The RPCES recognized that there were women who served the needs of the church throughout history and in the present day, and one of those people in the early church was Phoebe in Romans 16. She was referred to as a “deaconess” or “servant,” and so the RPCES in its General Synod statements concluded that giving women that name was not “unbiblical.” Yet, the Church forbade the ordination of women to an office of the church due to a lack of biblical evidence in favor of ordaining women to the office. 

A few years ago, I conducted a funeral for a godly woman in our congregation. In conversation with friends and family, several people mentioned that she had served as a deacon in our church. This surprised me since we – like other congregations of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) – do not have women deacons. However, our congregation has historical roots first in the mainline United Presbyterian Church USA (UPCUSA) and then in the Reformed Presbyterian Church Evangelical Synod (RPCES). When the topic of our beloved sister’s past service in the congregation has come up, those who knew her well have suggested that she was a deacon either in the UPCUSA or in the RPCES. Such speculations have led me to ask the question: did the RPCES have women deacons?

This question tends to come up in the wake of proposals to replace the PCA’s commitment to a male-only diaconate with the implementation of an egalitarian diaconate of men and women. Even without official action, some PCA churches have moved on the issue by implementing one of three innovative practices: 1) appoint or elect “deaconesses” as unordained commissioned church workers to support the work of ordained male deacons; 2) form an egalitarian group of unordained men and women to serve as “deacons” (or, as members of a so-called “diaconate”); or 3) maintain a separate group of unordained commissioned church workers call “deaconesses,” more or less independent from the ordained male deacons.

When the possibility of women deacons comes up in the PCA, or when one of these three novel ecclesial practices are introduced into the life of a PCA congregation, the precedent of the RPCES will almost inevitably enter the discussion. Some have stated that the RPCES as a whole sanctioned women deacons, or at least allowed for individual congregations to ordain women deacons that were identical with deaconesses. This claim seems to have been popularized recently by Sean Michael Lucas in his treatment of the history of the PCA, For a Continuing Church: The Roots of the Presbyterian Church in America (P & R Publishing, 2015). Lucas writes, “the RPCES affirmed the freedom of individual congregations to call and ordain women deacons, or deaconesses” (pg. 326). Though Lucas cites a particularly significant RPCES study report on the role of women in the church, he seems not to have explored the official action which the RPCES took in response to the study report (see under point 2, below).

This has led to some misunderstanding in the PCA that some RPCES congregations brought deaconesses into the PCA through Joining and Receiving. Some go so far as to make mention of a “grandfather clause” incorporated in the terms of Joining and Receiving. The claim here is that the RPCES allowed women deacons, and that congregations were allowed to keep them when they came into the PCA.

With the recent publication of the RPCES General Synod minutes online (through the PCA Historical Center, here), now is the time to put the question to rest. What follows are five important historical facts about the women deacons issue as it developed in the RPCES.

1) The original position of the RPCES in its Form of Government specifically forbade women from serving on a congregation’s Board of Deacons.

While the PCA has a Book of Church Order (BCO), the equivalent standard in the RPCES dealing with polity was called the Form of Government (FoG). The RPCES Form of Government (FoG) read: “II, 11. a. The Board of Deacons shall be composed of the pastor together with the deacons elected by the congregation for active service as such. b. Only men may be ordained to the office of deacon.”

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