Robert L. Woodson Sr. is founder and president of the Center for Neighborhood Enterprise (formerly the National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise) in Washington, D.C., which trains and supports community and faith-based programs. Woodson emphasizes self-help, market-oriented solutions to social problems. He is a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship “genius award” recipient and wrote The Triumphs of Joseph: […]

Jeffrey McCune Jr. is an associate professor of women, gender, and sexuality studies, as well as african and african american studies, at Washington University in St. Louis, Mo. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Frederick Douglass Institute for African and African-American Studies at the University of Rochester in New York. He teaches about black masculinity, […]

Leah Gaskin Fitchue, the first woman to be president of a historically black theological seminary, heads the 160-year-old Payne Theological Seminary in Wilberforce, Ohio. The school is affiliated with the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Previously, Fitchue was a consultant in leadership development and organizational and community transformation for church and faith-based organizations. She is also […]

Felicia Dix-Richardson is assistant professor of sociology and criminal justice at Florida A&M University in Tallahassee. She has studied religious conversion in prisons, particularly among African-American women, and is expert on the topics of race, religion and inmate culture.

Michael I.N. Dash is professor of ministry and context at the Interdenominational Theological Center. He co-directed the ITC/Faith Factor Project 2000 study, which focused on African-American congregations and is part of Hartford Seminary’s Faith Communities Today project.

Melissa Harris-Lacewell is the Maya Angelou presidential chair at Wake Forest University. There she is the executive director of the Pro Humanitate Institute and founding director of the Anna Julia Cooper Center. She is the author of Barbershops, Bibles, and BET: Everyday Talk and Black Political Thought (Princeton 2004).

James Abbington is associate professor of music and worship at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology in Atlanta. He wrote Let Mt. Zion Rejoice! Music in the African American Church (Judson Press, 2001).

Wallace D. Best is professor of religion and African-American studies at Princeton University. He has written about storefront churches and other topics concerning black Americans and religion, and he teaches a course titled “The African-American Sacred Music Tradition.”

Mellonee V. Burnim is an associate professor of folklore and ethnomusicology at Indiana University-Bloomington. Her focus is black religious music and aesthetics and music of the African Diaspora.