Melva Wilson Costen is an authority on music and worship in the black church. She wrote the widely consulted African American Christian Worship (Abingdon Press, 1993) and In Spirit and In Truth: The Music of African American Worship (Westminster, 2004). She recently retired from the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta, where she was Helmar Emil Nielsen Professor of Music […]

Leo Davis Jr. is artistic director at Gia Publications, Inc. in Chicago, Ill. Davis has a scholarly background in black church worship and can discuss contemporary influences and trends in church music.

Rudolph McKissick Jr. is co-senior pastor at the 9,000-member Bethel Baptist Institutional Church in Jacksonville, Fla. He is a national leader in contemporary sacred music and developed a professional-quality national recording choir at his church. He is an expert in sacred music and opera.

Mark Anthony Neal is associate professor of black popular culture in the Program in African and African-American Studies at Duke University. He wrote What the Music Said: Black Popular Music and Black Public Culture (1998), Soul Babies: Black Popular Culture and the Post-Soul Aesthetic (2002), and Songs in the Key of Black Life: A Rhythm and Blues Nation (2003).

Mala Htun is professor of political science at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. She wrote Sex and the State: Abortion, Divorce and the Family Under Latin American Dictatorships and Democracies (Cambridge University Press, 2004).

FHI 360, formerly titled Family Health International, is a nonprofit organization that works to improve health in more than 60 developing countries. It conducts behavioral, biomedical and health services research in support of numerous global health priorities, including contraception, reproductive health, HIV, malaria, rotavirus, and other infectious diseases, such as avian influenza. FHI also implements programs […]

Eugene F. Rivers is pastor of Pentecostal Azusa Christian Community (affiliated with the Church of God in Christ) in south Boston and president of Ella J. Baker House community organization in the Dorchester Four Corners neighborhood of Boston. Rivers co-founded the clergy-led National Ten Point Leadership Foundation, which is credited with helping to diminish gang violence in Boston and […]

Evangelical speaker and minister Claudette Anderson Copeland founded New Creation Christian Fellowship and Destiny Ministries for women. She wrote Stories From Inner Space: Confessions of a Preacher Woman and Other Tales (Red Nail Press, 2003) and Coming Through the Darkness: Cancer and One Woman’s Journey to Wholeness (Destiny Press, 2000). Contact her through executive director Destiny Ministries.

Mary R. Sawyer was a professor of religious studies at Iowa State University in Ames. She wrote the entry “National Conference of Black Christians” for the Encyclopedia of African and African-American Religions (Routledge, 2001). She has written about women’s leadership roles in the black church.