07 May 2024

Alexandria restores Order of Deaconesses

About seven years ago the Patriarchate of Alexandria decided that it needed to revive the ancient order of deaconesses within the Orthodox Church in order to better serve the pastoral needs of the Church in Africa. There is a parody of an Anglican hymn that runs ‘Like a might tortoise moves the Church of God’. That may be so, but the Church does move slowly and surely in response to the needs it faces. And just last week Metropolitan Seraphim of Zimbabwe ordained Angelic Molen to serve as a deaconess in the Patriarchate of Alexandria and All Africa

It is good to see a Church of the Global South taking the lead in revisiting our ancient traditions and adapting them for use in the present. Of course, this move has already generated a good deal of heat among the more conservative elements of the Orthodox Church. For example, one critic dismisses Metropolitan Seraphim as ‘Yet another white man teaching the natives modern Western ways’. Whatever one might think about the re-emergence of deaconesses, this is a grossly unfair characterization. As I understand it, the initiative came not from the Greek hierarchy of the Church but from African priests concerned about an influx of women converts and the pastoral needs of widows (both aspects of the life of the Church that were traditionally within the remit of deaconesses).

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