Andrew P. Klager

Dr. Andrew Phillip Klager is the Provost & Vice-Chancellor of St. Stephen's University; founding Director of the Jim Forest Institute for Religion, Peace & Justice; and Professor of Religion and Peace Studies. He lives in Yarrow, British Columbia with his wife of 23+ years and three children, with another who has already flown the coop and lives nearby in Aldergrove. Andrew is an avid baseball and Red Sox fan, loves to read, and has a deep appreciation for art, poetry, and music, especially as they intersect with theology and contemplative peacemaking. Andrew earned a Master of Arts in Christian Studies from McMaster University, with his research focusing on St. Gregory of Nyssa and his understanding of apophasis and the creeds. His PhD in Religious Studies and History is from the University of Glasgow and focuses on the Church fathers and 16th-c. Anabaptist theological emphases and peace traditions. He has also completed continuing studies in Interfaith Conflict Resolution and Conflict Analysis from the United States Institute of Peace and was a Research Associate at the Humanitas Anabaptist-Mennonite Centre at Trinity Western University and a Visiting Research Fellow at the Centre for Studies in Religion and Society at the University of Victoria. Andrew is also the Director of the Orthodox Peace Fellowship, a community of peacemakers in the Orthodox tradition — founded in 1968 during the Vietnam War by the poet, artist, and playwright, Mariquita Platov, and a small gathering in West Nyack, NY, and relaunched in the late 1980s under the leadership of Jim Forest — whose purpose is to bring an Orthodox presence into the peace world and a peace presence into the Orthodox world.

Andrew has made presentations at conferences, symposiums, and dialogues across North America and is widely published in various peer-reviewed journals (Journal of Ecumenical Studies; Greek Orthodox Theological Review; Mennonite Quarterly Review; Peace Research: The Canadian Journal of Peace and Conflict Studies; Conrad Grebel Review; Journal of Mennonite Studies; Journal of Theological Studies [Oxford]; Journal of Religion, Conflict, and Peace; Reformation & Renaissance Review; Direction Journal) and books ('Stricken by God? Nonviolent Identification and the Victory of Christ' [Eerdmans 2007], 'Compassionate Eschatology: The Future as Friend' [Wipf & Stock, 2011], and 'Canadian Christian Zionism: A Tangled Tale' [Synaxis Press, 2014]) in a number of research fields ranging from early modern European history, peace and conflict studies, Anabaptist-Mennonite studies, interreligious peacebuilding especially in Egypt and the Middle East, peace theology, history of Christianity, 16th-century Reformation and Humanism, the Church fathers (especially St. Gregory of Nyssa), and Eastern Orthodox theology/asceticism.

In addition to his academic publications, Andrew has also written for Egypt Independent (Al-Masry Al-Youm) and writes regularly for the Huffington Post and Clarion Journal of Spirituality and 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 is also the editor of the book, From Suffering to Solidarity: The Historical Seeds of Mennonite Interreligious, Interethnic, and International Peacebuilding (Pickwick, 2015), with his next book due out in 2027, Wild with Divinity: Becoming Human in a World of Violence.