There is quite a lot on this blog about deaconesses. This post makes the most useful resources easily accessible.
1. All you might ever need to know, and the only item you have to pay for, but you don’t have to pay much:
The Disappearing Deaconess: Why the Church Once Had Deaconesses and Then Stopped Having Them
2. Talking points on deaconesses, free:
3. Slide presentation on deaconesses (read here or download the pdf for free):
4. Africa’s new “deaconess”:
5. Were deaconesses really Apostolic?
6. A Public Statement on Deaconesses by Concerned Clergy and Scholars:
7. A review of Carrie Frost’s 2023 book Church of Our Granddaughters, the Mein Kampf of Orthodox feminism. What does Frost want? Everything up to and including a “conversation” about women as priests and bishops:
I am aware of a young woman in the OCA who considers herself to be a deaconess in the making. She says she has “recently been receiving blessings to hold a censer during some of her ministry” and just a day or so ago “was given a blessing to cense with a censor” (sic), apparently by her father who is an OCA priest, during a house blessing. Is this permissible? From where would such authority to give such blessings to lay persons derive?
Perhaps you can email more information on this irregularity, using the contact form on this site. Tradition prohibits even subdeacons from swinging censers, though they may carry one for the priest or bishop when there is no deacon present.
Done, thanks.