Marilyn J. Kurata is director of core curriculum enhancement and an associate professor of English at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She worked on a program, supported by the Ford Foundation, integrating into the curriculum a focus on race, ethnicity, religious values and place to give students a better understanding of ethics and civic […]

Listen to an April 3, 2006, Talk of the Nation program on National Public Radio about the contentious issues of African-Americans, immigration and social justice.

Luke A. Powery is assistant professor of homiletics at Princeton Theological Seminary and the author of Spirit Speech: Lament and Celebration in Preaching (2009).

Juan M. Floyd-Thomas is associate professor of African-American religious history at Vanderbilt University’s Divinity School and a member of the cultural resources team for the African American Lectionary. He is also an expert on religion and protest music and black religious experience in America.

The African American Lectionary provides cultural and worship resources, as well as lectionary commentary, for use by congregations year-round, including on Watch Night.

Leonard Saxe directs the Steinhardt Social Research Institute and the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. He has conducted studies on many aspects of Jewish life, including intermarriage, the impact of Birthright Israel and antisemitism on college campuses.

Shakeel Syed is the executive director of the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California. In 2006, the council organized a meeting between hajj tour directors and imams leading the pilgrimage and U.S. Customs and TSA officials at Los Angeles International Airport. The council repeated the meeting in 2007 and 2012 as a town hall event open to […]

See the Supreme Court of the United States blog’s comprehensive coverage of the Arizona v. United States case.

Cheryl Kirk-Duggan is a professor of theology and women’s studies at the Shaw University Divinity School in Raleigh, N.C. She can discuss the current celebration of Kwanzaa in black communities and congregations in the South.