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However, when the bishop of Eleutheropolis visited the monastery to assess the situation and conduct his own investigation, she revealed that she was a woman to two virgin nuns. [1] [2] The bishop, moved by her faith, decided to consecrate her as a deaconess and invited her to accompany him back to Eleutheropolis. [1] [2]
Concerning a deaconess, I, Bartholomew enjoin O Bishop, thou shalt lay thy hands upon her with all the Presbytery and the Deacons and the Deaconesses and thou shalt say: Eternal God, the Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the creator of man and woman, that didst fill with the Spirit Mary and Deborah, and Anna and Huldah, that didst not disdain ...
Ferard was a gentlewoman from a prominent Huguenot family. Her father, Daniel Ferard (1788–1839), was a solicitor. [3]Archibald Tait, then Bishop of London and later Archbishop of Canterbury, encouraged Elizabeth Ferard's religious vocation, particularly her visit to deaconess communities in Germany after the death of her invalid mother in 1858.
References are made within the earliest Christian communities to the role of women in positions of church leadership. Paul's letter to the Romans, written in the first century, commends Phoebe who is described as "deaconess of the church at Cenchreae" that she be received "in the Lord as befits the saints, and help her in whatever she may require from you, for she has been a helper of many and ...
Saint Stephen, one of the first seven deacons in the Christian Church, holding a Gospel Book in a 1601 painting by Giacomo Cavedone.. A deacon is a member of the diaconate, an office in Christian churches that is generally associated with service of some kind, but which varies among theological and denominational traditions.
Women were ordained deaconesses by the Bishop of Alabama (in 1885) and the Bishop of New York (1887), and gradually, more dioceses began to make deaconesses, but there was no clear consensus: some intended that deaconesses be in holy orders, and others did not. In churches that now ordain women, the order of deaconess has largely died out.
In 1965, James Pike, Bishop of California, recognized Phyllis Edwards as a deacon in his diocese. [6] She had been ordained a year earlier under the old canon law using the term "deaconess". This increased awareness led to the General Convention of 1970 eliminating canonical distinctions between male deacons and female deaconesses.
In 1907, bishop Cleland Kinloch Nelson addressed the second annual meeting of the diocese's council of colored churchmen, held at the Church of the Good Shepherd. He described Alexander as a "devout, godly and respected colored woman" and consecrated her as a deaconess. She became the first and only African-American deaconess.