Mitchell was born in New York. He graduated from Trinity School in 1947 and Trinity College in Hartford in 1951. For his basic theological studies, Mitchell attended Berkeley Divinity School, graduating with a master's degree in sacred theology in 1954. Shortly, after graduation, he was ordained as a Deacon and then as a Priest of the Episcopal Church. In the fall of 1959, Mitchell entered the General Theological Seminary as a doctoral student in church history. However, when the seminary called H. Boone Porter, Jr. to be professor of liturgics, Mitchell switched his major to liturgics and completed his doctoral dissertation in December 1963. When he received his doctorate in 1964, Mitchell had earned the first doctor’s degree in liturgics awarded by an Episcopal seminary.
Parish priest
Between his student and his teaching careers, Mitchell served as a parish priest: first at Christ Church,Riverdale, then Saint John in the Wilderness, Copake Falls, NY, then Christ Church, Warwick, NY, then at St Luke’s, Beacon, NY. During his years as a parish priest, Mitchell served as chaplain for many area organizations including Goodwill Hook and Ladder Fire Department, Phi Beta Kappa, and the Boy Scouts. He joined young people in protesting against the war in Vietnam and he worked to unite black and white parishioners. In 1971, Mitchell and his family moved to South Bend, IN so that he could pursue a full-time teaching career at Notre Dame University.
Teaching career
From 1971 to 1978, Mitchell served as an assistant professor in the University of Notre Dame’s Department of Theology and as director of its master’s program from 1974 to 1978. He was the first Episcopal priest to serve as a full-time faculty member at Notre Dame. From 1978 to 1995, Mitchell was professor of liturgics at Seabury-Western Theological Seminary and lecturer in Church history and liturgy at Seabury-Western from 1978 to 2005, after which he became a professor emeritus. In 1978, Mitchell was made an honorary canon and in 2008, he became canon theologian at the Cathedral of St. James in South Bend, Indiana.
Death
Mitchell, 81, died on May 23, 2012 at Hospice House in South Bend.
