The Rev. Al Sharpton was a child preacher and was ordained as a minister at age 10. He has been organizing for social justice causes since he was a teenager and has run for U.S. Senate, for mayor of New York and for president of the U.S. He is host of The Al Sharpton Show, a radio talk show. […]

Marilyn J. Keefe is deputy assistant secretary for population affairs in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and directs the Office of Population Affairs in Rockville, Md.

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 […]

Cornel West is the Princeton University Class of 1943 University Professor of Religion. His interests include philosophy of religion and cultural criticism. Among his many books are Race Matters and Democracy Matters. Among courses he teaches is “The Religious Dimensions of Du Bois, Baldwin and Morrison.”

Robert M. Franklin was tenth president of Morehouse College in Atlanta. He was ordained in the Church of God in Christ and worships in several different traditions. He has previously been president of the Interdenominational Theological Center, directed black church studies at Candler School of Theology and has been the Ford Foundation’s program officer, directing grants […]

Katie Geneva Cannon is president of the Society for the Study of Black Religion. She was the first black woman ordained in the United Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), and she is Annie Scales Rogers Professor of Christian Ethics at Union Theological Seminary and Presbyterian School of Christian Education in Richmond, Va. Her areas of expertise are womanist theology, […]

Roshie Bernie Glassman heads the Massachusetts-based Zen Peacemakers. Contact through assistant Rami.

Claude AnShin Thomas is an author, peace activist, Zen monk and Vietnam veteran. In 1994, he founded the Zaltho Foundation, a spiritually based nonprofit committed to ending violence. The foundation, which is based in Fort Walton Beach, Fla., offers mindfulness meditation retreats to veterans and their families to help them deal with the emotional, psychological and […]

Shuja Shafi, a microbiologist at Northwick Park Hospital in Harrow, United Kingdom, is a co-author of the editorial, “Hajj and the Risk of Influenza,” and the letter, “Influenza Vaccine Uptake among British Muslims Attending Hajj, 2005 and 2006,” published in the British Medical Journal, Dec. 9, 2006.