Anne M. Hallum chairs the political science department of Stetson University in DeLand, Fla. A specialist in religion and politics, she has written about the anti-poverty dynamic of religion.

Sociologist John Bartkowski at Mississippi State University has studied faith-based poverty relief in Mississippi. He co-authored Charitable Choices: Religion, Race, and Poverty in the Post-Welfare Era (New York University Press, 2003).

The National LGBTQ Task Force organizes and operates the National Religious Leadership Roundtable, a group of leaders from LGBTQ-welcoming faith organizations, and runs the Institute for Welcoming Resources, which works with eight major denominations. It maintains offices in Massachusetts, New York, Minneapolis, Florida and Washington, D.C. Contact Mark Daley.

Bishop E. Roy Riley of the New Jersey Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America testified about welfare reform July 19, 2006, before the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee. He expressed concern about persistent poverty and a growing gap between rich and poor in America.

The Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) is an organization that works to combat LGBT prejudice and bullying in schools. It conducts and compiles research about LGBT youth in U.S. schools. Contact Andy Marra.

Colage is an organization of children, youth and adults with one or more LGBT parent. It is based in Seattle, Wash. Paul Perry is the interim executive director.

The Crouch-Gregory book followed the publication of a similarly-themed book, Understanding and Transforming the Black Church, by Anthony Pinn, the Agnes Cullen Arnold Professor of Humanities and professor of religious studies at Rice University in Houston. Pinn is also executive director of the Society for the Study of Black Religion, and he co-chairs the American Academy of […]

A March 2010 forum at ReligionDispatches featured responses from six historians, religious scholars and other experts on the black church, as well as a response from Glaude.

Read a May 24, 2010 Religion News Service story, about African-American atheists, “Blacks, Mirroring Larger U.S. Trend, ‘Come Out’ As Nonbelievers.”