THE REVEREND CANON BRIAN COX

Canon Brian Cox is an ordained Episcopal Priest and a trained professional mediator who serves as a pastor, as a senior official of a Washington DC based non-governmental organization, and as a professor and academic devoted to faith-based diplomacy.

He was born in Chicago, Illinois. He received his B.S. in Geological Sciences at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, California and his Master of Divinity degree from the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He received a Master of Dispute Resolution degree from Pepperdine University School of Law in Malibu, California.

He was ordained an Episcopal Priest in 1975. He has served congregations in Southern California and Northern Virginia. At the present time he serves as Rector of Christ the King Episcopal Church in Santa Barbara, California. He has been a leader in the work of faith-based reconciliation on a local, diocesan and national context in the Episcopal Church. You can visit the website at www.ctksb.org.

In 1996 he founded the Reconciliation Institute in Santa Barbara, California and developed the faith-based reconciliation seminar as a religious framework of peacemaking in intractable identity-based conflicts. As such, he sought to apply the principles and skills of faith-based reconciliation to his own community which included initiatives concerned with racial healing, Jewish/Christian reconciliation and civic reconciliation. He also sought to spread the vision of faith-based reconciliation throughout the Episcopal Church as a paradigm shift from one of win/lose advocacy to faith-based reconciliation. In 2005 he became one of the founders of the Reconcilers.Net movement in the national Episcopal Church. You can visit the website at www.reconcilers.net.

His involvement with international affairs began in 1984 when he spent several months in South Africa under the auspices of Africa Enterprise and the Anglican Diocese of Pretoria. It was in South Africa during the darkest years of apartheid that the vision of reconciliation was planted in his heart. In 1985 he founded and became the first U.S. Director of Sharing of Ministries Abroad (SOMA) which was involved in fostering spiritual renewal throughout the Anglican Communion. In 1990 he founded the European Reconciliation Fellowship which focused on the work of faith-based reconciliation with political and religious leaders in East Central Europe, particularly the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo. It was in East Central Europe that he began to develop the strategic paradigm of faith-based reconciliation as a spirituality for individuals and as a moral vision for societies.

In 1999 he joined a newly formed non-governmental organization called the International Center For Religion and Diplomacy and later became ICRD’s Senior Vice President. The mission of the International Center For Religion and Diplomacy is to address problems of communal identity that exceed the grasp of traditional diplomacy (such as ethnic conflict, tribal warfare and religious hostilities) by effectively combining religious concerns with the practice of international politics. As such, it is committed to faith-based diplomacy. He has served as ICRD’s Project Leader for Kashmir and the Middle East. During these years he has had extensive exposure to the Islamic world in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia. You can visit the website at www.icrd.org.

In 2001 he joined the faculty of the Straus Institute of Pepperdine University Law School in Malibu, California as an Adjunct Professor. He presently serves as Director of the Pacis Project in Faith-Based Diplomacy and continues teaching Master’s level courses.

He has been a pioneer and practitioner in integrating faith and politics in the international context. Over the course of his work in Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and the Middle East he has developed the strategic paradigm of faith-based reconciliation as a fresh approach to identity-based conflict, as a religious framework for peacemaking and conflict resolution and as an alternative to religious extremism. Besides his experience in some of the world’s roughest neighborhoods, he has contributed to the scholarly and conceptual development of faith-based reconciliation with journal articles and opinion pieces. In 2007 his book “Faith-Based Reconciliation: A Moral Vision That Transforms People and Societies” was published by Xlibris Publishing. He has also published three versions of the Faith-Based Reconciliation Seminar manual. You can visit the website at www.faith-basedreconciliation.com.

He and his wife Ann live in Santa Barbara, California and have two grown children, Clare and John.