Category Archives: Church

Talking Gender with Dissident Mama

by Brian Patrick Mitchell Posted on December 5, 2023

Shortly after my talk with Fr. Thomas Soroka on Ancient Faith Radio, I had the great pleasure of also talking about gender issues with Rebecca Dillingham for her blog, Dissident Mama. I mentioned our talk and linked to the podcast … Continue reading →

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Talking Points on Deaconesses

by Brian Patrick Mitchell Posted on December 4, 2023

The argument over deaconesses in the Orthodox Church tends to center around past history and present needs, but the history of deaconesses is obscure, easily distorted, and not always relevant. After all, history is not tradition; it only becomes tradition … Continue reading →

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Book Review: Church of Whose Granddaughters?

by Brian Patrick Mitchell Posted on July 31, 2023

How is one to understand a scholar—a theologian no less—who writes a book accusing the Orthodox Church of not living up to its own theology in its treatment of women while ignoring everything in Holy Scripture, Holy Tradition, and the … Continue reading →

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Male and Female as Archic and Eucharistic Modes of Relation

by Brian Patrick Mitchell Posted on May 15, 2023

Is not personalism merely a form of individualism—more humane (perhaps) than old-fashioned, rights- based individualism, but not humane enough to keep from reducing the human person to an inhuman abstraction stripped of the concrete particulars that define every human life, … Continue reading →

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Special Pleading for Helenism

by Brian Patrick Mitchell Posted on January 20, 2022

“Immanent critique” is a Marxist method of analysis arising out of the notorious Frankfurt School of subversive scholarship. In theory, the immanent critiquer enters intellectually into a targeted culture to develop its thinking along its own lines so as to … Continue reading →

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Just Released: Origen’s Revenge

by Brian Patrick Mitchell Posted on October 15, 2021

Is the difference of male and female to be “completely shaken off” so that men and women are no longer men and women but merely human beings? The great seventh-century saint Maximus the Confessor said yes, but such thinking is … Continue reading →

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My latest book, just released: The Disappearing Deaconess

by Brian Patrick Mitchell Posted on March 29, 2021

“The whole Church has never had a tradition of having deaconesses, but the whole Church has had a tradition of not having them.” — The Disappearing Deaconess examines not just the history of deaconesses but also patristic teaching on male … Continue reading →

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