Review of Women Deacons and Deaconesses: 400 Years of Baptist Service by Charles W. Deweese
Oren Martin and Barak Tjader
This book review appears in the Annotated Bibliography for Gender-Related Books in 2005, JBMW Volume 11 No. 2.
Category: Non-Evangelical - important secular works and books that addrss the subject of biblical gender issues from a religious, albeit, non-evangelical point of view. This category also serves as our classification for liberal scholars wanting to retain some sort of Christian identity.
This volume provides a history of women serving as deacons and deaconesses in Baptist churches. Although complementarians have allowed some room for disagreement as to whether Scripture allows for women deacons, Deweese argues for the inclusion of women in the diaconate using clearly egalitarian reasoning. Interestingly, while texts such as Rom 16:1, 1 Tim 3:11, as well as the nature of the diaconate itself, have been used by some complementarians to support women's inclusion as deacons, Deweese actually dismisses these verses as inconclusive and appeals to the same arguments that egalitarians have espoused in favor of women pastors. Moreover, the positive examples of women in the diaconate provided by Deweese are those in which women have had governing authority in the church.
