The Rev. Ralph C. Watkins is the Peachtree associate professor of evangelism and church growth for Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Ga. Watkins co-authored The Gospel Remix: Reaching the Hip Hop Generation (Judson Press, 2007). Watkins, a pastor and musician, works to resolve gaps between the hiphop generation and its elders.

Ellen Herman is a professor of contemporary American history at the University of Oregon and the creator of the Adoption History Project. She is the author of Kinship by Design: A History of Adoption in the Modern United States, which examines the history of modern adoption.

Read a Nov. 8, 2012, article from Virginia’s WTVR about hotels in Mexico and Central America that used the Dec. 21 date as a hook to lure tourists.

Read a Nov. 30, 2012, article from the New York Times about television networks from using the date of the supposed apocalypse to promote their apocalypse-themed programming.

In Russia and elsewhere, the end-of-the-world predictions in December 2012 caused some to panic, as this Dec. 1 New York Times story reports.

David Brodzinsky is a research and project director at the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute in Oakland, Calif. He is an expert on the psychology of adoption in children, adoption research, interracial adoption, adoption outcomes, foster care, stress and coping in children, developmental psychopathology and divorce and child custody issues. He co-edited The Psychology of […]

The Hiphop Archive is a door into the hiphop world, with a mission to “to facilitate and encourage the pursuit of knowledge, art, culture and responsible leadership through Hiphop.”

Sarah-Vaughan Brakman is associate professor of philosophy at Villanova University in Villanova, Pa., where she served as founding director of the Ethics Program from 1999-2004. She co-edited The Ethics of Embryo Adoption and the Catholic Tradition: Moral Arguments, Economic Reality and Social Analysis.

Larry Acosta is president of the Hispanic Ministry Center and the evangelical Urban Youth Workers Institute in Buena Park, Calif. He can discuss the organization’s use of Christian rap and the response of youngsters to it.