Dr. Ezekiel J. Emanuel is the Diane Levy and Robert M. Levy University Professor in the department of medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania.

William Julius Wilson is Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor at Harvard University. A MacArthur Prize Fellow from 1987 to 1992 and former president of the American Sociological Association, Wilson has said that he looks, in addition to government, to religious organizations to reduce social problems in neighborhoods and to rebuild inner cities. […]

Robert L. Woodson Sr. is founder and president of the Center for Neighborhood Enterprise (formerly the National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise) in Washington, D.C., which trains and supports community and faith-based programs. Woodson emphasizes self-help, market-oriented solutions to social problems. He is a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship “genius award” recipient and wrote The Triumphs of Joseph: […]

Jeffrey McCune Jr. is an associate professor of women, gender, and sexuality studies, as well as african and african american studies, at Washington University in St. Louis, Mo. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Frederick Douglass Institute for African and African-American Studies at the University of Rochester in New York. He teaches about black masculinity, […]

Leah Gaskin Fitchue, the first woman to be president of a historically black theological seminary, heads the 160-year-old Payne Theological Seminary in Wilberforce, Ohio. The school is affiliated with the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Previously, Fitchue was a consultant in leadership development and organizational and community transformation for church and faith-based organizations. She is also […]

Felicia Dix-Richardson is assistant professor of sociology and criminal justice at Florida A&M University in Tallahassee. She has studied religious conversion in prisons, particularly among African-American women, and is expert on the topics of race, religion and inmate culture.

Michael I.N. Dash is professor of ministry and context at the Interdenominational Theological Center. He co-directed the ITC/Faith Factor Project 2000 study, which focused on African-American congregations and is part of Hartford Seminary’s Faith Communities Today project.

Mellonee V. Burnim is an associate professor of folklore and ethnomusicology at Indiana University-Bloomington. Her focus is black religious music and aesthetics and music of the African Diaspora.

Melva Wilson Costen is an authority on music and worship in the black church. She wrote the widely consulted African American Christian Worship (Abingdon Press, 1993) and In Spirit and In Truth: The Music of African American Worship (Westminster, 2004). She recently retired from the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta, where she was Helmar Emil Nielsen Professor of Music […]