“How should Christians respond to the oil spill?” is a June 18 column by Jonathan Merritt, author of “Green Like God: Unlocking the Divine Plan for Our Planet.” The essay is at CNN’s Belief Blog.

Louis Farrakhan leads the Nation of Islam, based in Chicago. In September 2006 he handed over daily leadership of the Nation of Islam to its executive committee. Under his leadership, the Nation of Islam, founded in 1930 to address the spiritual, economic and social needs of African-Americans and criticized as separatist and anti-Christian, has become more mainstream. […]

Vashti (pronounced “Vasht-eye”) M. McKenzie is bishop of the 13th Episcopal District of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the first woman bishop in the denomination. Formerly a journalist and radio broadcaster, she wrote Not Without a Struggle: Leadership Development for African American Women in Ministry (Pilgrim Press, 1996) and Strength in the Struggle: Leadership Development for Women (Pilgrim Press, 2002).

An online petition, “The BP Oil Spill: A Christian Call for Lament and Reconciliation,” called on Americans to observe a “fast from oil” on Sunday, June 20, 2010, the two-month anniversary of the spill. Composed at the 2010 Duke Divinity Center for Reconciliation Summer Institute, the petition includes a Litany of Lament and suggestions for reducing oil […]

The governors of Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas named Sunday, June 27, a day of prayer for the Gulf Coast oil spill.

The Rev. Al Sharpton was a child preacher and was ordained as a minister at age 10. He has been organizing for social justice causes since he was a teenager and has run for U.S. Senate, for mayor of New York and for president of the U.S. He is host of The Al Sharpton Show, a radio talk show. […]

Read a March 28. 2013 article from Arizona State professor Pauline Cheong about the ways in which religious organizations use social and digital media.

Jacquelyn Grant is Callaway Professor of Systematic Theology at the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta, where she founded and directs the Center for Black Women in Church and Society. She wrote White Women’s Christ and Black Women’s Jesus: Feminist Christology and Womanist Response (American Academy of Religion, 1988). She is also assistant minister at Victory African Methodist Episcopal Church […]

Cornel West is the Princeton University Class of 1943 University Professor of Religion. His interests include philosophy of religion and cultural criticism. Among his many books are Race Matters and Democracy Matters. Among courses he teaches is “The Religious Dimensions of Du Bois, Baldwin and Morrison.”