Sandra Patton-Imani, an adoptee, is an associate professor of American studies in the Department for the Study of Culture and Society at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa. She is the author of Birth Marks: Transracial Adoption in Contemporary America, in which black and multiracial adoptees discuss their experiences.

Randall L. Kennedy is the Michael R. Klein Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. He wrote Interracial Intimacies: Sex, Marriage, Identity and Adoption, an examination of the role of race in those arenas.

Heather Jacobson is assistant professor of sociology and anthropology at the University of Texas at Arlington. Her interests include sociology of families, the intersection of social inequality (race, class, gender) and families and family formation.

Read a Jan 5, 2012 Christian Post article about Christian hiphop, its growing popularity and some churches’ hesitancy to accept the genre with open arms.

Read a Sept. 13, 2004 New York Times article about the developing relationship between hiphop and Christianity.

Read an April 21, 2013 Christianity Today article about how Christian hiphop might be another form of evangelical marketing.

Read a April 29, 2008 Patheos article in response to “The Failure of Christian Hip Hop.”

Read a June 17, 2013 article about the differentiation of traditional hiphop to Gospel hiphop and the positive messages the latter preaches.

According to The Boston Globe’s Dec. 3, 2006, article Christian and gospel music is the one growing music category; sales in 2007 were up 11.6 percent. That popularity is recognized at conferences and music award ceremonies, where Christian rap or hiphop is increasingly included as a category.