Updated 10/20/17

McKeesport, Pa., seems an unlikely location for an ecclesiastical revolution, but one occurred there in 1888. McKeesport is located where the Youghiogheny River joins the Monongahela River, southeast of Pittsburgh. In the late 1700s, Reformed Presbyterians had settled along the “Yough” and formed societies, and then a congregation, which daughtered the McKees­port RP Church in 1882; it closed in 1918.

In 1888, the McKeesport RPC held an election for deacons, and a woman, Miss McConnell, was chosen. Since the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America did not at that time permit women to be ordained to the office of deacon, the session sought the counsel of the Pittsburgh Presbytery.

The presbytery in turn sought the counsel of Synod, which permitted the ordination and installation of Miss McConnell to the office of deacon by approving the following recommendation of its Committee on Discipline: “[S]uch ordination is[,] in our judgment[,] in harmony with the New Testament and with the constitution of the Apostolic church.”

Not only did Miss McConnell become the first female deacon in the RPCNA, but apparently in any Presbyterian church around the world. Indeed, the RPCNA was the first Presbyterian denomination anywhere to approve the ordaining of women to any church office. It is not often that an ecclesiastical revolution occurs in our circles!

About 20 percent of the delegates voted against permitting women deacons, and 9 elders recorded their dissent (four of them were named Faris). The Synod acted without any study of the issues involved, such a study being our consistent practice, both before and after 1888. Reminded in the dissents of this failure, Synod appointed a two-man committee (Pastors James Kennedy of the Fourth New York Church and T. P. Stevenson of the First Philadelphia Church) to explain the grounds of Synod’s decision through an article to be published in the church magazines.

The office of deacon itself had already provoked considerable disagreement within the RPCNA. In his history of the denomination through 1871, Transplanted to America, David Carson spends considerable space discussing this deacon controversy. Several questions concerned the disputants: Is there a permanent office of deacon? If so, what are the duties of this office? What are the qualifications for this office? Sentiments ran so high that a competing journal was started so that both sides could disseminate their viewpoints. Families divided, and some even changed the spelling of their names so as not to be confused with those on the other side! Dr. Carson confesses to being mystified by this brouhaha from the mid-19th Century.

But by 1888 the church was in a deacon controversy once again, one that has not really ended, although it has passed through times when it has been quiescent.

Synod’s committee defended the practice of having women deacons on four grounds. First, “There is a progressive and organic development of offices within the history of the New Testament and Old Testament church.” Since women deacons are not explicitly forbidden in the later scriptural revelation, the presumption must be that they may hold the office. The second ground consisted in the teaching of two scriptural texts, Romans 16:1-3 and 1 Timothy 3:11. In the first, Phoebe is described as a “deacon” of the Corinthian church, which the two ministers maintained justifies ordaining women to the office of deacon. In the second passage, the “women” are believed to be female deacons, not the “wives” of deacons, the more common translation of the word. The third ground concerns the nature of ordination, which is considered as justifying the ordination of women deacons, not just recognizing their service in some lesser sense. And the fourth ground is the practical merits of having women, as well as men, serving as deacons.

In addition, Prof. D. B. Willson of the Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary argued for women deacons in his lecture at the opening session of the seminary on Sept. 18, 1888. His defense has similar grounds to those of the committee, but he relates them more explicitly to a postmillennial view of the world.

Synod’s committee set out what became the usual lines of defense used by the RPCNA ever since to justify the practice of ordaining women deacons, especially the first two grounds.

The authorization of women deacons is clearly set out in the RPCNA Testimony: “Women as well as men may hold the office of deacon” (25:8). It is also included in the current Directory for Church Government (Chapter 3, A:1).

Those who opposed women deacons in 1888 were considered free to do so, and no decision of Synod since has changed that. This situation is the same with other changes the church has made in the original doctrines and practices: the identity of the pope; the number of offices in the church; the marriage of a man with his deceased wife’s sister; and the authority of the state to call church assemblies; and the offering as an element of worship. Synod has never determined, at any time following these changes in the church’s standards, that all office bearers must agree to the change. And, in each of these changes, the RPCNA has parted company with our historic mothers, the Reformed Presbyterian Church in Ireland and the Reformed Presbyterian Church of Scotland. Since we enjoy full interchange of officers between us—no questions asked—Synod has implicitly and consistently permitted disagreement on all these issues (except the offering), not just those concerning women deacons, among its officers for that reason as well.

Looking back to 1888, the decision to permit women deacons was not only made in the context of a church recovering from a long controversy about the diaconate, but it was also conducted in a social context in which the progressive movement was moving forward from its base in the anti-slavery and pro-temperance movements (in which Reformed Presbyterians had been active) to embrace the women’s rights movement. Articles in the contemporary RPCNA magazines make that connection clear and most authors laud it, although one writer caustically chalks up the decision in favor of women deacons to “the sentimental overflow” of Synod. Later progressives would become more overtly political and even violent, but, at the time, the movement’s goals were more limited, and the RPCNA determined to move along some farther distance with this social trend.

Eventually, most RPCNA congregations elected women deacons. Many have served with distinction. The long­est serving deacon in the history of the Quinter, Kan., congregation, until recently, was Mary McElroy, from 1897 to 1949, or 52 years. Women have served as deacon delegates from presbyteries to Synod, until the Synod eliminated the practice around 2002; among the last such delegates were Edna Hatfield from the Midwest Presbytery and Kay Klein of the Pacific Coast Presbytery. Nowadays, many, but not most, RPCNA congregations are served by women deacons.

The practice of women deacons is still sometimes disputed. When the current Directory for Church Government was sent down in overture to the sessions by the Synod of 1986, eight delegates objected to women deacons and were assured that their scruples were fully permitted within the RPCNA. In 2001, a paper from the Belle Center, Ohio, RPC, approved overwhelmingly by the Great Lakes-Gulf Presbytery, garnered the votes of about 40 percent of the Synod—a dramatic change in just 15 years, but still far from the two-thirds supermajority needed to change the standards of the church.

The practice of having ordained women deacons has created challenges for the RPCNA in its ecumenical relations, which have developed considerably in the past 60 years. Members of the Interchurch Committee are regularly queried by representatives of other conservative Reformed or Presbyterian Churches about our stance, especially in the two ecumenical organizations to which we belong, the North American Presbyterian and Reformed Council (NAPARC) and the International Conference of Reformed Churches (ICRC). The initial concern of these brethren is that the practice of having women deacons is usually an expression of theological liberalism, since other denominations that have permitted women deacons have proceeded to ordaining women as ruling elders and ministers as well. Our representatives have reassured these brethren that this position is based on scriptural exegesis and not social movements. The Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church, a sister denomination in NAPARC that has in recent decades strengthened its Presbyterian roots, also ordains women deacons.

It will be interesting to see how the service of women deacons—otherwise almost unknown in conservative Presbyterian and Reformed circles—will develop and change in the coming years.

Thomas Reid is librarian and registrar at the Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Pittsburgh, Pa., where he teaches the Reformed Presbyterian church history course. He has served as a pastor in Ireland, Kansas, and Canada.