A March 2010 forum at ReligionDispatches featured responses from six historians, religious scholars and other experts on the black church, as well as a response from Glaude.

The Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies in Religion and Ministry at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, Calif., supports LGBT seminarians and the schools and churches that hire them. The center provides the media with information about several experts, including its executive director, Bernard Schlager.

The Fund for Theological Education (FTE), described as “a nonprofit advocate for improving faculty diversity in theological schools and cultivating the next generation of leaders for the church, academy and society,” held a June 11-13, 2010 conference in Chicago on the future of African-American Religious leadership. Read the group’s press release.

Judson Press, the publishing arm of the American Baptist Churches USA, which has a substantial African-American membership, released a new book in May 2010 called What We Love About the Black Church: Can We Get a Witness? The volume is a collection of essays on best practices in the African-American churches. It is edited by two white […]

Read an April 16, 2010, column on the controversy in The New York Times by Samuel G. Freedman, titled “Call and Response on the State of the Black Church.”

Terence J. Fay is a lecturer on the History of Religion at the University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada. He is an expert on the history of Catholicism.

Douglas Pratt is a Professor of Religious Studies in the department of Philosophy, Religious Studies, and Ethics at the University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand. His areas of expertise include Christianity, Islam, Christian-Muslim relations, interreligious dialogue, and religious issues such as pluralism, fundamentalism and extremism.

Eileen Barker is a professor emeritus in the sociology department at the University of London. She studies minority religions, including cults, sects and New Religious Movements, and relevant social conditions.

Read a Nov. 30, 2011, article from Christianity Today wondering if he should tone down his public expressions of faith to avoid alienating people.