J. Kameron Carter is an associate professor of systematic theology and black church studies at Duke Divinity School. He recently participated in a panel on Black Lives Matter hosted by the school.

Nyle Fort is a minister, writer and community organizer based in Newark, N.J. His areas of study include critical race theory, African-American studies, the American prison system and hip-hop culture. He has been published in the Harvard Journal of African American Public Policy, The Guardian, Black Girl Dangerous and The Feminist Wire. He has linked the Black Lives Matter […]

Leah Gunning Francis is associate dean for contextual education and assistant professor of Christian education at Eden Theological Seminary. She is based in St. Louis and was present in Ferguson, Mo., during the unrest in the aftermath of Michael Brown’s death.

The Rev. Ashlee Wiest-Laird is pastor at First Baptist JP in Jamaica Plain, Mass. She traveled to Ferguson, Mo., to protest and spoke about the experience on Boston Public Radio.

Onleilove (pronounced “only love”) Alston is the executive director at Faith in New York, a coalition of 70 congregations in New York City. She is a social justice activist and an expert on black lives in the Bible. She recently participated in a panel sponsored by PICO National Network about the black church and the […]

The Rev. Osagyefu Sekou is a Freeman Fellow at the Fellowship of Reconciliation, a New York-based interfaith group dedicated to peace. He has been on the forefront of the protests in Ferguson and has written about his experiences there, which includes an arrest for praying, and delivers lectures at universities and colleges about Black Lives […]

Karen Armstrong, a former Catholic nun, is an authority on the Abrahamic religions and author of many books on the subject. Her most recent book is Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence.

The Rev. Nageeb Michael is a Dominican priest and a scholar at the Digital Center for Eastern Manuscripts. He digitizes historic Assyrian Christian manuscripts, according to a New York Times article, and he fled the city in which he previously worked, Qaraqosh, when the Islamic State gained control of the area. He is a source on art and religion.

Tina Beattie is a professor of Catholic studies at the University of Roehampton in London. She focuses her research on the relationship between the Catholic tradition and contemporary culture with an emphasis on gender, sexuality, and reproductive ethics. She also studies Catholic social teaching and women’s rights, and theology and the visual arts.