Forrest Harris is director of the Kelly Miller Smith Institute on African-American Church Studies at Vanderbilt University Divinity School in Nashville, Tenn., as well as an associate professor of the practice of ministry. He teaches courses on the theology of ministry in the black church tradition and can discuss liberation theology and social justice.

Stephanie Mitchem is a professor of womanist theology and African-American spirituality at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, S.C. She is the author of Name It and Claim It? Prosperity Preaching in the Black Church (Pilgrim Press, 2006).

Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. is pastor emeritus of Trinity United Church of Christ, a predominantly African-American megachurch in Chicago. He participated in a conference of African-American pastors concerned with the effect of prosperity gospel in their churches. Trinity’s mission statement includes a “disavowal of the pursuit of middleclassness” and commitment to work toward economic parity.

R. Drew Smith is a Baptist minister and professor of urban ministry at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. He has studied and written about black megachurches and has edited four volumes on American religion and public life, including New Day Begun: African American Churches and Civic Culture in Post-Civil Rights America.

Sam Pollard is a professor of film and television at New York University in New York, N.Y. He has produced and directed several documentaries, including one about black preachers for the History Channel.

Milmon F. Harrison is the author of Righteous Riches: The Word of Faith Movement in Contemporary African American Religion (Oxford University Press, 2005). He is an associate professor of African-American and African studies at the University of California, Davis.

Anthea Butler is the Geraldine R. Segal Professor in American Social Thought and chair of religious studies at the University of Pennsylvania. A historian of African American and American religion, she specializes in the history of Pentecostalism and is the author of White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America.

Estrelda Alexander is president of William Seymour College in Bowie, Md., and author of The Women of Azusa Street (The Pilgrim Press, 2005), which explores the major role of women in the birth and success of Pentecostalism, especially among African-Americans.

The Rev. Edward P. Harding Jr. completed a new church start for the Presbyterian Church — Prince George’s Community Church in Springdale, Md., in 2000. He was formerly pastor of the Martin Luther King Jr. Presbyterian Church in Springfield, Mass.