Daniel attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,graduated in 1969 with a Bachelor of Arts in Spanish He earned his Master of Divinity from Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria, Virginia. He was granted honorary Doctor of Divinity degrees from both Virginia Theological Seminary in 1997 and the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee in 1998.
He served the diocese as her diocesan bishop from 1997 until 2013, when he became Provisional Bishop of Pennsylvania. Daniel was ordained to the diaconate in June 1972, and then to the priesthood in April 1973. In 1996 he was elected and consecrated bishop coadjutor of the Episcopal Diocese of East Carolina.
With the death of B. Sidney Sanders, he became the diocesan bishop on June 5, 1997.
On February 28, 2013, Daniel resigned as Bishop of East Carolina in order to become the Provisional Bishop of Pennsylvania.
