John Lomperis is the United Methodist action director for the Institute on Religion & Democracy, which supports renewal and orthodoxy within American Christian denominations. He is an expert on liberal and conservative groups within the United Methodist Church.

The Rev. Warner H. Brown Jr. is a United Methodist Church bishop and head of its California-Nevada Council. He has also served as president of the UMC’s council of bishops. He is based in Sacramento, Calif.

The Rev. William Pfohl is senior pastor of Jesse Lee Memorial United Methodist Church in Ridgefield, Conn. He is the chair of the Board of Ordained Ministry  for the church’s New York Conference, which announced in March 2016 that, in defiance of church rules, it would not consider an ordination candidate’s sexual orientation.

Valerie Bridgeman is a poet, dancer, and performer, and she serves as a visiting associate professor of Homiletics and Hebrew Bible at the Methodist Theological School in Ohio. She also founded the WomanPreach! ministry. She contributed a “preaching reflection” about the death of Michael Brown to Odyssey Networks.  

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.

Gary Hall is a Methodist presbyter who teaches practical theology at the Queen’s Foundation for Ecumenical Theological Education in Birmingham, England. He has written widely about Mertonian spirituality and will lead a guided retreat based on Thomas Merton’s spirituality as part of the yearlong celebration of Merton’s centenary.

Emily McGinley is a pastor at Urban Village Church, a multisite United Methodist Church in the Chicago area with an outreach ministry to transgender people.

David E. Weekley is a United Methodist Church pastor who described his life as a transgender man in In From the Wilderness: Sherman: She-r-man. He blogs about his life in the church at Sherman’s Wilderness. He is the pastor of St. Nicholas United Methodist Church in Hull, Mass.