The Rev. James W. Fraser is professor of history and education at the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development at New York University. He wrote Between Church and State: Religion and Public Education in a Multicultural America.

Marshall Fitz is the director of immigration policy for the Center for American Progress (CAP), which is a progressive independent nonpartisan educational institute. Contact Fitz through the CAP communications director Crystal Patterson or through the email form on his CAP page.

Jeffrey S. Passel is a senior demographer for the Pew Hispanic Center, which has conducted research on Latino immigration patterns and Hispanic attitudes toward immigration policy.

Anthony B. Pinn is a professor of humanities and religious studies at Rice University in Houston. He has been critical of the prosperity gospel preached in some Black megachurches for its lack of emphasis on community service and charity. He is the author of Why, Lord?: Suffering and Evil in Black Theology and editor of Redemptive Suffering: a […]

Stephanie Mitchem is a professor of womanist theology and African-American spirituality at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, S.C. She is the author of Name It and Claim It? Prosperity Preaching in the Black Church (Pilgrim Press, 2006).

Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. is pastor emeritus of Trinity United Church of Christ, a predominantly African-American megachurch in Chicago. He participated in a conference of African-American pastors concerned with the effect of prosperity gospel in their churches. Trinity’s mission statement includes a “disavowal of the pursuit of middleclassness” and commitment to work toward economic parity.

R. Drew Smith is a Baptist minister and professor of urban ministry at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. He has studied and written about black megachurches and has edited four volumes on American religion and public life, including New Day Begun: African American Churches and Civic Culture in Post-Civil Rights America.

Esdras Betancourt is director of the Hispanic Ministries department of the Church of God, in Cleveland, Tenn.

Gerald R. Barnes is executive director of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Secretariat for Hispanic Affairs, whose mission is to assist the Catholic Church in its efforts to serve the large Hispanic population in the United States.