Jacquelyn Grant is Callaway Professor of Systematic Theology at the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta, where she founded and directs the Center for Black Women in Church and Society. She wrote White Women’s Christ and Black Women’s Jesus: Feminist Christology and Womanist Response (American Academy of Religion, 1988). She is also assistant minister at Victory African Methodist Episcopal Church […]

The University of North Carolina’s digital archive, “Documenting the American South,” includes a history on the southern black community and documentation of the past.

Read a brief history and review of scholarly surveys on community outreach by black churches, by John J. DiIulio Jr. at the Manhattan Institute Web site.

Read an essay on BlackandChristian.com about black denominations; find a directory of local black churches around the country.

Robin W. Lovin is the Cary Maguire University Professor of Ethics at the Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University in Dallas where he specializes in religion, politics and ethics.

The Churches’ Center for Land and People, based in Middleton, Wis., is is an ecumenical organization working to strengthen rural life and the ministries of faith communities in Wisconsin, Iowa and Illinois. It is sponsored by a number of Christian denominations, religious orders and other organizations.

Mark Tooley is president of the Institute on Religion & Democracy, a faith-based organization that tracks how Christian denominations respond to issues such as religious liberty, LGBT rights and immigration and often advocates for a more conservative approach.

Bill Mefford is director of civil and human rights at the United Methodist General Board of Church & Society.

Read this May 3, 2012, New York Times article about the United Methodist Church voting overwhelmingly not to change language in its books of laws and doctrines about homosexuality, including ordination of gay clergy.