Bishop Earl E. McCloud Jr. is ecumenical affairs officer for the African Methodist Episcopal Church. He and leaders of the Interdenominational Theological Center organized a September 2006 meeting of 300 representatives of historic black churches and black Muslim leaders in Atlanta to organize an initiative against “black on black crime” in Atlanta.

Bertram L. Melbourne is an ordained minister of the Seventh-day Adventist Church and an associate professor of New Testament language and literature at Howard University School of Divinity.

David W. Wills is Winthrop H. Smith ’16 Professor of American History and American Studies in the religion and black studies departments at Amherst College in Amherst, Mass. He is general editor of “African-American Religion: A Documentary History Project.” Wills is a historian of religion in the U.S. with particular emphasis on African-American religious history.

Cheryl Lynn Greenberg, professor of history at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., writes about 1960s black activism and about black-Jewish relations, including Troubling the Waters: Black-Jewish Relations in the American Century (Princeton University Press, 2006).

Angel Kyodo Williams, an ordained Zen priest, is founder of New Dharma Meditation Center for Urban Peace in Oakland, Calif., and the author of Being Black: Zen and the Art of Living With Fearlessness and Grace (Viking Press, 2000). She can be contacted through her website.

Claudine Michel chairs the department of black studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She edits The Journal of Haitian Studies and co-edited (with Patrick Bellegarde-Smith) two books on Vodou, Haitian Vodou: Spirit, Myth, And Reality (Indiana University Press, 2006) and Invisible Powers: Vodou in Haitian Life and Culture (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006).

Mozella Gordon Mitchell is professor and chairwoman of religious studies at the University of South Florida in Tampa. Her expertise includes Afro-Caribbean religions and the history of African-American religion.

The Rev. Cyprian Davis is professor emeritus of church history at St. Meinrad School of Theology in St. Meinrad, Ind. He is a Benedictine monk and has expertise on African-American Christianity and on blacks and Catholicism.

Paul S. Morton is founder and international presiding bishop of the New Orleans-based Full Gospel Baptist Church Fellowship, International and pastor of Greater St. Stephen Full Gospel Baptist Church, with locations in New Orleans and Decatur, Ga. Begun in 1992, the Episcopal-style fellowship includes mostly African-American Baptist congregations and individuals who emphasize spiritual gifts, including speaking in […]