox theologian, Metropolitan Kallistos Ware.

At the same time, there has been an upsurge in ordinations of male deacons, as the Orthodox Church has discovered more ways to make use of the diaconate. This follows centuries of decline. In the Christian East, the role of the deacon had withered over time till deacons were little more than liturgical assistants. This decline may have been the result of the disentanglement of church and state in many parts of the Orthodox world. When church and state overlapped, deacons often worked as administrators. As soon as the state had its own non-ecclesial administrators, deacons suddenly had less to do. Now, however, the male diaconate is again being remembered as a boon to parish life and a ministry unto itself, rather than just a procedural stage on the path to priesthood. This is why several North American Orthodox seminaries have established diaconal training programs.

Deaconesses would also be a boon to parish life. Even in twenty-first-century America, a woman can often go where men are either not as welcome or not as comfortable. Deaconesses could minister to other women in cases of miscarriage, infertility, sexual and domestic abuse, for example. An order of deaconesses would also help the Orthodox Church recognize and make use of women’s gifts. Today, Orthodox women are lawyers, artists, theologians, chaplains, doctors, real-estate agents, historians, educators, scientists, and so on. It is discouraging to see their gifts embraced and put to use in the world but not in the church. The Orthodox woman who works as a chaplain at my local jail ought to be able to bring Communion to Orthodox inmates. Imagine the inspiration of seeing her ordained at the altar so that she could do just that.

With so many calls for renewal of the female diaconate and so many needs that could be met, why would anyone oppose it?

First, some claim that there is no longer any need for a female diaconate. In the early church, these opponents say, deaconesses anointed and baptized unclothed female converts, but today this function is all but obsolete since few adults enter the Orthodox Church. This objection simply overlooks the many other duties of the diaconate.

The second claim is that, if the Orthodox Church were to ordain women to the diaconate, this would inevitably lead to the ordination of women to the priesthood, which would in turn lead to a massive decline—just as, in this view, the ordination of women has led to the decline of the Anglican Church. This claim overlooks too many important differences between the culture and theology of the Orthodox Church and those of the Anglican Church. More fundamentally, it disregards Orthodoxy’s robust understanding of the diaconate as something more than a way station to the priesthood. Nor is it clear that the Anglicans’ difficulties can all be attributed to the ordination of women. That doesn’t mean that Orthodox Christians should ignore the experience of other churches, but we must take into account the many relevant differences between our tradition and theirs.

The same critics assert that seeing deaconesses at the altar would have an unconscious effect on the faithful, leading to thoughtless support for female priests. There is no doubt that the effect of seeing women serve would indeed be powerful, but the critics underestimate the sophistication of the faithful. They forget that icons of deaconess saints, the celebration of their feast days, and the remembrance of their lives in hymns already surround the faithful, who have internalized this rich legacy. In fact, there is no movement in the Orthodox Church to ordain women to the priesthood, nor has there been anything like a sustained exploration of the matter; the theological spadework simply has not been done. There is plenty of precedent in the Orthodox Church for a female diaconate, none for a female priesthood. Nor is there any support for a female priesthood from the faithful or clergy. This means we ought to be able to discuss the female diaconate on its own merits without confusing the issue.

Finally, some critics worry that reviving the female diaconate—or even acknowledging its history—would erode the Orthodox Church’s understanding of men and women as meaningfully different. Given the many ways in which the Orthodox Church’s theology, homiletics, iconography, and hymnography support a vision of man and woman as equal but not equivalent, the ordination of deaconesses seems unlikely to compromise this vision. Not ordaining deaconesses may even undermine the Orthodox claim that men and women each have distinctive charisms. For to make this claim while ordaining only men to holy orders skews the entire church toward the masculine charisms. Ordaining deaconesses would allow the distinctive female charisms to benefit the whole church. Refusing to ordain them, lest this be misunderstood as a capitulation to secular trends, sends the wrong message, a message of fear rather than faithfulness.

What would a female diaconate look like today? It would revive the historical roles of deaconesses that are still relevant while also adapting to the church’s current needs, as is happening at this very moment in Africa. My ideal vision of the female diaconate in our own time and place would involve allegiance to a bishop, formal ordination, and commitment to diakonia—some type of ministerial service, as a chaplain, parish administrator, spiritual advisor, or pastor to women. Ideally, deaconesses would be paid for their services to the church, both to demonstrate that their work is valued and to prevent overwork. A deaconess ought to be vetted, educated, and trained by her bishop.

‘My vision of the female diaconate would involve allegiance to a bishop, formal ordination, and commitment to diakonia’

Then there are the questions of eligibility: How old do deaconesses need to be? Do they need to be married, or unmarried? Early canons stated that a deaconess must be at least sixty; canons from the fifth century lowered that age to forty. These canons are still on the books, but canon law in Orthodoxy is largely particular to time and place. Today it would make sense to make the minimum age for deaconesses the same as that for deacons: twenty-five. As for marital status, there is historical evidence of both celibate and married deaconesses. There were even cases of celibate married deaconesses, who were ordained to the diaconate when their husbands became bishops or monks. Today it would make sense to adopt the same discipline for deaconesses as for deacons: that they remain married if already married, and celibate if not.

A women’s diaconate would demonstrate that there is a place in the Orthodox Church for women to serve in roles of leadership. Seeing deaconesses offer their gifts to the church, serve at the altar, preach, and be recompensed for their work would demonstrate that women’s gifts really are as important as men’s, in practice as well as in theory. Just as importantly, it would show that the Orthodox Church is more concerned with fidelity to its own traditions than with keeping up resistance to secular trends. In short, it would demonstrate confidence, not capitulation.

Published in the June 2, 2017 issue: https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/

“The Deaconess in the Orthodox Church”
Dr. Helen Theodoropoulos
Wednesday, April 5, 2017
SS. Peter and Paul Greek Orthodox Church
1401 Wagner Rd.
Glenview, IL 60025

6 pm Presanctified Liturgy
Lenten meal and lecture immediately following
Registration is not necessary

We are grateful to be included in the SS. Peter and Paul Greek Orthodox Church 2017 Lenten Lectures. Hear St. Phoebe Center Board Member Dr. Helen Theodoropoulos speak on the deaconess of the early Church, her ministry, and how restoration of this ordained role could help build up Christ’s Church and His people.

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