Father Duane Pederson, The Right Reverend

Archimandrite The title archimandrite ( gr, ἀρχιμανδρίτης, archimandritēs), used in Eastern Christianity, originally referred to a superior abbot (''hegumenos'', gr, ἡγούμενος, present participle of the verb meaning "to lead") who ...

(September 30 1938 - July 20 2022) was an American

Eastern Orthodox Eastern Orthodoxy, also known as Eastern Orthodox Christianity, is one of the three main branches of Chalcedonian Christianity, alongside Catholicism and Protestantism. Like the Pentarchy of the first millennium, the mainstream (or "canonical") ...

priest, "

Jesus freak ''Jesus freak'' is a term arising from the late 1960s and early 1970s counterculture and is frequently used as a pejorative for those involved in the Jesus movement. As Tom Wolfe illustrates in ''The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test'', the term "fre ...

" and former leader of the "

Jesus movement The Jesus movement was an Evangelicalism, evangelical Christian movement which began on the West Coast of the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s and primarily spread throughout North America, Europe, and Central America, before it su ...

". He was also the founder of Orthodox Christian Prison Ministry.

Early life

Father Duane was born in

Hastings Hastings () is a large seaside town and borough in East Sussex on the south coast of England, east to the county town of Lewes and south east of London. The town gives its name to the Battle of Hastings, which took place to the north-west ...

Minnesota Minnesota () is a state in the upper midwestern region of the United States. It is the 12th largest U.S. state in area and the 22nd most populous, with over 5.75 million residents. Minnesota is home to western prairies, now given over to ...

, USA and had three sisters and a brother.

Jesus movement

After moving to California, he was a leader in the

Jesus People The Jesus movement was an evangelical Christian movement which began on the West Coast of the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s and primarily spread throughout North America, Europe, and Central America, before it subsided in the la ...

Movement during the 1960s and 1970s. He was also the founding editor and publisher of the Hollywood Free Paper which was a

Christian Christians () are people who follow or adhere to Christianity, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. The words ''Christ'' and ''Christian'' derive from the Koine Greek title ''Christós'' (Χρι ...

response to

countercultural A counterculture is a culture whose values and norms of behavior differ substantially from those of mainstream society, sometimes diametrically opposed to mainstream cultural mores.Eric Donald Hirsch. ''The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy''. Hou ...

underground newspapers. As circulation grew rapidly from California to Europe, the Paper became the most widely distributed Jesus Movement publication. It ran from 1969 to 1978. From 1979 to 1980, it became “Visit,” a periodical ministry to prisoners under the name ''Christian Prison Volunteers''. The paper ceased publication in 1980, but briefly resumed from 1987 to 1988 under its former title. He was credited with coining the terms "Jesus people" and "Jesus movement", but clarified in an audio interview that those words were attributed to him by a news agency when he said "We're people who love Jesus."

Priesthood

Pederson joined the

Antiochian Orthodox Church The Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch ( el, Ελληνορθόδοξο Πατριαρχείο Αντιοχείας), also known as the Antiochian Orthodox Church and legally as the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch and All the East ( ar ...

where he received Holy Orders and was ordained as a priest in 1991.

Orthodox Prison Ministry

In 1993, Metropolitan Philip,

Primate Primates are a diverse order of mammals. They are divided into the strepsirrhines, which include the lemurs, galagos, and lorisids, and the haplorhines, which include the tarsiers and the simians (monkeys and apes, the latter including huma ...

of the Antiochian Archdiocese of North America, asked Father Duane, an experienced prison minister, to establish a prison ministry for the Archdiocese. In 2005, Philip offered the Archdiocese’s prison ministry to the

Standing Conference of the Canonical Orthodox Bishops in the Americas The Standing Conference of the Canonical Orthodox Bishops in the Americas (SCOBA) was an organization of bishops from Eastern Orthodox Christian jurisdictions in the Americas. It acted as a clearinghouse for educational, charitable, and missionary ...

(SCOBA). Shortly thereafter, Orthodox Christian Prison Ministry (OCPM) was chartered by SCOBA as its official prison ministry. During this time, Father Duane also assisted three churches in California: St. Nicholas Cathedral of Los Angeles, St. Matthew Church of Torrance, and Holy Cross Church of Palmdale.

Publications

In 2009, Father Duane edited a 35th anniversary edition of the ''Hollywood Free Paper''.Hollywood Free Paper
In 2014, he wrote ''Larger Than Ourselves: The Early Beginnings of the Jesus People'', (Hollywood CA: Hollywood Free Paper, 2014). In the book, he recounted some of the earliest stories of how the Jesus People movement began and includes pictures of key figures and places throughout the early years of the movement.

Awards

In 2012, Father Duane was presented with the Matthew 25:36 Award for his lifetime achievement in prison ministry. The award contains a piece of actual prison bar from Graterford State Prison,

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

with the simple inscription of Matthew 25:36 (“I was in prison and you came to me…”). In 2016, he was awarded the Archdiocese’s Silver Order of St. Raphael of Brooklyn.

Later life and death

Later semi-retired, Father Duane ministered to prisoners and those on the street, through homeless shelters, as well as serving various parishes in Southern California and Minnesota of the Antiochian Orthodox Church. After his retirement, he returned to his home state of Minnesota where he served at St. George Church of West St. Paul. He passed away July 20, 2022, in Eagan MN. His funeral was held at St. George Antiochian Orthodox Church, 1250 Oakdale Avenue, West St. Paul, MN. He is buried at Lakeside Cemetery in Hastings, MN.

References

External links

''Hollywood Free Paper''

Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America

Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America

Orthodox Christian Prison Ministry

Pederson's sermons

St. Matthew's Orthodox Church

audio interview with Father Duane
1938 births 2022 deaths 21st-century Eastern Orthodox priests American Eastern Orthodox priests American Pentecostals Converts to Eastern Orthodoxy from Protestantism Former Pentecostals Jesus movement Members of the Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch {{orthodoxy-stub