Valerie Elverton Dixon (Ph.D., Temple University) is an independent scholar who taught Christian Ethics at United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio and at Andover Newton Theological School in Newton Centre, Massachusetts. She is founder of JustPeaceTheory.com and author of Just Peace Theory Book One: Spiritual Morality, Radical Love, and the Public Conversation (iUniverse, 2012). She is a regular contributor to Tikkun Daily at Tikkun.org. She is also a participant in the postdoctoral colloquium at the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.
David P. Gushee (Ph.D., Union Theological Seminary) is Distinguished University Professor of Christian Ethics and Director of the Center for Theology and Public Life at Mercer University. He is the author, co-author, editor or co-editor of 22 books and approximately 150 book chapters, journal articles, and reviews. His most notable books include Righteous Gentiles of the Holocaust (Fortress, 1994/Paragon, 2003); Kingdom Ethics (with Glen Stassen, IVP, 2003/Eerdmans 2016); The Future of Faith in American Politics (Baylor, 2008); Still Christian: Following Jesus Out of American Evangelicalism (Westminster John Knox, 2017); and Moral Leadership for a Divided Age: Fourteen People Who Dared to Change Our World (with Colin Holtz, Brazos, 2018).
Charlene Jin Lee (Ph.D., Union Presbyterian Seminary) is a practical theologian who is attentive to the theo-ethical dimensions of spiritual formation and the sociopolitical contexts of religious education. Her research themes of identity, voice, and context inform her teaching. Jin Lee teaches in the area of spiritual leadership in the Doctor of Ministry program of San Francisco Seminary, where she previously served as Assistant Professor of Christian Education and Director of Student Formation. She is currently discerning a transition to parish ministry. Jin Lee is a mentor for RISE Together Mentorship Network, a nationwide initiative with the Women of Color in Ministry Project. She is a member of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).
Ricardo Levins Morales, “Sisters.” Used by permission.
Peter Paris (Ph.D., University of Chicago) is the Elmer G. Homrighausen Professor of Christian Social Ethics Emeritus at Princeton Theological Seminary. Paris has written and lectured extensively on the spirituality of African peoples on the continent and in the diaspora. Among his published works are Virtues and Values: The African and African American Experience (Fortress, 2004); The Spirituality of African Peoples: The Search for a Common Moral Discourse (Fortress, 1994); Black Religious Leaders: Unity in Diversity (Westminster John Knox, 1991); and The Social Teaching of the Black Churches (Fortress, 1985). He is past president of the American Academy of Religion, the Society of Christian Ethics, the Society for the Study of Black Religion, and the American Theological Society.
Angela Sims (Ph.D., Union Theological Seminary and Presbyterian School of Christian Education) is President of Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School in Rochester, New York. Her research examines connections between faith, race, and violence with specific attention to historical and contemporary ethical implications of lynching and a culture of lynching in the United States. She is the author of Lynched: The Power of Memory in a Culture of Terror (Baylor University Press, 2017); Ethical Complications of Lynching: Ida B. Wells’s Interrogation of American Terror (Palgrave-McMillan, 2010); co-editor with Katie Geneva Cannon and Emilie M. Townes of Womanist Theological Ethics: A Reader (Westminster John Knox Press, 2011); and lead author of Religio-Political Narratives in the United States: From Martin Luther King, Jr. through Jeremiah Wright (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).
Andrew Taylor-Troutman (M.Div., Union Presbyterian Seminary) is poet pastor of Chapel in the Pines Presbyterian Church. He holds masters degrees from Union Presbyterian Seminary and the University of Virginia Charlottesville. He is the author of Take My Hand: A Theological Memoir (Wipf and Stock, 2012); Parable of Parenthood: Interpreting the Gospels with Family (Wipf and Stock, 2014); Earning Innocence: A Novel (Wipf and Stock, 2015); and Gently Between the Words: Essays and Poems (Light Messages, 2019).
Linda E. Thomas (Ph.D., American University) researches, writes, speaks, and teaches about the intersection and mutual influence of culture and religion. Her work is rooted in a womanist perspective. She is particularly focused on the experience of African-American women and is passionate about uncovering and exploring historical and contemporary experiences and ideologies that govern actions, policies, and norms surrounding sex, race and class. She is the author of Under the Canopy: Ritual Process and Spiritual Resilience in South Africa (University of South Carolina Press, 1999) and editor (with Dwight Hopkins) of Walk Together Children: Black and Womanist Theologies (Cascade, 2010) Thomas’s work has taken her to South Africa, Peru, Cuba and Russia.
Emilie M. Townes (Ph.D., Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary/Northwestern University) is Dean and E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Professor of Womanist Ethics and Society at Vanderbilt Divinity School. Townes has been a pioneering scholar in womanist theology, a field of studies in which the historic and current insights of African American women are brought into critical engagement with the traditions of Christian theology. She is the author of Womanist Ethics and the Cultural Production of Evil (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006). Other books include Breaking the Fine Rain of Death: African American Health Care and A Womanist Ethic of Care (Continuum, 1998); In a Blaze of Glory: Womanist Spirituality as Social Witness (Abingdon Press, 1995); and Womanist Justice, Womanist Hope (Scholars, 1993). She co-edited Womanist Theological Ethics: A Reader (Westminster John Knox Press, 2011) with Katie Geneva Cannon and Angela D. Sims.
