Harold Dean Trulear, senior pastor of Mount Pleasant Baptist Church in Twin Oaks, Pa., is an expert on religion and social policy. He is associate professor of religious education at Howard University and is ordained in both the Progressive National Baptist Convention and American Baptist Churches in the USA.

The Rev. William H. Gray III is pastor of Bright Hope Baptist Church in Philadelphia. He was formerly a former U.S. congressman and president of the United Negro College Fund.

The Rev. Floyd Flake is the senior pastor of Greater Allen AME Cathedral of New York in Jamaica, Queens, which has more than 18,000 members and extensive commercial and residential developments. He was a U.S. congressman for 11 years. He is also president of Wilberforce University in Ohio.

The Rev. Renita J. Weems was the first African American woman to earn a doctorate in Old Testament studies. She taught at Vanderbilt Divinity School and Spielman College. She is one of the founding pastors and chief servants at the Ray of Hope Community Church in Nashville, Tennessee. Contact through website.

Barbara Harris is a retired Episcopal bishop. Harris was the first female bishop in the Anglican Communion. She is past president of the Episcopal Urban Caucus and has worked on prisoner issues and in other organizations serving the urban poor. She currently is assisting Bishop John B. Chane in the Diocese of Washington, D.C. Contact her […]

The Rev. Jesse Jackson is founder and president of the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, the Chicago organization that works on issues involving economic development and economic justice, health care, voter registration, jobs and peace.

Otis Moss III is pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. He espouses Black theology and advocates efforts to reach Black youth in the city. A poet, he wrote Redemption in a Red Light District: Messages of Hope, Healing, and Empowerment.

The Rev. Suzan Johnson Cook is a distinguished fellow at the Freedom Forum Institute’s Religious Freedom Center. She served as U.S. ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom from 2011 to 2013. Cook is an ordained Baptist pastor.

The Most Rev. Wilton Gregory is Roman Catholic archbishop of Atlanta. He served as president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops from 2001 to 2004. During his term the bishops developed new policies on clergy sexual abuse. He also has written about the death penalty, physician-assisted suicide and African-American liturgy.