Read this column by Terry Mattingly published on September 1, 2005, on GetReligion.org.

Read this September 2005 Beliefnet.com article detailing apocalyptic theories about what Hurricane Katrina could have meant for society.

Edward Phillip Antonio is associate professor of Christian theology and social theory, associate dean of diversities and director of the Justice & Peace Program at Iliff School of Theology in Denver. He wrote the article “Black Theology” in The Cambridge Companion to Liberation Theology.

John Burdick, Syracuse University professor and anthropology chair, is the author of Legacies of Liberation: The Progressive Catholic Church in Brazil (Ashgate Publishing, 2004). He says the emphasis in liberation theology has shifted from the poor to those marginalized by race, ethnicity or gender – though not yet sexuality. Contact , .

Dwight N. Hopkins, University of Chicago theology professor, has written about black theology of liberation and also about gun control. Black liberation theology, he says, is aligning more closely with black churches and developing partnerships with liberation theologians in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Latin America and the Pacific Islands.

Ronald Barrett is a psychology professor at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. He is an expert on African-American contemporary funeral practices.

Jonathan C. Smith is an assistant professor of American studies at St. Louis University and is researching African-American funerary customs.  

Charlton McIlwain is Associate Professor of Media, Culture and Communication at New York University. He is the author of Death in Black and White: Death, Ritual and Family Ecology (Hampton Press, 2003), which examines African-American funeral practices.

Jessica Koth is public relations manager for the National Funeral Directors Association, an organization of mostly independent funeral home operators, based in Brookfield, Wis. She can discuss the influence that the needs of different ethnic and religious groups have had on funeral directors and their services.