Duane Pederson

Father Duane Pederson, The Right Reverend Archimandrite (September 30, 1938 – July 20, 2022) was an American Eastern Orthodox priest, "Jesus freak" and former leader of the "Jesus movement". He was also the founder of Orthodox Christian Prison Ministry.

Pederson was born in Hastings, Minnesota, US and had three sisters and a brother.

After moving to California, he was a leader in the Jesus People Movement during the 1960s and 1970s. He was also the founding editor and publisher of the Hollywood Free Paper which was a Christian response to countercultural 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."

Pederson joined the Antiochian Orthodox Church where he received Holy Orders and was ordained as a priest in 1991.

In 1993, Metropolitan Philip, Primate of the Antiochian Archdiocese of North America, asked Pederson, 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 (SCOBA). Shortly thereafter, Orthodox Christian Prison Ministry (OCPM) was chartered by SCOBA as its official prison ministry.

During this time, Pederson also assisted three churches in California: St. Nicholas Cathedral of Los Angeles, St. Matthew Church of Torrance, and Holy Cross Church of Palmdale.