Mitchell, Leonel Lake

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.