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 […]

William C. Turner Jr., associate professor of the practice of homiletics at Duke University Divinity School, is an expert in pneumatology (spirits as intermediaries between God and people) and the tradition of spirituality and preaching in the black church. He has written on the “musicality of black preaching” and black evangelism. He is also pastor […]

Karen Baker-Fletcher is a professor of systematic theology at Southern Methodist University’s Perkins School of Theology. She specializes in womanist theology and is the co-author of My Sister, My Brother: Womanist and Xodus God-Talk. Baker-Fletcher’s research interests also include ecology, and in 2007 the environmental magazine Grist named her as one of 15 top religious leaders on […]

Debra Y. Fraser-Howze is president and CEO of the National Black Leadership Commission on AIDS. Her professional career has been spent delivering social services to African-American communities.

Brenda Girton-Mitchell is director of the Department’s Center for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. She is also chaplain to the National Bar Association and is a deacon trustee at the Metropolitan Baptist Church in Washington, D.C. She can discuss the NCC’s work on social issues, including marriage, single-parenthood and families. Contact 202-544-2350.