The Author
CREATING THE BELOVED COMMUNITY
A Journey with the Fellowship of Reconcilation

Paul R. Dekar

Paul R. Dekar, Memphis, Tennessee, is Niswonger Professor at Memphis Theological Seminary and Adjunct Professor at the University of Memphis. In addition to teacher, he is a peacemaker, social activist, and visionary. Over a thirty-year teaching career, he has sought to unite scholarship, spirituality, and a passion for transformative peacemaking

Dekar has has taught introductory and elective courses in peace studies, religious studies, history, and theology at universities in Australia, Canada, and the United States. Offering immersion courses, he has facilitated learning experiences in Bolivia, Cameroon, India, Trinidad; with Native Australians, Canadians, and Americans; and with refugees. He has done fieldwork and continues ongoing research on six continents.

In demand as a speaker at academic, church, and peace events, Paul has preached and led workshops in over twenty countries. Every year he endeavors to do a week-long spiritual retreat. Seeking to "walk the talk," he strives to project his scholarship and spirituality into public policy in areas of disarmament, human rights, and the environment. He has served on numerous boards, including Amnesty International, the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America, and the Baptist World Alliance Commission on Freedom and Justice.

Paul is a dual citizen of Canada and the United States. He and his wife Nancy Rose Dekar have been married thirty-eight years. They have two sons, Nathaniel Paul and Matthew Paul. For recreation, Dekar and his family vacation at their summer shack on the rocks of the Georgian Bay in Ontario. An ordained clergyperson of the Baptist Convention of Ontario and Quebec, Paul serves a small congregation as he summers in Ontario. While living in Hamilton, Ontario, he was involved with Baptist, Quaker, and Mennonite congregations. In Memphis, Tennessee, he attends an American Baptist congregation, Prescott Church. He has gone through formation as a Benedictine Oblate and is also involved in a Baptist monastic contemplative community in Australia.

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