Dr. Andrew Phillip Klager is the Director of the Orthodox Peace Fellowship, which is housed under the auspices of the Jim Forest Institute for Religion, Peace & Justice (JFI) (jfi.ssu.ca), of which he is also the founding Director. JFI is the Peace & Justice School of St. Stephen’s University (ssu.ca), where Andrew is also Provost & Vice-Chancellor and Professor of Religion and Peace Studies.
He lives in the small village of Yarrow, British Columbia (about an hour outside of Vancouver) with his wife of 24+ years and his four children. He loves baseball, reading, woodcarving, drawing, and working on building projects around the house and has a deep appreciation for the way art, poetry, myth, literature, and music intersect with theology and contemplative peacemaking.
He earned a Master of Arts in Christian Studies from McMaster Divinity College, with a research focus on St. Gregory of Nyssa’s understanding of apophatic theology and the creeds. He has a PhD in Religious Studies and History from the University of Glasgow, where he wrote his doctoral dissertation on the use of the Church Fathers by early leaders of the 16th-c. Anabaptist movement and their embrace of nonviolence and peacemaking. He also completed continuing studies in Interfaith Conflict Resolution and Conflict Analysis from USIP, was a Research Associate at the Humanitas Anabaptist-Mennonite Centre at Trinity Western University, and was a Visiting Research Fellow at the Centre for Studies in Religion and Society at the University of Victoria.
Andrew’s research interests are in peace theology, the inner transformation of a peacemaker, interreligious peacebuilding, conflict transformation and peacebuilding, conflict analysis, contemplative studies, Eastern Orthodox theology and spirituality, theological anthropology, Christology, Church fathers, St. Gregory of Nyssa, History of Christianity, and Anabaptist-Mennonite history and theology.
Aside from numerous book chapters, Andrew’s peer reviewed academic publications have appeared in Salt: An Orthodox Journal of Cross-Cultural Theology, Dialogue and Mission; Peace Research: The Canadian Journal of Peace and Conflict Studies; Journal of Ecumenical Studies; Greek Orthodox Theological Review; Mennonite Quarterly Review; Reformation and Renaissance Review; Journal of Mennonite Studies; Conrad Grebel Review; and Direction Journal. Andrew has also written for Egypt Independent (Al-Masry Al-Youm) and writes for the Huffington Post and Clarion Journal of Religion, Peace & Justice, of which he's also a co-editor. He is also an Associated Editor of The Kenarchy Journal and the Lead Editor of the OPF's publication, In Communion. Andrew also edited the book, From Suffering to Solidarity: The Historical Seeds of Mennonite Interreligious, Interethnic, and International Peacebuilding (Pickwick, 2015), with his next book, Wild with Divinity: Becoming Human in a World of Violence and Division, due out in 2029.
Andrew has been involved in the Orthodox Peace Fellowship since 2009 when he first met Jim Forest on one of his visits to the Vancouver area, this time at the invitation of the Thomas Merton Society. Upon planning and organizing an OPF AGM and conference at the University of the Fraser Valley in 2012, Andrew was given funding by the OPF to support a research trip to Egypt during the Arab uprisings, exploring local capacity for interreligious peacebuilding and restorative justice initiatives. Through correspondence over the years, Jim’s mentorship from afar — even if meeting up whenever Jim was in BC or Andrew was in the Netherlands — instilled in Andrew a deep appreciation for the connection between contemplation and peacemaking, our inner world and outer action, transformation from within to bring a presence of peace into our fractured world. This inner transformation of a peacemaker is the focus of Andrew’s research as the clearest expression of an Orthodox theology of peace and nonviolence and is one of the main emphases of the OPF.
Andrew Phillip Klager, PhD
PROVOST & VICE-CHANCELLOR of ST. STEPHEN'S UNIVERSITY
DIRECTOR of THE JIM FOREST INSTITUTE FOR RELIGION, PEACE & JUSTICE
PROFESSOR of RELIGION AND PEACE STUDIES
Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship, CSRS, University of Victoria (2014)
PhD, Religious Studies and History, University of Glasgow (2011)
MA, Christian Studies (History), McMaster Divinity College (2006)
BA, Biblical Studies, Columbia Bible College (2003)