AFRICAN-AMERICANS
A guide to African-Americans and religion

IN THE NORTHEAST
• Wallace D. Best is associate professor of African-American religious studies at Harvard 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.” Contact 617-384-7287 (office), 617-495-5761 (department), wbest@hds.harvard.edu.
• Cheryl Townsend Gilkes is a professor of sociology and African-American studies at Colby College in Waterville, Maine. She has written widely, including If It Wasn’t for the Women: Black Women’s Experience and Womanist Culture in Church and Community (Orbis Books, 2000). Contact 207-859-4715.
• Cheryl Lynn Greenberg, professor of history at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., writes about 1960s black activism and about black-Jewish relations, including Troubling the Waters: Black-Jewish Relations in the American Century (Princeton University Press, 2006). Contact 860-297-2371, Cheryl.Greenberg@trincoll.edu.
• Eugene F. Rivers 3d is pastor of Pentecostal Azusa Christian Community (affiliated with the Church of God in Christ) in south Boston and president of Ella J. Baker House community organization in the Dorchester Four Corners neighborhood of Boston. Rivers co-founded the clergy-led National Ten Point Leadership Foundation, which is credited with helping to diminish gang violence in Boston and other urban areas. He is also general secretary of the Pan African Charismatic Evangelical Congress, through which African-American churches help African churches with AIDS projects and through which they lobby to affect U.S. foreign policy. Rivers has worked with the White House on faith-based projects. Contact 617-282-6704 or 617-524-4331.
• David W. Wills is Winthrop H. Smith ’16 Professor of American History and American Studies in the religion and black studies departments at Amherst College in Amherst, Mass. He is general editor of “African-American Religion: A Documentary History Project.” Wills is a historian of religion in the U.S. with particular emphasis on African-American religious history. Contact 413-542-8212 (African-American Religion: A Documentary History Project), 413-542-2470 (office), aardoc@amherst.edu.
• William Julius Wilson is Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor at Harvard University. A MacArthur Prize Fellow from 1987 to 1992 and former president of the American Sociological Association, Wilson has said that he looks, in addition to government, to religious organizations to reduce social problems in neighborhoods and to rebuild inner cities. He is known for classics such as The Declining Significance of Race: Blacks and Changing American Institutions (University Of Chicago Press, 1980) and When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor (Vintage, 1997). His expertise is in the areas of civil rights, the inner city, poverty, race, social policy and urban policy. Contact 617-496-4514, bill_wilson@harvard.edu; assistant Edward Walker, 617-496-5612, edward_walker@harvard.edu; or the Kennedy School communications office, 617-495-1115.

IN THE EAST
• David A. Bositis is senior research associate at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a think tank in Washington, D.C., that focuses on public policy issues of concern to African-Americans. He runs the center’s National Opinion Poll, which samples African-Americans as well as the general population. He is a source for statistics on blacks, churches and politics. Contact him through the center’s media office, 202-789-6366, media@jointcenter.org.
• Jo Ann Browning is co-pastor of Ebenezer African Methodist Episcopal Church in Fort Washington, Md. Contact 301-248-8833.
• The Rev. Calvin O. Butts III is head pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, N.Y. Butts chairs the National Black Leadership Commission on AIDS. Contact 212-862-7474.
• James Hal Cone is Charles A. Briggs Distinguished Professor of Systematic Theology at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. (He is on sabbatical during spring semester 2007.) He has written widely on African-Americans, religion and the black theology of liberation. Contact 212-280-1369 (office), 212-662-7100 (department), jcone@uts.columbia.edu.
• The Rev. Suzan Johnson Cook is outgoing president of the Hampton University Ministers’ Conference, one of the largest annual gatherings of black clergy in the country, and a former White House Fellow. She is also senior pastor at the Bronx Christian Fellowship. Contact her in New York City at 212-289-4374 or 212-289-4378, bcfbaptchurch@aol.com.
• Cheryl R. Cooper is executive director of the National Council of Negro Women in Washington, D.C., which seeks to improve the quality of life for African-American women and their families. Contact 202-737-0120.
• The Rev. Floyd Flake is the senior pastor of Greater Allen AME Cathedral of New York in Jamaica, Queens, which has more than 18,000 members and extensive commercial and residential developments. He was a U.S. congressman for 11 years. He is also president of Wilberforce University in Ohio. Contact 718-206-4600.
• The Rev. James A. Forbes Jr. is senior minister of the 2,400-member Riverside Church in New York City and host of the radio program The Time Is Now. Riverside, built in 1927 by John D. Rockefeller and situated on Manhattan’s Upper West Side near Columbia University, calls itself an interdenominational, interracial and international church. It is affiliated with the United Church of Christ and American Baptist Churches. Contact 212-870-6700.
• Debra Y. Fraser-Howze is president and CEO of the National Black Leadership Commission on AIDS. Her professional career has been spent delivering social services to African-American communities. Contact 212-614-0023.
• Eddie Glaude Jr. is associate professor of religion at Princeton University. He is an expert in African-American religious history. Among books he has authored is Exodus! Religion, Race, and Nation in Early 19th Century Black America (University of Chicago Press, 2000), and among courses he teaches are “Black Power and Its Theology of Liberation” and “Religion in Black America: The Twentieth Century.” Contact esglaude@princeton.edu.
• The Rev. William H. Gray III is pastor of Bright Hope Baptist Church in Philadelphia. He was formerly a former U.S. congressman and president of the United Negro College Fund. Contact 215-232-6004.
• Horace L. Griffin, a gay, black Episcopal priest, is the author of Their Own Receive Them Not: African American Lesbians & Gays in Black Churches (Pilgrim Press, 2006), which takes a critical look at homophobia in black churches. Griffin teaches pastoral theology at The General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church in New York City. Contact 201-444-6874, griffin@GTS.edu.
• Barbara Harris is a retired Episcopal bishop. Harris was the first female bishop in the Anglican Communion. She is past president of the Episcopal Urban Caucus and has worked on prisoner issues and in other organizations serving the urban poor. She currently is assisting bishop to Bishop John B. Chane in the Diocese of Washington, D.C. Contact her through assistant Cheryl Wilburn, 202-537-6543, bharris@edow.org.
• Fredrick C. Harris is a political science professor at the University of Rochester, where he directs the Center for the Study of African-American Politics and the Frederick Douglass Institute for African and African-American Studies. Among books he has written are Something Within: Religion in African-American Political Activism (Oxford University Press, 1999) and (with R. Drew Smith) Black Churches and Local Politics: Clergy Influence, Organizational Partnerships, and Civic Empowerment, (Rowman & Littlefield, 2005). Contact 585-275-4735 or 585-273-5346, fredrick.harris@rochester.edu.
• Melissa Harris-Lacewell is associate professor of politics and African American studies at Princeton University and author of Barbershops, Bibles, and BET: Everyday Talk and Black Political Thought (Princeton 2004). Contact 609-258-9171, lacewell@princeton.edu.
• Lawrence H. Mamiya, with the late C. Eric Lincoln, wrote The Black Church in the African American Experience (Duke University Press, 1990), about their survey of some 1,900 ministers and 2,100 churches. Mamiya is professor of religion at Vassar College outside of Poughkeepsie, N.Y. He’s a widely recognized expert on African-American religion in general and on the Nation of Islam. Contact 845-437-5522, mamiya@vassar.edu.
• Bertram L. Melbourne is an ordained minister of the Seventh-day Adventist Church and an associate professor of New Testament language and literature at Howard University School of Divinity. Contact 202-806-0500, bmelbourne@howard.edu.
• Jeffrey McCune is 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 and black sexual politics and he is writing a book about closeted gay black men "on the down low," who live straight lives and see themselves as straight though they have sex with men. Contact 585-273-3804, 585-275-7235, jmccune@mail.rochester.edu.
• Ronald B. Mincy is Maurice V. Russell Professor of Social Policy and Social Work Practice at Columbia University School of Social Work in New York. His work focuses on public policy, family, race, the role of men in poverty and the relationship between marriage and poverty. He coined the term "fragile families." Mincy says that a third of all American children, and 70 percent of African-Americans, are born outside marriage. Contact 212-851-2406, rm905@columbia.edu.
• Brenda Girton-Mitchell, an attorney and a Baptist lay leader, directs the National Council of Churches' public policy program. She is also chaplain to the National Bar Association and is a deacon trustee at the Metropolitan Baptist Church in Washington, D.C. She can discuss the NCC's work on social issues, including marriage, single-parenthood and families. Contact 202-544-2350.
• Albert J. Raboteau is Henry W. Putnam Professor of Religion in the Princeton University religion department. He wrote Slave Religion: The “Invisible Institution” in the Antebellum South (Oxford University Press, 1980). Contact 609-258-2761, raboteau@Princeton.EDU.
• Cheryl J. Sanders is a professor of Christian ethics at Howard University School of Divinity and senior pastor of the Third Street Church of God in Washington, D.C. She has written extensively on race and culture and on the holiness-Pentecostal experience in African-American religion and culture. She can also discuss the tradition of community work among black churches. Contact 202-806-0632, csanders@howard.edu.
• Milton C. Sernett is a history professor in the African-American studies department of Syracuse University. He wrote Bound for the Promised Land: African American Religion and the Great Migration (Duke University Press, 1997) and has co-chaired the American Academy of Religion’s African American Religious History Group. He has retired from teaching. Contact 315-443-9346 or 315-443-4302, mcsernet@syr.edu.
• 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. Sharpton, once entertainer James Brown’s road manager, is known to many as a leader, to others as a divisive critic and to all as a power broker. He wrote Go & Tell the Pharaoh: The Autobiography of Reverend Al Sharpton (Doubleday, 1996). Contact him through Rachel Nordlinger in his media office, 212-876-5444, revalmedia@yahoo.com.
• Harold Dean Trulear, senior pastor of Mount Pleasant Baptist Church in Twin Oaks, Pa., is an expert on religion and social policy. He is associate professor of religious education at Howard University and is ordained in both the Progressive National Baptist Convention and American Baptist Churches in the USA. Contact 202-806-0636, htrulear@howard.edu.
• Ronald Walters is director of the African American Leadership Institute and professor of government and politics at the University of Maryland. He worked on the Public Influences of African American Churches project and has observed that the level of political engagement in African-American churches is extremely high. Contact 301-405-1787, rwalters@academy.umd.edu.
• 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 (Vintage, 1994) and Democracy Matters (Penguin Press, 2004). Among courses he teaches is “The Religious Dimensions of Du Bois, Baldwin and Morrison.” Contact 609-258-0021 (office), 609-258-4482 (department) or email maryannr@princeton.edu.
• 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: How Community Healers are Reviving Our Streets and Neighborhoods (Free Press, 1998). He is knowledgeable about the Bush administration's faith-based initiative. Contact 202-518-6500.

IN THE SOUTHEAST
• 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). Contact 404-712-4602, wabbing@emory.edu.
• Allison Calhoun-Brown is an associate professor of political science and director of graduate studies at Georgia State University. She has written numerous scholarly articles on topics concerning African-Americans and Christianity, evangelicalism, churches and politics. Contact 404-651-4842 (office), 404-651-3152 (department), polacb@panther.gsu.edu.
• 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, women in society and religion and Christian ethics. She wrote the book of essays Katie’s Canon: Womanism and the Soul of the Black Community and Black Womanist Ethics (Continuum International, 1997). Contact 804-355-0671, kcannon@union-psce.edu.
• Christine D. Chapman wrote (with Stephen C. Rasor) Black Power From the Pew: Laity Connecting Congregations and Communities (Pilgrim, 2007). She is an adjunct professor at Georgia State University and at the Interdenominational Theological Center. Contact 404-527-7700.
• Melva Wilson Costen is an authority on music and worship in the black church. She wrote the widely consulted African American Christian Worship (Abingdon Press, 1993) and In Spirit and In Truth: The Music of African American Worship (Westminster, 2004). She recently retired from the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta, where she was Helmar Emil Nielsen Professor of Music and Worship. Contact 404-696-9836, mwcosten@mindspring.com.
• 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. Contact 404-527-7700, mdash@itc.edu.
• 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. Contact 850-599-3316 (office), 850-599-3316 (department).
• Robert Michael Franklin Jr. is Presidential Distinguished Professor of Social Ethics at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology 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 and has been the Ford Foundation’s program officer, directing grants to African-American churches delivering secular social services. He is a frequent commentator and radio and TV guest. Among the books he has written are Crisis in the Village: Restoring Hope to African American Communities (Fortress, February 2007) and Another Day’s Journey: Black Churches Confronting the American Crisis (Fortress, 1997). Contact 404-727-0756, rmfrank@emory.edu.
• Alice M. Graham is professor of pastoral care and counseling at Hood Theological Seminary in Salisbury, N.C. She is an ordained minister in the American Baptist denomination. Among her interests is the subject of the psychological and emotional issues facing inmates released from prison. She teaches a seminar for inmates in a transitional program at North Carolina Department of Corrections' Piedmont Correctional Institute in Salisbury. Contact 704-636-7611.
• Jacquelyn Grant (see her bio at TheHistoryMakers.com) 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 in Atlanta. Contact 404-527-5712, jgrant@itc.edu.
• 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. Contact 404-527-7700, mhandy@itc.edu.
• Laurie F. Maffly-Kipp is an associate professor of religious studies and American studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She has expertise in the historical evidence of African-American religious life. Contact 919-962-3927, Maffly@email.unc.edu.
• Cheryl A. Kirk-Duggan wrote Exorcising Evil: A Womanist Perspective on the Spirituals (Orbis Books, 1997) and Violence and Theology (Abingdon, 2006). She is a professor of theology and women’s studies, and directs the women’s studies program at Shaw University Divinity School in Raleigh, N.C. Contact 919-716-5522, ckirkduggan@shawu.edu.
• Bishop Earl E. McCloud Jr. is ecumenical affairs officer for the African Methodist Episcopal Church. He and leaders of the Interdenominational Theological Center organized a September 2006 meeting of 300 representatives of historic black churches and black Muslim leaders in Atlanta to organize an initiative against “black on black crime” in Atlanta. Contact 770-458-7220, EMccloudjr@aol.com, or reach him through his assistant at wonderingw@aol.com.
• Two leaders, Rudolph McKissick Sr. and his son, Rudolph McKissick Jr., share the role of senior pastor at the 9,000-member Bethel Baptist Institutional Church in Jacksonville, Fla., the oldest Baptist church in the state. The senior McKissick is noted for mentoring younger men and women in the ministry. He has been particularly active in ecumenical and social-service work. The younger McKissick has developed ambitious projects at the church -- including developing a national recording choir and turning a hotel and conference center into the Bethelite Christian Conference Center. He is a national evangelical speaker and an expert in sacred music and opera, and his professional quality recordings are at the forefront of the contemporary gospel business. Hear Pastor McKissick’s hip-hop mix and other gospel cuts. See a list of Bethel’s outreach ministries. Contact 904-354-1464.
• Mozella Gordon Mitchell is a professor and chairwoman of religious studies at the University of South Florida in Tampa. Among her areas of expertise are Afro-Caribbean religions and the history of African-American religion. Contact 813-974-1852, mmitchel@cas.usf.edu.
• Stephanie Y. Mitchem’s books include Introducing Womanist Theology (Orbis Books, 2002) and African American Folk Healing (New York University Press, 2007), and she is working on a book about prosperity preaching in black communities. She is an associate professor with a joint appointment in women’s studies and religious studies at the University of South Carolina in Columbia. She co-edits the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion. Contact 803-777-0408, mitchesy@sc.edu.
• Political scientist Michael Leo Owens has studied black church involvement in government programs. He is an assistant professor in the political science department at Emory University in Atlanta and is working on two books, tentatively titled God and Government in the Ghetto: The Politics of Church-State Collaboration in American Cities and Pulpits and Policy: Changing African American Church Politics. Contact 404-727-9322 (office) or 404-727-6572 (department), mowens4@emory.edu.
• Betty Glover Palmer chairs the department of urban studies at Beulah Heights Bible College in Atlanta, where she also directs the Institute for Urban and Global Economic Development. She works to provide opportunities for urban and global disenfranchised families and communities. She is ordained through the Evangelical Church Alliance. Her B.G. Palmer Economic Development Training consults with and trains faith-based and nonprofit organizations. Contact 404-627-2681 ext. 150, betty.palmer@beulah.org.
• Stephen C. Rasor wrote (with Christine D. Chapman) Black Power from the Pew: Laity Connecting Congregations and Communities (Pilgrim, 2007). Rasor is a professor of sociology of religion at the Interdenominational Theological Center, where he directs the doctor of ministry program. Contact 404-527-7700, scrasor@itc.edu.
• Rosetta E. Ross is an associate professor of religion and chairs the department of philosophy and religious studies at Spelman College in Atlanta. An elder in the United Methodist Church, she writes and lectures widely about African-American religion and is treasurer of the Society for the Study of Black Religion. She is an expert on women in the civil rights movement, and she wrote Witnessing and Testifying: Black Women, Religion, and Civil Rights (Augsburg Fortress, 2003). Contact 404-270-5527, RRoss@spelman.edu.
• Martha Simmons is publisher of the nondenominational preaching and ministry journal The African American Pulpit, and she is an associate minister at Rush Memorial United Church of Christ in Atlanta. Simmons has preached throughout the country for 20 years in a variety of ministerial capacities and has her finger on the pulse of trends, changes and issues in the black Christian world. She invites reporters to consult on story ideas, on finding experts and especially to get help checking the accuracy of their reporting. Simmons is co-editor of The Norton Anthology of African American Preaching: 1650-2005 (W.W. Norton Publishers, fall 2007) and The African American Lectionary Project, through which she, Vanderbilt University’s Kelly Miller Smith Institute, scholars and pastors are assembling the first African-American Lectionary (a selection of scriptural passages for use each Sunday throughout the year), to be published in winter 2007. Contact 800-509-8227, info@theafricanamericanpulpit.com.
• R. Drew Smith directs the Public Influences of African-American Churches Project, which surveyed some 1,900 ministers nationally. He is scholar-in-residence at the Leadership Center at Morehouse College in Atlanta. He is a Baptist minister and political scientist. 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 (Duke University Press, 2003). Contact 404-614-8565, rdsmith@indyweb.net or rsmith@morehouse.edu.
• Ndugu T’Ofori-Atta is professor emeritus of church and society at the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta, where he founded and directs the Religious Heritage of the African World research and advocacy project. Contact 404-527-7756, rhaw@itc.edu.

IN THE SOUTH
• Victor Anderson is associate professor of Christian ethics at Vanderbilt Divinity School. He was ordained in the Christian Reformed Church. His areas of expertise include African-American political theology, 20^th-century ethics, American pragmatism, religion and morality. He wrote Beyond Ontological Blackness: An Essay on African American Religious and Cultural Criticism (Continuum, 1999) and Pragmatic Theology: Negotiating the Intersections of an American Philosophy of Religion and Public Theology (State University of New York Press, 1998). Contact 615-343-3973, victor.anderson@vanderbilt.edu.
• 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). Contact 501-569-3406, habaer@ualr.edu.
• David Chappell is associate professor of history at the University of Arkansas and a historian of the American South, the civil rights movement and race relations in the United States. He is the author of A Stone of Hope: Prophetic Religion and the Death of Jim Crow (University of North Carolina, 2004). Contact 479-575-5888, dchappel@uark.edu.
• Leo Davis Jr. is minister of music at the Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church in Memphis, which is renowned for its gospel music, broadcast on three local radio stations. Davis has a scholarly background in black church worship and can discuss contemporary influences and trends in church music. Contact 901-729-6222 ext. 414, davis.leo@mbccmemphis.org, or contact his assistant, Sharon Smith, ext. 417, smith.sharon@mbccmemphis.org.
• Forrest Harris is director of the Kelly Miller Smith Institute on the African- American Church and assistant professor of the practice of ministry at Vanderbilt Divinity School in Nashville. Contact 615-322-2776, forrest.e.harris@vanderbilt.edu.
• Shayne Lee is assistant professor in the Tulane University sociology department in New Orleans. He is the author of T.D. Jakes: America’s New Preacher (NYU Press, 2005) and has written articles about black Baptists and social action and about women leaders among African-American Baptists. Contact 504-862-3088, slee@tulane.edu.
• Vashti (pronounced “Vasht-eye”) M. McKenzie is bishop of the 13th Episcopal District of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the first woman bishop in the denomination. Formerly a journalist and radio broadcaster, she wrote Not Without a Struggle: Leadership Development for African American Women in Ministry (Pilgrim Press, 1996) and Strength in the Struggle: Leadership Development for Women (Pilgrim Press, 2002). Contact 615-242-6814 or reach her through her husband, Stan McKenzie, 615-403-0143 (mobile), 13th_episcopal@bellsouth.net.
• Houston Bryan Roberson is an associate history professor at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tenn. He teaches courses on the history of African-Americans and religion. Contact 931-598-1232, hroberso@sewanee.edu.
• The Rev. Renita J.Weems is associate professor of Hebrew Bible at Vanderbilt University Divinity School in Nashville and an ordained elder in the African Methodist Episcopal Church who has written extensively on family life, particularly women's, in books, articles and newsletters. Contact 615-343-3987.

IN THE MIDWEST
• Sandra L. Barnes is an associate professor in the department of sociology and anthropology and in the African American Studies and Research Center at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind. Among her research subjects are black church culture and community action, black church social services and gender inclusion in the black church. Contact 765-496-2226, sbarnes@purdue.edu.
• Lorraine Blackman, associate professor at the Indiana University School of Social Work, is director of the African American Family Life Education Program, an educational, research and service project that teaches family life skills. Contact 317-274-6713.
• 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. Contact 812-855-4258 burnim@indiana.edu.
• The Rev. Cyprian Davis is a professor of church history at St. Meinrad School of Theology in St. Meinrad, Ind. He has expertise on African-American Christianity and on blacks and Catholicism. Contact 812-357-6611.
• Quinton Hosford Dixie advised the makers of the PBS series “This Far by Faith” and, with Juan Williams, co-wrote the book of the same title. He also edited (with Cornel West) The Courage to Hope: From Black Suffering to Human Redemption (Beacon Press, 1999). Dixie teaches in the philosophy department of Indiana University-Purdue University, Fort Wayne. He also has expertise in civil rights, and the spirituality of hip-hop. Contact 260-481-5724, dixieq@ipfw.edu.
• 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 the first African-American woman president of the Association of Theological Schools. She belongs to the Christian Community Development Association and the Association of Urban Theological Education & Ministry and is a regent of Northwest Graduate School of the Ministry and International Urban Associates. She is an ordained Itinerant Elder in the AME Church. Contact 937-376-2946.
• The Rev. Jesse Jackson is founder and president of the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, the Chicago organization that works on issues involving economic development and economic justice, health care, voter registration, jobs and peace. Contact 773-373-3366 or through spokeswoman Rashida S. Restaino, 773-256-2718 or 773-791-0014, rrestaino@rainbowpush.org.
• W. Deen Mohammed is spiritual leader of the American Society of Muslims, the largest African-American Muslim organization, with 2.5 million members. The son of the late Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the Nation of Islam, he had a tumultuous relationship with the NOI because of his own inclination toward a more-orthodox Islam. After the 1975 death of his father, Mohammed began steering the organization, now called the American Society of Muslims toward the Sunni Islam practiced in much of the world. Contact him through The Mosque Cares in Calumet City, Ill., 708-798-6750.
• Aldon D. Morris is a professor of sociology and African-American studies at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. His classic book The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement: Black Communities Organizing for Change (Free Press, 1986) examines black church organization and influence on the civil rights movement. Contact 847-491-3448, amorris@northwestern.edu.
• Otis Moss III is pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, which is led by Senior Pastor Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. Moss is known for his ability to speak to young people, extensive theological education and preaching. A poet, he wrote Redemption in a Red Light District: Messages of Hope, Healing, and Empowerment (FOUR-G Publishers, 2000). Contact 773-962-5650.
• Linda E. Thomas, professor of theology and anthropology at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, calls womanist theology an emergent voice of African-American Christian women. Contact 773-256-0778, lthomas@lstc.edu.
• Antonio Tillis teaches a course called "The Black Male" at Purdue University's African American Studies and Research Center, where he is associate professor of Spanish and African American studies. He can discuss cultural, economic, political and social influences on black men in the U.S., including personal relationships, sexuality, self-definition, criminal justice and media representations. Contact 765-494-9754, tillis@purdue.edu.
• The Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. is senior pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, which has grown from 87 to 8,000 members under his leadership. He is a well-known orator and has been active in urging African-American church leaders to work on AIDS issues. Contact him through Kim Dixson, administrative assistant, 773-962-5698, kad400@aol.com; or Ivey Matute, executive secretary, 773-962-5691, Ijm400@aol.com.

IN THE SOUTHWEST
• Frederick M. Denny is a professor of religious studies at the University of Colorado in Boulder. He is an expert on Islam, has written many books, including Muslims in America (Oxford UniversityPress, April 2007), and can discuss Islam in prisons. Contact 303-492-8041, frederick.denny@colorado.edu.
• Karen Baker-Fletcher is an associate professor of systematic theology at Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University. She specializes in womanist theology and is the co-author of My Sister, My Brother: Womanist and Xodus God-Talk (Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2002). Contact 214-768-3801, kbakerfl@smu.edu.
• The Rev. Kirbyjon Caldwell gave the benediction during President George W. Bush’s inauguration and is known as an adviser to Bush. He is senior pastor of the 15,000-member Windsor Village United Methodist Church in Houston, known for its extensive and innovative outreach to the community. Contact 713-723-8187.
• Mark Alan Chaves is a professor and head of the sociology department at the University of Arizona in Tucson. His 1998 National Congregations Study sampled 1,236 congregations. He wrote Ordaining Women: Culture and Conflict in Religious Organizations (Harvard University Press, 1997) and Congregations in America (Harvard University Press, 2004). Contact 520-626-2560, mchaves@u.arizona.edu.
• Evangelical speaker and minister Claudette Anderson Copeland founded New Creation Christian Fellowship and Destiny Ministries for women. She wrote Stories From Inner Space: Confessions of a Preacher Woman and Other Tales (Red Nail Press, 2003) and Coming Through the Darkness: Cancer and One Woman’s Journey to Wholeness (Destiny Press, 2000). Contact her at her San Antonio-based organization through administrative assistant Denise Campbell, 210-389-4752, or through Clara Mitchell, Destiny Ministries executive director, 210-637-6394 ext. 105 (office), 210-316-4410 (mobile), clara@destinyministries.org.
• Michael O. Emerson is director of the Center on Race, Religion and Urban Life and is a sociology professor at Rice University in Houston. He has written several books on race and religion, including People of the Dream: Multiracial Congregations in the United States (Princeton University Press, 2006) and Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America (Oxford University Press, 2000). Contact 713-348-4448, moe@rice.edu.
• Bishop T.D. Jakes founded the 28,000-member Potter’s House church in Dallas. His immense popularity is fueled by his stadium-sized conferences for women and men, best-selling books, Grammy-award-winning CDs, movies and plays, prison ministry, his preaching and the extensive outreach programs of his Pentecostal church. In a Sept. 17, 2001, cover story, Time magazine wondered, “Is this man the next Billy Graham?” Contact 214-331-0954.
• Stacey Floyd-Thomas is an associate professor of ethics and black church studies at Brite Divinity School at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth. She is founder and executive director of the Black Religious Scholars Group and a second-generation womanist scholar. Contact 817-257-7140, s.floyd-thomas@tcu.edu.
• 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 (University of North Carolina Press, 2006) and (with Philip Goff) The Columbia Documentary History of Religion in America Since 1945 (Columbia University Press, 2005). He is working on a history of religion, race and American ideas of freedom. Contact 719-262-4078, pharvey@uccs.edu.
• Frederick D. Haynes III is pastor of the 8,000-member Friendship West Baptist Church in Dallas and a proponent of faith-based community development. Contact 972-228-5200.
• Byron R. Johnson is a criminologist who studies religion, race, delinquency and criminal justice. He is a professor in the sociology department of Baylor University in Waco, Texas. He is co-director of the Baylor Institute for Studies of Religion there. Contact 254-710-7555, BR_Johnson@baylor.edu.
• The Rev. Sheron Patterson is senior pastor of Highland Hills United Methodist Church in Dallas, host of a nationally syndicated radio program on Christian relationships and the author of numerous books. Contact 972-225-1096, revscp@highlandhillsumc.org.
• Anthony B. Pinn is the Agnes Cullen Arnold Professor of Humanities and professor of religious studies at Rice University in Houston. He is also executive director of the Society for the Study of Black Religion, and he co-chairs the American Academy of Religion’s Black Theology Group. He wrote Terror and Triumph: The Nature of Black Religion (Fortress, 2003) and numerous other books about African-American religion. Pinn has expressed skepticism of the effectiveness of megachurches because of their scale and because the “prosperity gospel” is preached in some black megachurches, which he says de-emphasizes community service and charity. Contact 713-348-2710, pinn@rice.edu.
• Theodore Walker Jr. is associate professor of ethics and society at Southern Methodist University's Perkins School of Theology. Contact 214-768-2446, twalker@smu.edu.

IN THE WEST/NORTHWEST
• Clayborne Carson is a Stanford University history professor and founding director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute. Contact 650-723-2092 or 650-725-8828, ccarson@stanford.edu.
• James N. Gregory is a history professor at the University of Washington and director of the Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project. Among books he has written is The Southern Diaspora: How the Great Migrations of Black and White Southerners Transformed America (The University of North Carolina Press, 2006). Contact 206-543-7792, gregoryj@u.washington.edu.
• Charlyn M. Singleton is president of God’s Woman Conferences, based in Rialto, Calif. She is a motivational and revival speaker, working with youth, women and men at conferences, marriage events, retreats, workshops and worship services. Contact 909-421-2040, godswoman@aol.com.
• Cecil Williams has been the pastor of the 7,000-member Glide Memorial United Methodist Church, in San Francisco’s gritty Tenderloin district since 1963. He is a spiritual, political and social force in the Bay Area, and the church is a leading voice in promoting diversity of all sorts, social activism and community programs. Contact 415-674-6100.
• Vincent Wimbush is a religion professor at Claremont Graduate University. He also directs the Institute for Signifying Scriptures in Claremont, Calif. His three-year “African Americans and the Bible” research project was funded by the Ford Foundation and the Lilly Endowment. Contact 909-607-9676 (office), 909-621-8085 (department), Vincent.Wimbush@cgu.edu.