The Office of Deacon

Summary

Stuart Robinson, the nineteenth-century Presbyterian pastor and editor later known for The Church of God as an Essential Element of the Gospel, published this article in The Presbyterial Critic, a journal he helped edit, in 1855. His stated aim is to define the Presbyterian idea of the deacon from the Form of Government: an officer with no doctrinal, legislative, or judicial power, charged with the care of the poor and the management of all the temporal affairs of the church.

He fortifies that reading from Calvin, Knox’s Books of Discipline, Thomas Smyth, and Samuel Miller of Princeton, then traces the American substitution of state-chartered trustees for deacons to a 1752 resolution of the Synod of New York.

Calling himself a strict constructionist, he concludes that a church that has vowed to uphold its constitution must either obey it or formally amend it.

Excerpt

Such being, undoubtedly the principles of Presbyterianism the world over, with regard to this officer, how is it that in these United States, the practice of Presbyterianism has allowed the Deacon almost every where to expire, from sheer idleness;—his business having been taken from him and put into the hands of a committee appointed by the State Legislature!

Excerpt

We have finished all that we designed in this article; which was, to prove that by the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church, the Deacons are the proper officers to manage all the temporalities of the Church. We belong to the strict construction party. If the Constitution is wrong, let it be regularly and formally altered ; but do not let us sneer at, and trample upon any part of that instrument which we have vowed to support entire.

The Office of Deacon

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