Showing 434 results

Leonel Lake Mitchell was born on July 23, 1930 in New York. He earned his undergraduate degree in sacred theology from Berkeley Divinity School and his master’s degree from the General Theological Seminary. In 1954 he was ordained as a deacon and a priest of The Episcopal Church. In 1964, Mitchell received a doctorate in liturgics from General Theological Seminary, the first ever awarded by an Episcopal seminary.

In 1971, after eighteen years serving as a parish priest in the dioceses of Albany and New York, Mitchell pursued a full-time teaching career as an assistant professor of liturgics at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana. He went on to become professor of liturgics, as well as a lecturer in Church history and liturgy at Seabury-Western Theological Seminary (1978) and remained on the faculty until his retirement in 2005. An expert in his field, Mitchell not only authored multiple books on liturgy but was also instrumental in revising the 1979 Book of Common Prayer.

Leonel Lake Mitchell died on May 23, 2012 in South Bend, Indiana.

Clifford P. Morehouse was born on April 18, 1904 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He graduated from Harvard in 1925 and received a master’s degree from Marquette in 1937. Some thirty years later he earned his doctorate from General Theological Seminary.

After graduating from Harvard, Clifford joined his father at the recently renamed Morehouse Publishing Company. He would go on to serve many roles in the company over the years, including taking over as editor of The Living Church after his father’s death in 1932, a position he held until 1952. It was at that time that Morehouse moved his family from Milwaukee to New York to assume a larger role in the company, which was then known as Morehouse-Gorham Co., first as vice president (1952-1964) then as president (1964-1970). After his retirement in 1970, he accepted the position of Chairman and remained involved with the company for several more years.

During his life he remained a steadfast and dedicated member of The Episcopal Church, being elected President of the House of Deputies by unanimous vote at the 1961 General Convention in Detroit and again in St. Louis in 1964. At the time he was only the second lay person to serve in that role. After he declined to run for re-election in 1967, he was elected to membership on the Church’s Executive Council where he served until 1973.

Clifford P. Morehouse died on February 17, 1977. In its obituary, the New York Times described Morehouse as “one of the best-known laymen in the Episcopal Church.”

In the fall of 1911, deaconesses gathered for a week long retreat at St. Faith’s House for Deaconesses in St. Louis, Missouri and began to create a more formal organization. The National Conference of Deaconesses originated with the Central Committee of Deaconesses that first met in St. Louis, Missouri on October 21, 1916. The deaconesses used this Central Committee as an annual gathering prior to the triennial National Conference. The first National Conference was held in October 1919, in Detroit, Michigan and met every three years at the same time and city as the Church’s General Convention.

From the beginning, the deaconesses lobbied the General Convention for revisions to the Canons of the Church to establish clear requirements and responsibilities for their Order, just as any other clerical office requires. This line of reasoning evolved to the point that the deaconesses desired the same rights and privileges as their male counterparts. The Conference remained active throughout the 1950s. By the 1960s and 1970s, the Conference was advocating a canonical means to allow women deacons to become priests. Following a change to the Canons in 1970 that allowed women to be ordained as deacons the Conference became less active, but remained listed in the Episcopal Church Annual until the 1978 edition.