Paul Harvey is a professor of American history at the University of Colorado in Colorado Springs. He wrote Freedom’s Coming: Religious Culture and the Shaping of the South From the Civil War Through the Civil Rights Era and co-edited (with Philip Goff) The Columbia Documentary History of Religion in America Since 1945. Harvey is working on a history of […]

Barney Self is a licensed marriage and family therapist . He has counseled ministers and their families for eight years through a program run by the Southern Baptist Convention’s LifeWay Christian Resources. He is now pastoral counseling minister at Forest Hills Baptist Church in Nashville.

Michael Lane Morris is associate professor of management at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. He has studied the effects of stress on clergy and their families.

Reginald A. Bruce is associate professor of management at the University of Louisville’s College of Business. He has done much research on pastoral leadership, including a 2005 paper titled “Leadership in High Performing Congregations: Uncovering the Secrets of Success.”

Bill Wilson is president of the Center for Congregational Health in Winston-Salem, N.C. He wrote a column for EthicsDaily.com about the importance of rest for everyone, but especially for clergy.

Rae Jean Proeschold-Bell is an assistant professor of health research at Duke University and research director of its Clergy Health Initiative. The program seeks to improve the health of United Methodist clergy in North Carolina and includes a two-year holistic health intervention called Spirited Life.

Maisha Itia Handy is a womanist scholar and assistant professor of Christian education at the Interdenominational Theological Seminary in Atlanta. She is also minister of Christian education at First Iconium Baptist Church in Atlanta.

Hans A. Baer is a professor in the department of sociology and anthropology at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. He wrote The Black Spiritual Movement: A Religious Response to Racism (University of Tennessee Press, 2001) and African American Religion: Varieties of Protest and Accommodation (University of Tennessee Press, 2002).

George Jacobs, a Presbyterian minister, and Gordon Jacobs, his wife, are the founders of the Davidson Clergy Center in Davidson, N.C., which provides programs for clergy experiencing burnout.