Daniel P. Coleman

Barclay Press books by Coleman

Daniel P. (Danny) Coleman has often been described as an explorer; it runs in the family. His parents emigrated from England to Canada, where Danny and his sister were born. After a few years the family boarded a passenger liner and sailed to New Zealand, where they lived for several months. The Colemans then moved to Australia for a time, traveled back to the UK, returned to Canada, and ultimately relocated to the United States (first in Maryland and then in Colorado).

As a child Danny planned to become a journalist, but things changed when he joined a teenage garage band and decided that his destiny was to become a rock star. He dropped out of school, left home, and spent his young adult years traveling throughout the western United States, playing in a series of bands. While driving through Texas he had a spiritual encounter that resulted in him becoming a Christian. He returned home to Denver and, for the first time in his life, began attending church and reading the Bible.

Danny found a career in the information technology field. He became a certified instructor for Microsoft, Novell, CompTIA, and Cisco, and traveled throughout the United States teaching courses in computer network engineering at IT training facilities, as well as doing consulting work. For the last fourteen years he has been employed as the senior network engineer for a construction firm with offices nationwide.

Danny spent twenty years in the charismatic Christian faith, playing in worship bands (including one in which he met his wife Carla), teaching, and eventually becoming an associate pastor. After many years he began to question why the type of church he was experiencing looked so different from the descriptions of the church in the New Testament. These questions led him to form a house church with the goal of emulating Paul's depiction of ecclesia: “When you come together, each of you has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. Everything must be done so that the church may be built up” (1 Corinthians 14:26 NIV).

It was during these house church years, as he endeavored to learn how to lead a type of church he had never seen modeled, that Danny came across writings by and about Quakers (Friends). He saw a strong affinity between what he was trying to do in the house church and what the Quakers had been doing for 350 years. The more he learned about Friends, the more he felt drawn to them. When the house church eventually came to an end, Danny and Carla began attending a Friends church.

After becoming a Friend, Danny continued to voraciously study Quakerism, along with theology in general. For a number of years, he led an hour-long, in-depth Bible study on Sunday mornings, working book by book through the New Testament. (It took eighteen months to get through the gospel of Matthew!) Next came a strong leading to attend seminary and formalize his studies. With encouragement from his wife, friends, and pastor, Danny enrolled in the MDiv program at George Fox Evangelical Seminary (now Portland Seminary), but soon transferred to Earlham School of Religion. At Earlham Danny wrote an essay which resulted in him being awarded the Nancy Kortepeter Mullen scholarship. He graduated from Earlham with an MA in religion, with an emphasis on Quaker studies.

At Earlham, Danny undertook supervised independent study of process theology and contemplative spirituality. His exploration of the nexus between contemplative spirituality (Quaker, Christian, and Buddhist) and process theology resulted in his master's thesis and then his first book, Presence and Process: A Path Toward Transformative Faith and Inclusive Community.

Danny's passion is transformative theology. He believes theology should have practical application and affect people's lives: how we live, how we understand ourselves, how we perceive God, how we interact with others and with our environment.
Danny and Carla live in Seattle and still make music together. Their only child, Seth, is currently working on a PhD in physics at Rice University. Danny’s website is http://danielpcoleman.com