Deacons and the Church

The ministry of the permanent diaconate, at least in the Latin West, has been nearly forgotten for almost a thousand years. It's only during the last couple of generations that the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches have remembered and attempted to revitalize it. The problem is that our millennium-long amnesia has left us with a lot of questions about the nature of diaconal ministry. Just what is a deacon? How does the ministry of a deacon differ from baptismal ministry? What's the role of the deacon in today's church? What's the proper relation between deacons and other ordained clergy? These and many other questions beg to be examined in a systematic and reflective manner, and a necessary condition for doing so is to begin to look at the theology and spirituality of deaconal service. Alas, this hasn't been done too often up to now. Analyses of the diaconate have tended to focus (to use Cummings' distinction) on either the "power" of the diaconate (its function) or the "history" of the diaconate. As a consequence, the Holy Order of deacons still leaves many people in the church confused: many bishops don't know what to do with deacons, priests sometimes see them as nuisances, and parishoners tend to think of them as assistant priests.Owen Cummings' book is the first to begin to think about the permanent diaconate from a theological perspective. Although written from the vantage point of the Roman Catholic tradition, it is invaluable for other Christian traditions (such as my own, Anglicanism) that ordains deacons. Cummings examines the history of the diaconate and its renewal in the twentieth century. This is pretty standard stuff. Much more importantly, however, is his attempt to sketch out a kenotic spirituality of the diaconate by the wonderful device of interpreting Jesus as a deacon. Also extremely good is his discussion of the "dysfunctional" deacon: the pitfalls (for example, clericalism, ritualism, anti-intellectualism) that deacons can fall into.All in all, an excellent effort. There's still much prayer and work to be done in reawakening to the full meaning and promise of the permanent diaconate, but Cummings has gotten us off to a good start. Heartily recommended.