Paul G. Chandler grew up in Senegal, West Africa, and has lived and worked extensively around the world in leadership roles within faith-based publishing, the arts, relief and development and the Anglican Communion. He is an author, art curator, speaker, interfaith peacemaker, social entrepreneur and an authority on the Middle East and Africa. He is the Founding President of CARAVAN, an international arts NGO that uses the arts to further our quest for a more harmonious future, both with each other and the earth.
In 2020, he was awarded by the Archbishop of Canterbury the Hubert Walter Award for Reconciliation and Interfaith Cooperation, the highest international award for outstanding service in the work of reconciliation and interfaith dialogue within the Anglican Communion. He is a Canon of All Saints' Cathedral in Cairo, Egypt.
He has authored four non-fiction books in the fields of spirituality, interreligious peacebuilding and the Middle East. His book on Kahlil Gibran, the best-selling Lebanese born poet-artist and author of The Prophet, is In Search of a Prophet: A Spiritual Journey with Kahlil Gibran (Rowman & Littlefield). He is also the author of an acclaimed book on Muslim-Christian relations titled Pilgrims of Christ on the Muslim Road: Exploring a New Path Between Two Faiths (Rowman & Littlefield) that focuses on the life and thought of Mazhar Mallouhi, the Syrian Arab novelist and “Sufi Muslim follower of Christ”. He is also the author of Songs In Waiting: Spiritual Reflections on Christ's Birth...A Celebration of Middle Eastern Canticles (Morehouse Publishing, 2009), and his first book was God’s Global Mosaic, What We Can Learn from Christians Around the World (InterVarsity Press/IVP, 2000).
Work History
Paul G. Chandler is the Founding President of CARAVAN, an international non-profit/NGO focused on using the arts to heal our world and to creatively foster peace, harmony, wholeness and health in all its forms. His various roles have included serving as the President of the Foundation for the Episcopal Diocese of Wyoming, and also the Bishop of the Episcopal Church in Wyoming, from 2021-2024, with a special focus on Native American spirituality and indigenous contemporary art. He was previously based in Doha, Qatar where he served as Chairman of The Anglican Centre, a spiritual home for more than 85 congregations and groups in Qatar and includes approximately 17,000-22,000 worshippers from 65 countries every weekend - a role that also included serving as the Rector of The Church of the Epiphany in Qatar. Between 2003-2013, he served as the Rector of St. John Church (Maadi) in Cairo, Egypt, an international English-speaking church of over 40 nationalities that welcomed people from many faith traditions, primarily from the diplomatic, academic, NGO and business communities, and as Director of the East-West Center for Peace, focused on interreligious peacebuilding, with a special emphasis on using the arts.
Prior to his time in Cairo, he served as the President/CEO of Partners, an international ecumenical humanitarian non-profit that exists to assist local faith-based non-governmental organizations in over 70 countries in Africa, Middle East, South Asia, Southeast Asia and East Asia. His former role was as the U.S. Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of IBS Publishing, a large ecumenical international publishing and linguistics non-profit that has published the Scriptures in thousands of languages worldwide.
Before that, from 1995-1997, he worked in London, England as the Director of SPCK Worldwide, an historic international publishing and literary grant-making organization of the Church of England, involved in publishing and communications in the U.K. and throughout the developing world. Prior to SPCK, from 1993-1995 he served in Tunisia, North Africa, as the Rector of the historic St. George’s Church in Tunis/Carthage, and Director of the Center for East-West Understanding, as well as Chaplain to the British Embassy. Before working in Tunisia, North Africa, he was the Director of International Programs for IBS Publishing, directing translation, publishing and distribution projects throughout the world, in over 100 countries.
Background
Paul, a US citizen, spent the first eighteen years of his life in French-speaking West Africa, in Senegal. He studied at Wheaton College in the USA, at Chichester Theological College (an Anglican institution) in West Sussex, England and at the Alliance Française in Paris, France.
He is a direct descendant of Samuel Jordan, the early English settler and Ancient Planter of Jamestown. Paul is also of Irish (Celtic) descent.
Two of his hobbies, outside of reading and travel, are exotic pigeon fancying and playing the French game known as Boules de Pétanque.