The Orthodox Deaconess: Partial Acceptance, Complete Abandonment

Protodeacon Patrick Mitchell joins The Orthodox Ethos to discuss the case for the restoration of Deaconesses today. BRIAN PATRICK MITCHELL holds a PhD in theology from the University of Winchester (UK) and is a protodeacon of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, a former Washington bureau chief of Investor’s Business Daily, a former cabinet-level speechwriter, and the author of seven books on politics and religion, including Eight Ways to Run the Country, which has been used to teach politics at Yale and elsewhere, and Origen’s Revenge: The Greek and Hebrew Roots of Christian Thinking on Male and Female, forthcoming in 2021 from Pickwick Publications, an imprint of Wipf and Stock. Protodeacon Patrick Mitchell is a former Washington Bureau Chief of Investor’s Business Daily, the author of four books on politics and religion, and a contributor of chapters to four other books on foreign policy, international banking, and American history. He has also appeared on many radio and television shows including ABC’s Nightline and Face the Nation, CBS’s Evening News, NBC’s Today, and CNN’s Crossfire and Larry King Live. Protodeacon Patrick served seven years in the United States Army as an infantry and counterintelligence officer. He was received into the Orthodox Church with his family in 1990 by our own Dean, Archpriest Alexander F.C. Webster, at the Protection of the Holy Mother of God OCA parish in Falls Church, VA, and was ordained to the diaconate by the OCA’s Metropolitan Herman in 2007. He was released to ROCOR in 2013 and is now attached to St. John the Baptist Russian Orthodox Cathedral in Washington, DC, where he has served since 2012.