Marcia Y. Riggs is J. Erskine Love Professor of Christian Ethics at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Ga. She wrote Plenty Good Room: Women Versus Male Power in the Black Church (Pilgrim Press, 2003).

Sally Moran of Charleston, S.C., is the author of a 2004 print-on-demand book, Women of the Covenant: The Case for Female Roman Catholic Priests.

The Rev. Frederick W. Schmidt is director of spiritual formation and Anglican studies and an associate professor of Christian spirituality at Southern Methodist University, Dallas. He is the author of A Still Small Voice: Women, Ordination and the Church (Syracuse University Press, 1996).

Paula Nesbitt is a visiting associate professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of Feminization of the Clergy in America: Occupational and Organizational Perspectives (Oxford University Press, 1997).

Kyle Roberts is executive director of the Congregational Library in Boston and the author of Evangelical Gotham: Religion and the Making of New York City, 1783-1860.

Center for Black Women in Church and Society at the Interdenominational Theological Center seeks to enhance the participation and relationship with African American women in church and society.

Patricia M.Y. Chang is a lecturer in the sociology department at Stanford University in Stanford, Calif. She has studied clergy career characteristics and the supply of ordained leadership in some Protestant denominations, and she co-authored Clergy Women: An Uphill Calling.

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.

Read a Guttmacher Institute study published May 28, 2013.