Ok. This one I get to cheat on, as it was on kindle so I can get all the texts easily rather than having to type them out manually:
"The year 2014 marked 175 years since Thomas Arnold first proposed a permanent ‘order of deacons’ in a sermon in Rugby’s parish church in 1839, and 2015 marks 30 years since General Synod voted to ordain women as permanent deacons, but there has been little discussion of the diaconate in print since the publication of The Mission and Ministry of the Whole Church in 2007." Kindle location 79.
"six decades of the twentieth century, but this era was atypical of the period since 1550. When the revival of the diaconate began in the 1960s, most were unable or unwilling to look back beyond living memory to the Victorian church’s bold experiments in diaconal ministry, or the older tradition of ministers in deacon’s orders who flourished in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries" Kindle location 223.
"It is the argument of this book that deacons, and thought on deacons, have always existed within the Anglican tradition. However, the meaning and significance of deacons has undergone transformation many times over the course of nearly 500 years, making it well-nigh impossible to give a simple definition of what an Anglican deacon is. The same could be said of the definitions of priest and bishop in the Anglican tradition, but the roles taken by deacons have proved particularly fluid." Kindle location 235.
"According to Collins’s interpretation, deacons were the bishop’s assistants and administrators, his ‘staff’, as opposed to the presbyters, who represented the bishop in individual churches in his diocese with delegated authority. Deacons worked for the bishop, whereas presbyters represented him. In the first three centuries of the church, deacons often rose to become bishops themselves (without being ordained as presbyters along the way). Two relics of this era have survived in the western church: the practice whereby the bishop alone lays hands on a deacon in the ordination service, and the title of ‘archdeacon’" Kindle location 265
"Whatever the original meaning of the word ‘deacon’, by the fifth century (at least) the diaconate had been transformed into ‘the first step in a successful clerical career through the order of presbyters, up to the rank of bishop, just like the various career grades in the Roman civil service’." Kindle location 285
"In fact, deacon was not the lowest grade of orders, since from late antiquity until the Reformation there were five ‘minor orders’ below it. In the Roman Catholic Church, seminarians continued to be admitted to the orders of doorkeeper, reader, exorcist, acolyte and subdeacon until 1972." Kindle location 288
"All of these orders, major and minor, are mentioned in a mid-third-century letter of Pope Cornelius, quoted by Eusebius in his Church History (324). Cornelius reported that the Roman church contained fifty-two exorcists, readers and doorkeepers in addition to its priests, deacons, subdeacons and acolytes." Kindle location 292
"By the early Middle Ages, deacons tended to be defined by what they were not (priests), rather than by what they were." Kindle location 303
"From a liturgical point of view, early deacons were ministers of the sacrament of baptism and assisted the bishop or presbyters at the eucharist. Deacons were ministers of the church in the full sense, and the only functions they could not do were those specifically delegated by the bishop to the presbyters, such as presiding over the eucharist. However, deacons were ‘concelebrants’ of the eucharist in an important sense, their liturgical role being the critical one of mediating between bishop/presbyter and people. The presence of deacons at the celebration of the eucharist was originally a required element of the rite" Kindle location 304
"Whilst the meaning of the diaconate was inevitably diluted by its transformation into a ‘rank’ in the church, there were individuals in the centuries that followed who consciously chose to remain in deacon’s orders without proceeding to the priesthood. Famous examples include Alcuin, the ninth-century Northumbrian monk who became the architect of the Carolingian Renaissance; Francis of Assisi, the founder of the Franciscan Order; and Gerard Groote, the Dutch mystic and founder of the Béguinage movement. Three popes (Gregory the Great, Leo the Great and Hildebrand) were all elected whilst in deacon’s orders. William Wareham, later Archbishop of Canterbury, was a deacon when he was appointed Bishop of London in 1502, and Reginald Pole was a deacon when he was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury in 1556. The diaconate as ministry survived as an undercurrent within Christian history, and the sixteenth-century reformers took the opportunity to resurrect it." Kindle location 313
"It perteyneth to the office of a Deacon to assiste the Prieste in devine service, and speciallye when he ministreth the holye Communion, and helpe him in distribucion thereof, and to reade holye scriptures and Homelies in the congregacion, and instructe the youth in the Cathechisme, to Baptise and preache yf he be commaunded by the Bisshop. And further more, it is his office to searche for the sicke, poore, and impotente people of the parishe, and to intimate theyr estates, names, and places where thei dwel to the Curate, that by his exhortacion they maye bee relieved by the parishe or other convenient almose." Kindle location 333 Quoting the ordinal 1550
"when the English liturgy returned under Elizabeth I in 1559, ordination practice differed little from the pre-Reformation era. Although the bishops made attempts to improve standards in the reign of James I, it was not until Laudian efforts to reform the church in the 1620s and ’30s that the year-long diaconate was widely (but by no means universally) enforced." Kindle location 346
"The prescriptions of the Ordinal regarding the interval between ordination to deacon’s and priest’s orders were still widely flouted, largely because the 1662 Act of Uniformity made it impossible, for the first time, for deacons to hold benefices. This made it imperative for men who wanted to advance their clerical careers to be in priest’s orders." Kindle location 350
"The issue was finally resolved in 1985 when General Synod voted to admit women to the diaconate, although the first women deacons were not ordained until 1987. A sudden flurry of documents and teaching on the diaconate followed, but the discussion soon turned to ordaining women to the priesthood. This occurred in 1994, leaving behind a small ‘rump’ of male and female deacons." Kindle location 378
"At the time of writing, the number of distinctive deacons within the Church of England remains tiny (around one hundred), with deacons mostly confined to the dioceses of Chichester, Portsmouth and London." Kindle location 384
"it would be pre-judging the issue to assume that the diaconate is undervalued in the Church of England just because there are very few distinctive deacons. There is no prima facie reason why the traditional ‘transitional’ diaconate of one year may not be a valuable ministry in its own right. In reality, however, the vast majority of transitional deacons still serve as curates, essentially acting as priests who are unable to preside at Holy Communion." Kindle location 390
"The use of terms such as ‘distinctive deacon’ and ‘transitional deacon’ is just one example of the linguistic difficulties into which any historical study of deacons is bound to run. These are terms of very recent coinage, while the diaconate itself is very ancient indeed." Kindle location 394
"It is an irony that those who make the loudest claims in favour of the restoration of an ancient order sometimes make the heaviest use of newly coined language to refer to deacons." Kindle location 396
"In this book I have spoken of individuals choosing ‘to remain in deacon’s orders’ rather than choosing ‘to remain deacons’, since this would imply that priests and bishops are not deacons. Likewise, I write of the ‘interval’ between diaconal and priestly ordination rather than ‘the duration of the diaconate’, since the latter implies that a minister’s diaconate comes to an end when he or she is ordained priest." Kindle location 410
"The prevalent assumption that transitional deacons are mere priests-on-probation, whose diaconal ministry is more symbolic than real, is a recent one. In telling the story of the diaconate in the Church of England, it is important to avoid the glib assumption that the transitional diaconate was ‘merely’ a probationary period for priests, thereby denigrating it. Just as it would be wrong to assume that pregnancy is an insignificant event in a woman’s life because it is temporary, so it is wrong to disparage the experience of so-called ‘transitional deacons’ just because their time in deacon’s orders ends in priestly ordination and the apparent sublimation of diaconal into priestly ministry." Kindle location 414
"Advocates of a distinctive diaconate must not be tempted to create the impression that transitional deacons and priests are not ‘real’ deacons, since this attitude subverts the threefold order of ministry itself." Kindle location 419
"Reliance on the work of Tanner and Pinnock by other authors has meant that historical knowledge of the diaconate in the Church of England has not advanced since the early 1990s." Kindle location 461
"Tanner is hardly to be blamed for this, since
Deacons in the Ministry of the Church was not intended primarily as a
work of historical scholarship. However, it is regrettable that it has
subsequently been treated as such, without any further effort at
investigation." Kindle location 464
"The most useful secondary sources for a
history of the diaconate are studies of ordination practices, such as
Kenneth Fincham’s study of the Jacobean bishops and William Marshall’s
study of the dioceses of Hereford and Oxford between 1660 and 1760." Kindle location 514
"However, it is in the nature of church history
(and indeed religious history in general) that ideas and practices pass
in and out of active life, their continuity enabled by the process we
call ‘tradition’, which allows ideas and practices to be passed on even
when a particular era or generation has lost touch with their original
meaning. So, for instance, the parish communion that takes place in most
Anglican churches on a Sunday in the twenty-first century did not exist
in the eighteenth century in a form that most contemporary worshippers
would recognise. But its elements, and the more ancient traditions upon
which it draws, have existed in every age since the Apostles." Kindle location 622
"Canon Law of the mediaeval English church did
not require men to be ordained priest before they were appointed to a
benefice, and it was commonplace for individuals to be admitted to the
order of acolyte or subdeacon at a young age in order to secure
preferment before they proceeded to the major orders of deacon and
priest." Kindle location 709
"The significance of diaconal ordination in the
late Middle Ages was that it marked admission to major orders, and
therefore a commitment to lifelong celibacy. It was the ‘point of no
return’ that indicated that a man was definitively choosing a career in
the church. A man could be in minor orders, as an acolyte or subdeacon,
and still marry and pursue a secular profession." Kindle location 714
"It was an abiding theme of the European
Reformation that the mediaeval church had allowed once significant
institutions to become stagnant and corrupt. Bishops and priests, once
true pastors, had become parasites who lived off the incomes of their
dioceses and benefices without pastoral concern for the people. Although
the reformers differed on the question of when the church had become
corrupted, and when the popes had become Antichrist, they were at one in
their view that the Reformation was not about innovation but about the
revival of the purity of the primitive church." Kindle location 721
"Bradshaw has argued that Cranmer viewed the
diaconate and the priesthood not as two consecutive orders, ‘but as two
completely separate orders of ministry’. Whereas in the ordination of
priests, the laying on of hands was intended to confer the Holy Spirit
on the candidates, in the ordination of deacons, ‘candidates are
expected to have received the Holy Spirit before hands are laid on
them’. Cranmer thus distinguished between two different sources of power
in ordination: ‘The power or authority given to deacons at the
imposition of hands was the permission of the Church to exercise certain
functions for which they were fitted. This power originated in the
Church, which by divine providence working through the Apostles had
created the office of deacons’." Kindle location 809
"The implication of Bradshaw’s interpretation
is that whereas priests receive an authority from Christ, deacons
receive an authority from the church. Thus, where priests are
constitutive of the church, deacons are ‘of the church’ in such a way
that a ministry of care and relief rather than leadership is imposed on
them." Kindle location 815
"them we beseche thee, O Lorde, to bee modest,
humble, and constant in their ministracion, to have a ready wyl to
observe al spiritual discipline, that they havinge alwayes the
testimonie of a good conscience, and continuing ever stable and strong
in thy sonne Christ, may so wel use themselves in thys inferior offyce,
that they may be found worthi to be called unto the higher ministeries
in thy Church." Kindle location 869
"Not for the last time, the Church of England established a diaconate without sufficient theological consideration beforehand." Kindle location 876
"Elizabeth I’s first Archbishop of Canterbury,
Matthew Parker, showed scant respect for the Ordinal when he permitted
John Scory, the Bishop of Hereford, to ordain ten men deacon and priest
on the same day in 1559.31 However, the church was desperate for new
clergy, since many remained loyal to the papacy and were deprived of
their benefices." Kindle location 972
"A deacon was preferable to a lay reader,
because he could baptise, marry and assist with the distribution of Holy
Communion. However, there is some evidence that congregations of remote
chapels-of-ease served by deacons were unhappy that they could only
receive the sacrament at infrequent intervals." Kindle location 993
"Lancelot Andrewes elaborated the liturgical
role of the deacon still further, suggesting that he should go in and
out of the ‘sacrarium’ (chancel) to serve the priest during the service,
recalling the practice of the deacon going in and out of the holy doors
in the iconostasis in the Orthodox Divine Liturgy.37 Andrewes’s
emphasis on the deacon’s intermediate role between the deacon and the
laity, going into but not remaining within the sanctuary, recalled the
practice of the early church but also suggested that Andrewes may have
expected this liturgical role to have been fulfilled by a deacon rather
than a priest performing the deacon’s role. Within the context of
Andrewes’s project to enhance the solemnity of the liturgy, the deacon
played a crucial role by demarcating the sanctuary space as sacred and
the role of the priest as an especially exalted one." Kindle location 1025
"Puritans were not necessarily opposed to
deacons per se, or to the idea of diaconal ministry. In 1570, the civic
authorities in Norwich appointed two men identified as ‘deacons’ in each
ward to have ‘oversight of the poore’, with duties that included
keeping records of the poor, vagrants, struggling families and newcomers
to the city, and ensuring that everyone who could work was put to work.
Clearly, these men were not ordained ministers but deacons after the
Calvinist model.38 Puritans opposed the idea that the ministerial office
could be divided between presbyters and deacons, so that deacons could
be delegated to perform some of the functions of presbyters." Kindle location 1035
"The Puritans’ assault on the diaconate was, in fact, part of their wider attack on the threefold order of ministry." Kindle location 1056
"In his Laws, Hooker argued that bishops,
priests and deacons represented three degrees of power in the church but
only two categories of ministry: priest-bishops and deacons.43 In
Hooker’s view, the fundamental difference between deacons and presbyters
was that, while the former were elected by Christ before his ascension,
the deacons were appointed by the Apostles after the ascension. The
primary purpose of both presbyters and deacons was to preach the Gospel,
and Hooker did not devote much consideration to deacons’ work in
relation to the poor." Kindle location 1066
"Most clergy passionately supported the idea of
a Protestant monarchy, but a significant proportion of them found that
they could not, in conscience, swear the Oath of Allegiance to William
and Mary while James II was still living. These men, who were led by the
deposed Archbishop of Canterbury, William Sancroft, became known as the
Non-Jurors. Over time, they would develop their own distinctive
interpretation of the high church tradition." Kindle location 1468
"Men who remained deacons for a lengthy period
of time, or even for life, were most likely to be found at the lower
social end of the clergy. Furthermore, deacons, unlike priests, were
permitted to continue in a secular profession, and the lawyers or
doctors whom Eachard claimed sought ordination ‘for want of employment’
may well have hoped to carry on their practice in holy orders.
Ordination to the diaconate, in other words, provided additional social
status (if not income) while they continued in their chosen profession." Kindle location 1527
"Queen Anne’s Bounty finally recognised the
contribution of the ‘working clergy’, as opposed to the wealthy
beneficed absentees, and marked the beginning of a progressive
improvement in clerical standards that continued throughout the
eighteenth century. By the middle of the century, the educational
standards expected of ordinands were higher and more uniform, and it was
unusual for clergy to be ordained priest after less than a year in
deacon’s orders. The prescriptions of the Ordinal were followed more
consistently, and a small number of lifelong and long-term deacons
flourished, primarily as schoolmasters, but also as college fellows,
perpetual curates, preachers and chaplains." Kindle location 1541
"It was amongst the Non-Jurors that an
appreciation of the liturgical and pastoral importance of deacons was
rediscovered in the first half of the eighteenth century. This was
largely because the Non-Jurors, who prided themselves on their patristic
scholarship, were keen to revive early forms of the liturgy. Anxious to
defend themselves against the accusations of popery that their
pronounced high churchmanship and support for the Jacobite cause
attracted, the Non-Jurors turned to the Greek Fathers to assure their
critics that their liturgical innovations were derived, not from
mimicking Rome, but from the practice of the early church." Kindle location 1646
"His description of the office of a deacon,
whilst clearly dependent on the Ordinal, added several new elements: 20.
Deacon, T., A Book of Common Prayer or Clementine Liturgy (London,
1734), pp. 74-101. 21. Ibid. p. 232. It appertaineth to the office of a
Deacon, to be subservient to the Bishop or Priest in Divine Service,
and especially in the Service of the Altar; to take care of the Holy
Table, and of all the ornaments and utensils belonging thereto; to read
Holy Scriptures and Homilies in the Church, and to instruct the
Catechumens and the youth; to distribute the Eucharist, and to baptize
in cases of necessity, where no Priest is to be had; to bid prayers in
the Congregation, and to preach with the Bishop’s License; to correct
and rebuke men who behave themselves irregularly at church; to attend
upon the Bishop, and to inform him or the Priest of the misdemeanours of
the People; to search for the orphans, and the sick and poor people of
the parish, to intimate their estates, names, and places where they
dwell, and to distribute to them such charities as shall be delivered to
him by the Bishop or Priest towards their relief and assistance.22 22.
Ibid. p. 237." Kindle location 1659
"Within the 201 clergy in the sample, there are
a small number of individuals who did not proceed to incumbencies, and
therefore may have remained in deacon’s orders. I have identified 17 of
these, who make up 8.5 per cent of the total. On the assumption that
Cambridge-educated clergy with surnames beginning with the first letter
of the alphabet are a reasonably representative sample of men ordained
during the period, it seems likely that the proportion of the clergy who
remained deacons for life in the eighteenth century was a little under
10 per cent. If this figure is accurate, it would indicate that lifelong
deacons were a much more significant group in the Church of England
than has previously been recognised." Kindle location 1713
"It was only in the early nineteenth century
that deacons came under the same general exclusion from politics and
secular employment as priests." Kindle location 1801
"The cross-section of eighteenth-century
lifelong deacons examined here has revealed deacon-fellows,
deacon-schoolmasters, deacon-preachers, deacon-chaplains and
deacon-administrators. However, lifelong deacons were the exception
rather than the norm in the eighteenth-century church, and a far more
significant group of clergy were long-term deacons, men who remained
deacons for considerably more than the 1 year laid down by the Ordinal.
The average length of time that the clergy in the sample remained
deacons was 704 days, which equates to a little under 2 years. This was
longer than was required by the Ordinal or Canon 34, which stipulated a
minimum ordination age of 23 for deacons and 24 for priests. Of the 155
clergy in the sample whose diaconal and priestly ordinations are
recorded, 37 per cent waited for less than a year to be ordained priest,
and only 13 were ordained priest within less than a month." Kindle location 1866
"One important piece of information missing
from Venn’s Alumni Cantabrigienses is the ages of the Cambridge alumni
at the time of their ordinations to the diaconate. Tanner suggested that
one reason for an interval of more than 1 year between a man’s
ordination to the diaconate and priesthood could be his relatively young
age. This may well be true, but it hardly explains the 14 per cent who
remained deacons for 3 years or more." Kindle location 1875
"this was the general trend, with the interval
in the Georgian era averaging out at a year and nine months, as opposed
to a year and five months between 1660 and 1709. It seems unlikely that
many clergy deliberately chose to remain in the diaconate for a lengthy
period of time, since this limited their career prospects. One possible
reason for the gradually lengthening interval was an increase in the
number of clergy relative to the number of incumbencies available, at a
time when the creation of new parishes was a very infrequent event
indeed, even in response to a growing population (new parishes could be
created only by Act of Parliament). Another possible reason was the
application of stricter standards of examination of candidates for
ordination by the bishops, who were concerned about the reputation of
the clergy, as well as the expansion of the number of fellowships
available at Oxford and Cambridge and positions as schoolmasters. These
last two factors allowed more men to gain a livelihood whilst remaining
deacons." Kindle location 1910
"John Wesley was a deacon for almost three
years, between 25 September 1725 and his priestly ordination on 22
September 1728. In Wesley’s case, the gap between his diaconal and
priestly ordinations can be explained by his status as a college fellow." Kindle location 1958
"To the end of his days, Wesley insisted that
he was not a separatist from the Church of England, and was acting
within the Anglican tradition."Kindle location 1998
"Wesley’s most dramatic departure from historic
Anglican norms was his personal ordination of ministers for mission in
North America, without the involvement of a bishop. Wesley’s views on
orders had been changing since the 1740s. In 1738, he declared his
belief that bishops, deacons and priests were ‘of divine appointment’,
but in 1746, his reading convinced him that although the orders of
bishop, priest and deacon were described in scripture, they were not
binding on all churches. In 1747, the Methodist Conference concluded
that the three orders of ministry were described in the New Testament,
and had existed in the early church, but denied that ‘God designed the
same plan should obtain in all Churches throughout the world’." Kindle location 1999
"Wesley was not necessarily acting as far
outside of the Anglican tradition as might first appear when, as a mere
presbyter, he ordained deacons contrary to the Church of England’s Canon
Law and ancient practice. Richard Hooker argued that the difference
between a priest and a bishop was a difference of authority rather than
sacramental character; it was only deacons who differed in character
from priest-bishops, since the power to absolve and consecrate was
shared equally by priests and bishops, but not by deacons.49 Wesley had,
in effect, been forced into assuming the position of ‘scriptural
bishop’ over the Methodist connexion by the Church of England’s
intransigence in meeting their pastoral needs. He was adamant that the
ministers ordained by him could serve only outside England, since within
England an episcopal government of the church prevailed. Thus, for
Wesley in the 1780s, episcopacy was primarily a matter of authority
rather than apostolic succession or sacramental character." Kindle location 2030
"There is no evidence that any of the early
Methodist ministers remained deacons only, and after Wesley’s death,
ordination of ministers by the imposition of hands fell into abeyance in
the Methodist connexion, except for overseas ministry. Reception into
full connexion took the place of ordination until 1836, although
Wesley’s adaptation of the Ordinal retained official authority within
Methodism. In 1846, a new rite of ordination merged elements of the
rites for the ordination of deacons, elders and superintendents into a
single text, effectively ending any vestiges of a threefold order of
ministry in Methodism. It was not until 1993 that the Methodist
Conference recognised deacons as an order of ministry (rather than a
ministry of the laity) and revived the Methodist Diaconal Order." Kindle location 2044
"In 1817, John Brewster composed a series of
reflections for newly ordained deacons that gives a sense of how the
diaconate was regarded in the pre-Victorian church. Brewster noted that
‘The office of a Deacon occupies but a small portion of the life of a
Minister of the Gospel in the Established Church’.52 Comparing the
deacons of the New Testament to the deacons of the Regency era, he
acknowledged that ‘the alteration of times has indeed made a
considerable change in the profession of a Deacon; but the Church very
wisely considers his situation as a state of probation’." Kindle location 2053
"Brewster made no attempt to pretend that the
deacon was still called upon to minister to the poor and sick: ‘Though I
am not now called upon, as a Deacon to search for the sick, the poor
and the impotent, and to intimate their cases to the superior minister,
or officiating curate; yet am I solemnly required to do this, and much
more, for myself’.54 Brewster argued that the conferral of the diaconate
by the imposition of hands by the bishop did not constitute a conferral
of grace, but was rather ‘only a symbol of the power which confers the
office, and of those ordinary graces, which are to be obtained by
prayer’.55 This suggests that Brewster regarded the diaconate primarily
as an office, rather than a sacred character. The diaconate was ‘the
first opening of an ecclesiastical life’, which ‘brought with it a
succession of holy duties’." Kindle location 2064
"At the beginning of the nineteenth century,
the diaconate was at one of its lowest ebbs; men who remained
permanently in deacon’s orders had largely disappeared, and a prevailing
low theology of holy orders regarded the diaconate as nothing more than
a ‘charge of probation’. But society was changing, and within a few
years, the idea of reviving the original purpose of deacons would
re-emerge with a vengeance." Kindle location 2073
"The conversion of John Henry Newman to Roman
Catholicism in 1845 convinced many that the Oxford Movement was a Trojan
horse for Romanism in the Church of England, while the Tractarians
themselves made strenuous efforts to identify themselves with the
pre-Reformation English church as ‘Anglo-Catholics’ rather than Roman
Catholics." Kindle location 2098
"Anglo-Catholics and evangelicals were united,
however, in the belief that greater professionalism was needed amongst
the clergy. Part of the process of ‘professionalisation’ was the
Pluralities Act, which made it illegal ‘for any spiritual person,
beneficed or performing ecclesiastical duty’ to engage in trade or
commerce.2 This represented a formalisation of Canon 76 of 1604, which
forbade a clergyman ‘to use himself . . . as a layman’.3 ‘Any spiritual
person’ included deacons, and the Pluralities Act thus removed the
possibility of part-time clergy." Kindle location 2102
"The mid-nineteenth-century call for the
renewal of the diaconate as an active order of ministry emerged from
concerns about the speed of population growth in the cities and the
inadequacy of the parish system as an effective model of ministry and
pastoral care. The Poor Law system, which saw the poor committed to
workhouses paid for by parish rates, was widely regarded as inhumane,
and the church was accused of conniving at the mistreatment of the poor." Kindle location 2115
"They not only wanted more bishops, priests,
and cathedral institutions, but collegiate institutions, hospitals,
houses of mercy, female penitentiaries, sisters of charity, and
monasteries. . . . For the Tory reviewers the Church of England,
divinely ordained and apostolic, had a place in it for a diaconate
which, under a bishop’s superintendence, could manage schools and
almshouses and guarantee an effective use of the offertory.5 5. Roberts,
D., ‘The Social Conscience of Tory Periodicals’, Victorian Periodicals
Newsletter 10 (1977), pp. 154-69, at p. 159." Kindle location 2130
"In May 1841, Arnold published a pamphlet
entitled Order of Deacons, in which he suggested that the church should
repeal the canons that prevented deacons from being in secular
employment. For Arnold, the main benefit of reviving the diaconate would
be to introduce an intermediate order between clergy and laity that
would broaden people’s conception of what the church meant: 6. Vaughan
(1987), p. 28. A link would be formed between the clergy and the
laity, by the existence of an order partaking of the character of both.
The confusion of confining the term Church to the clergy would be
greatly dispelled: inasmuch, as there would be not only members but even
ministers of the Church who did not belong to the clergy considered as a
profession." Kindle location 2141
"Deacons were to be subordinate to local
incumbents, and until there was one priest for every thousand people,
the church should expect priests to ‘raise their cry and call for
Deacons to be placed under them, while they may give themselves
“continually to Prayer and to the Ministry of the Word”’. Mackenzie’s
deacons were, in other words, to be parish deacons and pastoral
assistants, although he also suggested that licensed schoolmasters could
also be deacons." Kindle location 2221
"Mackenzie gave a number of reasons to justify
his proposal. He insisted that ‘No change of ordinance, no Act of
Parliament, no innovation of any kind would be needed’ in order to bring
his scheme about.14 This was because his deacons would be full-time
ministers, in contrast to Arnold’s suggestion that working men should
serve as deacons. Mackenzie pointed out, quite correctly, that Arnold’s
proposal would require the repeal of the Pluralities Act, and Parliament
was unlikely to be willing to devote its time to such a matter. Most
importantly, however, the existence of a renewed order of deacons would
‘establish a sympathy between the church and the lower section of the
middle class’." Kindle location 2225
"Hale did not have sufficient authority, as an
archdeacon, to revive the orders of deacon and subdeacon himself, but he
enjoyed considerable influence. He was neither a reformer nor a
supporter of the Oxford Movement, but an old-fashioned high churchman
whose priority was the suppression of innovation. The attraction of the
diaconate to such a man was the fact that it was a dormant ancient
institution rather than a new one. The latitudinarian Arnold, the
Anglo-Catholic Chepmell and the old-fashioned high churchman Hale were
all in favour of deacons: indeed, the only voice in the Church of
England not speaking out for revival was that of the evangelicals." Kindle location 2395
"objections were threefold. In the first place,
there were grave doubts about the possibility of being able to pay the
new deacons; secondly, there was a concern that the reputation of the
clergy could be endangered by admitting men without a university
education to holy orders; and thirdly, there was concern that
‘permanent’ deacons would look on their fellow ‘transitional’ deacons
with jealousy and question why they were unable to proceed to the
priesthood." Kindle location 2414
[Sound like nothing has changed!]
"The Convocation of Canterbury’s misgivings
about full-time deacons are understandable, given the difficulties of
paying existing clergy. Allowing men in secular employment to be deacons
would have required the repeal of the 1838 Pluralities Act, and
Convocation was reluctant to involve itself in a lengthy tussle with
Parliament." Kindle location 2448
"In 1864, the issue of deacons came up once
more at the Convocation of Canterbury, coupled with a request for the
more general licensing of readers.57 Accordingly, on Ascension Day,
1866, the bishops reached an agreement that Readers could be licensed in
all dioceses to lead prayers and preach in the absence of a
clergyman,58 although scripture readers had already been operating in
some areas for decades. The 1866 decision removed the ambiguity of
Readers’ canonical status and established them as a para-clerical ‘order
of ministry’." Kindle location 2508
"Before the late nineteenth century, deacons
were virtually invisible in the liturgy. Deacons wore exactly the same
choir dress as priests: a surplice and black preaching scarf." Kindle location 2668
"The Victorian Church of England’s inactivity
against the odds in response to the ongoing demand for distinctive
deacons from both the clergy and laity might be seen as one of the great
missed opportunities of Anglican history, like the church’s failure to
accommodate the Methodist movement or William Booth’s Salvation Army.
The nineteenth-century Anglican literature on the diaconate is very
extensive, speculative and repetitive; many authors do not seem to have
been aware that they were not the first person to have the brilliant
idea of reviving deacons." Kindle location 2710
"The indirect effect of Vatican II on the
Church of England, combined with a growing recognition that the ministry
of women should develop beyond lay roles, led some to suggest that the
diaconate could be a catch-all ministry used to subsume existing lay
ministries – deaconesses, lay workers, Church Army officers and so on." Kindle location 2732
"less than ten years after the momentous
decision to admit women to deacon’s orders, the distinctive diaconate
was brought to the brink of extinction as the majority of women deacons
sought ordination as priests." Kindle location 2735
"The Lambeth Conference of 1958 commissioned a
report, The Order of Deacon, to explore whether the experience of the
Episcopal Church in the United States of America (ECUSA), which had a
thriving distinctive diaconate, could and should be applied to the
Anglican Communion as a whole. As a result, the Conference passed
Resolution 88, ‘The Office of Deacon’, which recommended that ‘Each
Province of the Anglican Communion shall consider whether the office of
deacon shall be restored to its primitive place as a distinctive order
in the Church, instead of being regarded as a probationary period for
the priesthood’." Kindle location 2836
[Interesting, though other books refer to the
movement to reassess the diaconate, they don't mention that it was how
the deacons were strengthening in the US that was the root cause of this reassesment.]
"When non-stipendiary ministers finally became a
part of the life of the Church of England, following the Welsby Report
in 1968, they would all go on to be priests. The idea of voluntary
clergy had by this time been debated on and off for 130 years, making
the twenty-first century Church of England’s debate concerning the
consecration of women to the episcopate seem rushed by comparison." Kindle location 2856
"When asked about the revival of the diaconate
in 1957, Pope Pius XII declared that ‘the time was not yet ripe’ for
such a move, but he instructed theologians to examine the issue more
closely.14 Before the opening session of the Second Vatican Council in
1962, no less than ninety proposals were received by the Vatican, many
of them signed by bishops, for the restoration of the diaconate. The
Council voted to revive the order as a lifelong ministry in September
1964, opening it to married men over the age of thirty-five.15 Pope Paul
VI implemented the decision of the Council by the decree Sacrum
Diaconatus Ordinem in 1967." Kindle location 2870
"In 1974, a report prepared for General Synod
by the Advisory Committee for the Church’s Ministry (ACCM) entitled
Deacons and the Church argued that the diaconate should be abolished
altogether, largely on the grounds that ‘we have . . . others who,
between them, can do anything in worship that a deacon can’.18 The
report argued in favour of direct ordination to the priesthood. The
report’s conclusions were rejected by General Synod in 1977, which opted
to keep the diaconate and took note of a different report that set out
three options for the future of the diaconate: its continuation as a
short intermediate stage on the way to priesthood, its discontinuation
in the Church of England or its expansion to include lay workers,
deaconesses and others.19 This latter option was not really the same as
subsequent proposals to introduce a ‘permanent’ diaconate, since it was
primarily a proposal to give sacramental recognition to existing
ministries by diaconal ordination, a ‘re-labelling’ of ministries." Kindle location 2900
"For John N. Collins, the Church of England’s
drift towards the abolition of the diaconate was an inevitable
consequence of the flawed definition of diakonia exclusively in terms of
service.21 As a ‘closely allied tradition’ to Roman Catholicism, which
had nevertheless come under significant influence from the German
Evangelical Lutheran deacon movement through Elizabeth Ferard,
Anglicanism was burdened with the same misconceptions as those
traditions." Kindle location 2915
"Deacons are ordained as a focus of diaconal
ministry, which is the call of God to serve the Church in Christ’s name.
Perhaps the most essential vision, therefore, is to see the deacon as a
community servant. Diaconal ministry should not be so tied conceptually
to the parochial context as is true generally of the
presbyterate. . . . The deacon as community servant needs to be
operating firmly within the context of the witness of the whole church,
and one Christian community in particular." Kindle location 3012
"In the view of Leslie Francis and Mandy
Robbins, by adopting the Portsmouth Report, ‘The church had created a
permanent diaconate with very little thought as to how it would
integrate it into the church’.43 The theological thought behind the
revival of the diaconate was retrospective at best, and superficial at
worst. The diaconate was primarily a vehicle for meeting the demand for
women to be admitted to ministry without outraging conservative opinion,
and women’s diaconal ministry was defined negatively: women deacons
were clerks in holy orders who were deacons because they could not be
priests.44 Much of the official literature on the diaconate produced up
to 1994 has the feel of having been hastily assembled, and many writers
were much more interested in the future development of the ministry of
women than they were in the diaconate for its own sake." Kindle location 3072
"Little attention was being paid, however, to
‘those men and women who are actually called to be deacons’. The issue
of deacons needed to be ‘disentangled’ from the different issue of the
ordination of women to which it had become attached." Kindle location 3091
"White and Williams suggested two images useful
for forming a theological understanding of the diaconate: the deacon as
servant and the deacon as bridge." Kindle location 3100
"The renewal of the diaconate is not an attempt
to muscle in on the proper ministry of the laity and take it over. The
deacon’s role is not so much to do the serving as to work alongside
God’s people and encourage and facilitate their implementing ‘the
mandate from Jesus Christ’ to be servants." Kindle location 3109 Quoting from Vatican II
"The apostolic college is essentially
incomplete without the presence of deacons whose particular role it is
to signify that the Kingdom is not of this world. It is open to serious
question whether such a role is adequately fulfilled by deacons whose
main ambition is to become priests or by deacons who are also priests
and in some cases bishops as well." Kindle location 3131
"Hannaford concluded that ‘the contemporary
diaconate is ill-suited to its task as a sacramental focus of the
diaconal ministry of Christ in Church and Kingdom’, and noted that ‘real
recognition must be given to its distinctive and unambiguous place in
the apostolic college’." Kindle location 3136
"What bishops may have envisaged as a minority
ministry rapidly became a major section of the clergy, and by November
1990 there were 999 women deacons in the Church of England, of whom 511
were stipendiary and 256 were non-stipendiary parish deacons. Only 56
were non-stipendiary deacons in secular employment," Kindle location 3201
[There are stipendary deacons in the UK??]
"The authors of Deacons Now found no evidence
that the ordination of women as deacons was having a negative impact on
Licensed Lay Ministry, which chimed with the experience of ECUSA, where a
thriving diaconate exists alongside licensed lay readers.66 The report
found instead that the number of women offering themselves for
non-ordained ministry in the church had increased, and suggested that
this might have been a consequence of laywomen being inspired to serve
by seeing other women in more prominent and public ministry roles." Kindle location 3210
"‘Suggestions for Extended Communion’ submitted
by the Diocese of Southwell were attached as an appendix to the
report.71 The distribution of consecrated elements outside of the
celebration of the eucharist was to be permitted only by the bishop, for
periods of a year or less. Licences were likely to be granted to: 71.
Ibid. pp. 89-91. 1. Churches in a team ministry wanting to celebrate a
central eucharist 2. Parish churches whose minister-in-charge was a
deacon, participating by extension in the eucharist of a neighbouring
church 3. Churches where a second congregation met later on the same day
as a eucharist celebrated earlier. There was to be no distribution in
one kind at these services of ‘Extended Communion’, which were not to
be called ‘Holy Communion’, so as not to confuse congregations. They
were not to take place unless preceded by a service of the word, and had
to always be linked to a specific eucharist taking place on the same
day, preferably explicitly in the notice advertising the service. In
this respect, the Church of England laid down stricter guidelines than
the Roman Catholic Church, which in the absence of a priest permits
deacons to lead eucharistic services at any time, using consecrated
wafers. Services of Holy Communion led by deacons are an ancient feature
of the Eastern Orthodox tradition, in the form of the ‘Liturgy of the
Pre-sanctified Gifts’ which regularly replaces weekday celebrations of
the Divine Liturgy during the Great Lent." Kindle location 3236
"Treasure highlighted the level of insecurity
experienced by deacons, who felt that their ‘jobs were in the balance’
each time there was a new incumbent.77 This was because most deacons
were licensed as curates, and therefore the nature of their ministry
(and even their ability to have a ministry at all) depended on the
incumbent’s good grace." Kindle location 3276
"Through the addition of a deacon, ‘the
President is freed from a confusing multiplicity of roles and
functions’. The deacon will be available to the congregation as they
arrive, will learn their needs and will know their concerns well enough
to incorporate them in the intercessions; he or she will prepare the
people for worship, supervise the preparation of the sacred vessels and
give out notices. The deacon will bring in the book of the Gospels and
will be responsible for ‘enabling touches’ in the course of the service,
such as announcing pages and hymns, inviting the people to confess
their sins and helping them to welcome the children. Burnham noted that
liturgical directions for the role of the deacon are more fully
developed in the Roman Catholic Church, and in the Prayer Books of
Anglican churches in the USA, Canada and South Africa than they are in
England, and these might provide sources for further development of the
deacon’s liturgical involvement." Kindle location 3376
"The churches in the Anglican Communion where
the distinctive diaconate has flourished are generally those in which it
was established at an early date, usually in the mid-nineteenth
century. The Episcopal Church in the United States of America and the
Anglican churches in Jamaica and Brazil are cases in point." Kindle location 3430
"Sykes anticipated future controversy by
warning that ‘the issue of whether or not there is a distinctive work
for life-long deacons . . . ought not to become a moment for raising
general anxieties about the devaluing of lay vocation or the so-called
clericalization of lay people’. He endorsed Noble’s vision of deacons as
‘the go-between or agent of the church, ministering in a pro-active,
practical way as educator/envisioner/facilitator with an instrumental
role in building missionary congregations’, and set out a blueprint for
the nature of the ministry of future deacons: Many new-style deacons
would pursue a normal career with the object of applying their
theological training and insight to their main occupation. In this way
they will build the experience that will enable them to teach, lead,
encourage and support the members of their home church and enable them
in turn to go out into the world and live their faith as confident,
visible Christians. Thus in the gathered churches these new style
deacons would have the real capability to equip the members to be
missionary congregations. Barry Rogerson, Bishop of Bristol, insisted
that ‘a renewed diaconate would fit into developing patterns of
collaborative ministry’" Kindle location 3508
"Like previous reports on the diaconate, For
Such a Time as This strove to balance innovation with tradition,
insisting that there existed ‘sufficient theological resources in the
current ordinal to support the thrust of the present report’. The
diaconate was ‘a fundamental expression of apostolic ministry’, and the
‘go-between character’ of deacons allowed interface between the world
and the church but also between the laity, clergy and bishops: The
calling of deacons is to focus, to encourage and to help coordinate the
diakonia (the divine commission of the whole church within the mission
of God in the world and to do this in three ways: through the liturgy,
through pastoral outreach and through catechetical work. . . . Deacons
can help the church to connect." Kindle location 3547
"As far as the deacon’s involvement in the
liturgy was concerned, the report suggested that the deacon could
[minister] at the celebration of the Eucharist in ways that are
appropriate to the life of the community and without excluding the
ministry of lay people: reading the Gospel, leading the prayers of
penitence, the intercessions and the acclamations of the people,
inviting the exchange of the peace, serving at the altar, administering
Holy Communion, and sending out the people with the liturgical
dismissal.21 21. Ibid. p. 55. The deacon could also lead the daily
offices, baptise with the parish priest’s permission and order the
church for liturgical worship, especially the altar and font, giving
guidance to the sacristan or verger. The deacon might also administer
house and hospital communions and officiate at services of the word with
Holy Communion (‘extended communion’), and he or she might assist or
officiate (except in the first year after ordination) at marriages,
funeral services and burials, as well as ministering to the sick and
dying with prayers.22 22. Ibid. p. 56. The deacon’s catechetical
ministry might include coordinating and monitoring faith development
courses, preparing adult candidates for baptism, preaching, conducting
confirmation preparation and preparing couples for marriage. Deacons
might also train lay people for catechesis, support lay involvement in
children’s activities, offer specialist counselling or train volunteers
to befriend families in need. The deacon should also represent the
church’s priorities on behalf of the bishop in areas of community
action." Kindle location 3566
In the debate that followed the publication of
For Such a Time as This in 2001, the accusation that a revived
diaconate risked clericalising the laity came to the fore. The Central
Readers’ Council, concerned that distinctive deacons would detract from
longstanding patterns of lay ministry, opposed the adoption of the
report as a blueprint for the future encouragement of distinctive
deacons. This was on the grounds that the best way to energise lay
ministry in the church was for lay people to continue to minister as
laity, rather than to encourage individuals engaged in lay ministry to
enter holy orders. The motion to endorse the report foundered in the
House of Laity, therefore, and in the end General Synod ‘took note of’
the report’s recommendations, meaning that it had no official status,
but might nevertheless be drawn upon by individual dioceses. For Such a
Time as This was ‘referred back for further work, seeking to relate
ordained and lay forms of ministry to each other’, and the following
motion was passed: That this Synod, disappointed that the
report . . . has not taken the opportunity to examine thoroughly the
offices of Reader, Pastoral Assistant and Church Army Officer, request
that the report is referred to the Ministry Division for further
consideration.25 25. MMWC, p. xi." Kindle location 3591
"The Chichester Report noted that priests could
still act as deacons, ‘but there is something about the flexibility of a
distinctive and permanent diaconate, accountable directly to the bishop
but working collaboratively with the presbyter in a local situation,
which has a different feel’.27 The report abandoned the idea of
‘defining’ diaconal ministry and instead recommended a more intuitive
discernment of whether a candidate for ministry was a ‘deacon-shaped’
rather than a ‘priest-shaped’ person,28 providing seven discernment
criteria for diaconal candidates. 27. Deacons in the Church: Report of a
Diocesan Working Party (Diocese of Chichester, 2003), p. 6." Kindle location 3611
[Makes sense!]
"According to the report, ‘The service of a
deacon, conceived as envoy and spokesperson entrusted with important
tidings, as an ambassador and mediator with authority and as a person
who performs tasks on behalf of another, is the Church’s service
sacramentalised’." Kindle location 3623
"Chichester envisaged the appointment of
stipendiary deacons, instead of curates in some cases, and recognised
that parishes would need to be educated about the difference between a
curate and a deacon. Indeed, the report goes so far as to suggest that
non-stipendiary deacons ‘should not be considered the norm’." Kindle location 3628
"The authors of For Such a Time as This noted
that the Bishop Otter Centre for Theology and Ministry within University
College, Chichester was the only Anglican institution in Britain
offering formation for distinctive deacons, although it was not
accredited to do so by the House of Bishops. The only other way to
receive formation specific to the diaconate was to attend an ecumenical
course designed to train Methodist deacons at Queen’s College,
Birmingham." Kindle location 3644
"On the other hand, there have been positive
reactions from the laity to the idea of a revived distinctive diaconate.
The lay theologian Margaret Selby has argued that the revival of the
diaconate is a welcome reflection of the ‘mutuality’ of lay and clerical
ministry in the church: Traditionally, the deacon is the one who
links the people to the priest at the altar, who symbolizes the bringing
of the world by the congregation to lay it before God and his
transforming love. Many of the traditional tasks of the deacon are now
shared by the laity, but it is the servant task of the whole Church,
symbolized by the deacon, to carry in the Gospel and to read it – to be
the bearer of the Good News to the people of God, to intercede for the
world as its servant, to call the people to peace with one another, to
send them out into the world as its servants. This allows the laity to
see themselves mirrored not only in the priestly ministry, but also in
that of the deacon. Christ is both Priest and Servant in his Church, and
this must be reflected both in the priestly intercession of the whole
people of God and also in their diaconal service in the world.37 37.
Selby, M., ‘A Word from one of the Laos’, in Guiver, G." Kindle location 3656
"two theologians, Paul Avis and Rosalind Brown.
Avis argued that a purely ‘quantitative’ analysis of what a deacon does
can never get to the heart of what a deacon is. A deacon is not
significantly different from a Reader in what he or she can do, but he
or she is ‘qualitatively’ different insofar as he or she is marked by a
sacramental character." Kindle location 3674
"Avis does not believe that the revival of the
diaconate necessitates the resurrection of a distinctive diaconate,
although this might be one aspect of revival. What matters is that
ordinands recover the significance of the diaconate by spending at least
two years (preferably three) in deacon’s orders alone." Kindle location 3698
"Avis has acknowledged the Church of England’s
paradoxical position with regard to deacons: ‘On the one hand it knows
that it cannot be right to see deacons merely as probationary priests,
but on the other hand, the Church of England on the whole is not geared
up to take advantage of the ministry of distinctive deacons’.
Furthermore, Avis points to a more fundamental problem with defining the
function of the diaconate: the difficulty of interpreting the sources
for it: In interpreting the diaconate, reason, tradition and Scripture
have a contribution to make. It would seem sensible to try to respond
to the needs of the Church and the needs of the world within which it
ministers. But these are impossibly diverse. It would also be
responsible to be guided as far as possible by the Church’s tradition.
But this too is extremely varied: the diaconate has meant many things in
the past two thousand years. Above all, therefore, it is necessary to
be guided by the New Testament. But this too is far from
straightforward.44 44. Avis, P., ‘Wrestling with the Diaconate’,
Ecclesiology 5 (2009), pp. 3-6, at p. 4." Kindle location 3712
"In his most recent writings on the diaconate
in the Church of England, Avis has described the diaconate as ‘the most
problematic but, at the same time, the most promising of all the
ministries of the Church’.46 However, Avis expresses concern that the
Church of England might be ‘imposing its anxiety about outreach and
evangelisation on to deacons’,47 as if the existence of a small band of
deacons exonerates the rest of the church from prioritising these
concerns. According to Avis, 46. Avis, P., ‘The Diaconate: a flagship
ministry’, Theology and Ministry 2 (2013), pp. 1-14, at p. 1. " Kindle location 3732
"Rosalind Brown’s book Being a Deacon Today
(2004), which was stimulated by her work on a report on the distinctive
diaconate for the Diocese of Salisbury, is currently the only book in
print on the subject of the diaconate from a British Anglican
perspective that is not an official report." Kindle location 3748
"Brown acknowledged that deacons and Readers
might find themselves reduplicating each other’s ministry, ‘but this can
be seen as an expression of the perichoretic dance of the Trinity, in
which we are caught up and at times find ourselves with our various
callings dancing the same steps together for a while, before continuing
the dance in different ways’. Deacons are ‘enablers of the ministry of
the bishop and the Church’, like ‘old retainer’ servants who ‘take the
initiative and keep [the church] running smoothly’." Kindle location 3759
"the Bishop did not want to clericalise all
church services. What message would it give the laity if public worship
was led only by priests and deacons? Readers were ‘a natural sign to lay
people of what their ministry can be’." Kindle location 3788
"‘If diakonia (ministry) is understood as
referring to the whole Church, what then is the distinctive role of a
deacon? Attempts to define the diaconate can all too easily appear to be
attempts to remove legitimate ministries from the whole people of
God’.60 The report’s authors argued that accepting Collins’s expanded
definition of the diaconate did not require the church to abandon the
idea that the diaconate was concerned with humble service, but rather to
emphasise that humble service is required of all Christians, in
imitation of Christ." Kindle location 3829
"A major recommendation of The Mission and
Ministry of the Whole Church was the call for greater weight to be given
to the ‘transitional’ diaconate, which is ‘an opportunity for the
ordained minister to discover and live out in practice what it means to
be conformed to the Deacon Jesus Christ, to partake of his apostolic
calling and to be entrusted with the stewardship of the mystery of the
gospel’. The report noted that one reason why people were calling for
the restoration of the distinctive diaconate was the neglect of the
‘transitional’ diaconate, yet ‘If the diaconate is indeed fundamental,
nothing is more important and time spent discovering what it means in
practice is time well spent." Kindle location 3859
"The report advised that individuals called to
the distinctive diaconate itself should have ‘a calling and aptitude for
a life-long ministry that is inextricably related to the word, the
sacraments and pastoral care, but is suited more to an assisting than to
a presiding role in relation to both the sacraments and the leadership
of the community’." Kindle location 3868
"‘As long as confusion continues over what
constitutes a diaconal ministry, it would be as well to appoint people
to particular tasks, and to leave ordination out of it. Until there is a
greater enthusiasm for a distinctive diakonia, there is little point in
reviving the term, even if only to relabel existing branches of
ministry’.73 73. ‘Leader: Deacons, not doormats’, The Church Times, 29
August 2007. "Kindle location 3933
"Deacons are called to work with the Bishop and
the priests with whom they serve as heralds of Christ’s kingdom. They
are to proclaim the gospel in word and deed, as agents of God’s purposes
of love. They are to serve the community in which they are set,
bringing to the Church the needs and hopes of all the people. They are
to work with their fellow members in searching out the poor and weak,
the sick and lonely and those who are oppressed and powerless, reaching
into the forgotten corners of the world, that the love of God may be
made visible. Deacons share in the pastoral ministry of the Church and
in leading God’s people in worship. They preach the word and bring the
needs of the world before the Church in intercession. They accompany
those searching for faith and bring them to baptism. They assist in
administering the sacraments; they distribute communion and minister to
the sick and housebound. Deacons are to seek nourishment from the
Scriptures; they are to study them with God’s people, that the whole
Church may be equipped to live out the gospel in the world. They are to
be faithful in prayer, expectant and watchful for the signs of God’s
presence, as he reveals his kingdom among us.77 77. This and subsequent
quotations from the Ordinal of Common Worship are taken from the online
version of the text, ‘Common Worship: Ordination Services’, The Church
of England, accessed on 30 July 2013:
http://www.churchofengland.org/prayer-worship/worship/texts/ordinal.aspx" Kindle location 3973
"According to guidelines issued jointly by the
Archbishops of Canterbury and York and appended to the canons, the
ordinary minister of marriage should be a priest or bishop. However, ‘A
deacon may officiate at a marriage only if the consent of the incumbent
and/or minister is first given’. Even if the officiating minister is a
deacon, ‘The authorized services should be used without variation’,
including the blessing of the congregation. If a priest or bishop is
present, he or she should perform the blessing. Furthermore, ‘In the
first year following ordination as deacon . . . a deacon should rarely,
if ever, solemnize a marriage and should only do so for exceptional
reasons’, since training for the solemnisation of marriages usually
takes place in the year after ordination." Kindle location 4019
"Even for a church that is renowned for its
indecisiveness, for the Church of England to have vacillated on the
question of deacons for 175 years is a remarkable, if dubious,
achievement. Only a tiny number of the laity who regularly attend church
are aware of the existence of distinctive deacons, and those that are
may be largely confined to churches that experience the ministry of a
deacon directly." Kindle location 4041
"The contemporary debate on the diaconate in
the Church of England is not about whether the diaconate should exist or
not, but about the form in which it should exist." Kindle location 4054
"To expect individuals to remain in deacon’s
orders for their entire lives is unrealistic in the contemporary Church
of England. In the same way that many vocations to the priesthood come
from amongst former Readers, so it is not possible for an individual to
be certain that a vocation to the diaconate will not evolve into a
vocation to the priesthood." Kindle location 4060
"The historical evidence for long-term deacons
presented in this book makes the mechanical one-year interval now
expected of clergy seem inappropriate. It seems odd that curates in the
supposedly decadent eighteenth century spent far longer in deacon’s
orders than deacons in the ‘mission-shaped’ twenty-first century." Kindle location 4068
"In addition to transitional and distinctive
deacons, the other group of deacons in the church are clergy who are
also ordained priest (and in some cases bishop) whose ongoing diaconal
character has been emphasised in recent church documents. The
institution of distinctive deacons detracts from attempts to foster the
diaconal ministry of priests who are also deacons," Kindle location 4075
"The argument that there must be distinctive
deacons to ‘represent’ the diaconate, or to provide a ‘focus’ for
diaconal ministry, denigrates the diaconal ministry and diaconal
character of other ordained ministers." Kindle location 4078
"If ordination really is cumulative, and
diaconal ministry is the foundation for all ministry, there is no reason
in theory why a priest might not choose to define him or herself
primarily as a deacon, and revert to priestly ministry if the need for
it should arise. Retired bishops cease to exercise their episcopal
ministry and often take on priestly roles, such as chaplain and
assistant curate; therefore there is no reason why some priests should
not cease to exercise their priestly ministry and become full-time
deacons. Such an arrangement would proclaim the equality of priestly and
diaconal ministry far more effectively than the ordination of
distinctive deacons." Kindle location 4084
"Whilst a greater emphasis on the significance
of the transitional diaconate is only right, encouraging individuals to
discern vocations to the distinctive diaconate is inappropriate. The
very existence of a distinctive diaconate undermines the status of
transitional deacons – who make up the vast majority of members of the
order of deacons at any one time – as ‘real’ deacons. The institution of
lifelong deacons is a relic of a church divided by class and gender
that is best forgotten, and although deacons existed in the Church of
England before the 1990s, they existed only for negative reasons. Men
remained in deacon’s orders because they were considered insufficiently
well-educated to proceed to priest’s orders, or because they were of a
lower social status" Kindle location 4089
"Whatever its significance in the early church,
the diaconate in the Church of England has only ever been a form of
‘second-class’ ministry in a status-obsessed church. The diaconate’s
relegation to a form of probation for priesthood is to be welcomed in a
church that ought to strive to be more egalitarian. The revival of the
distinctive diaconate has never taken hold in the Church of England, in
spite of many attempts at revival, and the church should attend to that
failure. Distinctive deacons represent a failed experiment in ministry,
and their tiny numbers and minimal growth rate testify to that fact. The
existence of distinctive deacons only serves to handicap the diaconal
ministry of others, whether bishops, priests or lay people, by
attempting to make an aspect of the church that belongs equally to all
its members the particular domain of one category of ministers." Kindle location 4095
"The revival of the diaconate comes primarily
from the clergy themselves, and stems from a combination of mimicry of
the Roman Catholic Church and a sense that the diaconate is
‘fashionable’ and ‘ecumenical’. However, the Church of England has
evolved non-priestly ministries of its own, and it is impossible to
impose a new level of clericalisation on the church without detracting
from lay ministries, particularly that of Readers, but also the ministry
of lay workers and youth workers. Time and time again, experience has
demonstrated that a clear definition of the ministerial role of Reader
is impossible, and in parishes throughout the country, Readers
frequently take on roles that go far beyond their original preaching and
teaching ministry. Readers and other lay people are often the glue that
keeps local churches together, especially in rural areas where
ministers are few and far between. The renewal of the diaconate would be
a retrograde step, an inappropriate clericalisation and an affront to
the work carried out by Readers." Kindle location 4102
"church insiders often find it hard to
appreciate the sheer depth of the laity’s indifference to official
church documents, many of whom do not know or care what the General
Synod is, quite apart from being familiar with the reports prepared for
it." Kindle location 4113
[Haa haa haa!]
"An honest advocate of deacons in the Church of
England must acknowledge that any ministry that could be done by
deacons is currently undertaken by priests and lay people, often
extremely effectively. Arguing for the distinctive diaconate in the
Church of England is difficult, because most people in the church have
never experienced it; it is almost like trying to explain the usefulness
of money to a society that has only ever experienced a barter economy.
The Church of England has adapted itself to a deaconless existence. Of
course it seems that deacons are not needed – because the church has
evolved so as not to need them. Deacons can therefore appear like an
ecclesiological luxury" Kindle location 4118
"The Church of England proclaims a threefold
order of ministry, and the fact that deacons have no permanent,
independent existence in the church will therefore always raise
questions about the Church of England’s faithfulness to its own
formularies and the tradition of the universal church." Kindle location 4127
"In a church that claims to be Catholic and
reformed, logic surely dictates that vestigial remnants of earlier
practices should either be discarded in their entirety, or revived in a
form appropriate for the present time." Kindle location 4130
[AMEN]
"The distinction between a deacon and Reader is
all but invisible in churches that are liturgically minimalist and do
not lay much stress on the theology of orders. It is no accident that
the two English dioceses in which distinctive deacons are most numerous,
Chichester and London, are renowned for their Anglo-Catholic tradition." Kindle location 4136
"The late twentieth-century’s anxiety about
status-specific language led the phrase ‘this inferior office’ to be
removed from the ASB Ordinal, but the word ‘inferior’ does not
necessarily imply ‘despised’. ‘Inferior’ may mean ‘under authority’ or
‘under obedience’,"Kindle location 4153
"The church should not have the characteristics
of a ‘supply and demand’ economy, but all too often the allocation of
stipendiary clergy in deanery pastoral plans is determined by
congregational demands for a priest to celebrate Holy Communion as often
as possible. This preoccupation with the weekly eucharist is a very
recent innovation and not part of historic Anglican tradition, and
therefore the church should not be brow-beaten into allocating all
resources to the employment of ordained priests." Kindle location 4168
"A feature of church life in the twenty-first
century is the increasingly ‘episcopal’ ministry undertaken by
incumbents, in the sense that most incumbents now have oversight of a
number of parishes and are obliged to delegate the everyday running of
local churches to lay leaders, such as Readers and churchwardens. At the
same time, priests are often expected to be the focus of everything.
Without distinctive deacons, priests are forced to take on an
unmanageable range of tasks and ministries, and laypeople are forced to
take on roles of spiritual leadership that they execute admirably, but
may never have signed up for." Kindle location 4173
"The twentieth century saw an ever increasing
emphasis on the parish service of Holy Communion on a Sunday as the
centre and focus of church life, and this contributed to the sense that
deacons were redundant. However, this focus implies that ‘the church’ is
co-extensive with ‘the congregation’, an outdated ecclesiological
assumption that is increasingly being questioned. As the worshipping
community dwindles as a percentage of the parish community in many
places, the church risks losing its credibility and its role in the life
of the community if it defines itself primarily as a ‘chaplaincy to
churchgoers’." Kindle location 4181
"The future of the church lies in serving the
entire community and not just in serving the spiritual needs of
congregations, those who happen to turn up to church. In this
environment, deacons are more keenly needed than they have ever been. It
is by no means necessary that the church’s outreach into the world
should be put in the hands of ordained ministers, but if the church were
to do this, it would send a message that such outreach is not merely a
bolt-on to Sunday worship, but something for which the church exists." Kindle location 4188
