Victoria Barnett is Staff Director of Church Relations at the U. S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and one of the general editors of the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works English Edition, published by Fortress Press. She has written and lectured extensively on the history of the churches during the Holocaust, and is the author of For the Soul of the People: Protestant Protest Against Hitler (Oxford University Press, 1992) and Bystanders: Conscience and Complicity during the Holocaust (Greenwood Press, 1999), and the editor and translator of the new revised edition of Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography, by Eberhard Bethge, (Fortress Press, 2000) and And the witnesses were silent: the Confessing Church and the Jews, by Wolfgang Gerlach (University of Nebraska Press, 2000). She is also the author of the essay on Bonhoeffer on the U. S. Holocaust Memorial Museum website. Barnett is a doctoral candidate at the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, George Mason University.
Tim Clayton is founder and former pastor of the Eleuthero Community, a small Christian community in the Portland, Maine, area focused on the issues of Christian life and faith as they nexus with care for the earth and the poor. Tim is now Assistant Rector at Saint John’s Episcopal Church in Charlotte, NC, with focus in the areas of outreach and education. Tim has led Christian service-learning opportunities relative to environmental or poverty issues in about a dozen countries on five continents, and spiritual pilgrimages to early Celtic Christian and mediaeval Christian sites in the UK. Along with Cheryl, his wife, and their three children, the Claytons are trying to figure out how to live in suburban-laden, unplanned-growth-bursting Charlotte in a manner in keeping with their faith and ethical convictions.
Christian Collins Winn is assistant professor of Historical and Systematic Theology, with special interest in post-Reformation and Modern Theology. His most recently edited the publication, From the Margins: A Celebration of the Theological Work of Donald W. Dayton ( Eugene , OR : Pickwick Press, 2007). Two further publications are due out this year: “Jesus is Victor!” The Significance of the Blumhardts for the Theology of Karl Barth ( Eugene , OR : Pickwick Press, forthcoming 2008), and, Johann Christoph Blumhardt: An Account of His Life , edited by Christian T. Collins Winn and Charles Moore ( Eugene , OR : Wipf & Stock, forthcoming). Winn is conference co-coordinator for the 2009 conference "The Pietist Impulse in Christianity," to be held at Bethel University in March 2009. He is currently working on articles exploring the theology of Karl Barth, the relevance of pietism in contemporary pneumatology and political theology, and the interconnection between the kingdom of God and political theology.
Valerie Cooper has been assistant professor of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia since the fall of 2005. She is currently revising a book manuscript, Word, Like Fire: Maria Stewart, the Bible, and the Rhetoric of African American Rights, which analyzes the use of scripture in the thought of Maria Stewart, a pioneering nineteenth century African American political speaker. This fall, she will continue research on a new book project investigating efforts at racial reconciliation among Evangelical Christians. Dr. Cooper has published articles in The Journal of Religious Thought, and in Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Her essay, “Some Place to Cry: Jephthah’s Daughter and the Double Dilemma of Black Women in America,” was recently published in Pregnant Passion: Gender, Sex, and Violence in the Bible. Her scholarly interests include African American Religious History, African American Women’s History, African American Biblical Appropriation and Hermeneutics, Pentecostalism, and Evangelicalism. She is particularly interested in recovering and remembering the life stories of ordinary black men and women of faith.
Susan Glisson, Director of the William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation at the University of Mississippi, is a native of Evans, Georgia. Glisson was assistant director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at UM from 1998 to 2002. She specializes in the history of race and religion in the United States, especially in the black struggle for freedom. In 1998, Glisson coordinated the only deep-South public forum for President Clinton's One America, an Initiative on Race, which led to the creation of the Institute for Racial Reconciliation. Glisson was appointed director of the William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation in November 2002. She has directed community projects throughout the state for the Institute since its inception. Glisson is the co-author of, First Freedoms: A Documentary History of First Amendment Rights in America (2006), and she edited, The Human Tradition in the Civil Rights Movement (2006). She is a contributor to the Encyclopedia of U.S. Labor and Working Class History and is the editor and contributor to The Wellspring, the newsletter of the Winter Institute. Glisson is also a Salzburg Fellow.
Johnny Hill currently teaches theology at the Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Kentucky. A deep interest in the work of social justice and reconciliation has led Dr. Hill to participate in many projects aimed at fostering more intercultural and inter-religious conversation, community renewal and reform, and multicultural awareness. Throughout his academic studies, Dr. Hill has also served the church. Since 2003, Dr. Hill, an ordained American Baptist, has served as an assistant pastor at Second Baptist Church, an urban congregation in the heart of Evanston, outside Chicago. His recent publications include: The Theology of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Desmond Mpilo Tutu (New York , NY: Palgrave MacMillan, 2007) in the series on Black religion/Womanist Thought/Social Justice and Multidimensional Ministry to Today's Black Family (Valley Forge, PA: Judson Press, 2007). He is co-chair of the Consultation for the Theology of Martin Luther King, Jr. with the American Academy of Religion. Dr. Hill also recently co-founded the Foundation for Reconciliation and Dialogue with renowned theologian J. Deotis Roberts, where he currently serves as president.
Josh Kaufman-Horner is one of the founders of Mission Year. As Oakland’s City Director from 1997 to 2006 he initiated and nurtured nearly 30 year-long intentional communities. Josh began working in urban Oakland in 1987 when he joined a recovery community as a counselor, and in 1996 was the founding pastor of a still thriving intentional community in inner-city Oakland. For 13 years Josh served as a community college counselor for low-income students at Merritt College. While an undergraduate at Eastern University Josh successfully led a student movement urging socially responsible investment of the school’s endowment. Josh’s partnerships with Tony Campolo (EAPE) and Ron Sider (Evangelicals for Social Action) led to work, interreligious dialogue, and travel throughout Eastern Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. In 2006 Josh, Annette, and their daughter Emma relocated to Charlottesville, where he became Mission Year’s Pastoral Advisor providing support to City Directors regarding the health of our communities. Josh is also a graduate student at the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding at Eastern Mennonite University and the co-founder, and interim coordinator, of the Freedom from Fear initiative. He and his family attend Charlottesville Mennonite Church, and they are also part of a small intergenerational, interracial community in Charlottesville.
Charles Marsh is professor of Religious and Theological Studies at the University of Virginia and Director of the Project on Lived Theology. His books include Reclaiming Dietrich Bonhoeffer: The Promise of His Theology (Oxford, 1994), God's Long Summer: Stories of Faith and Civil Rights (Princeton, 1997), his memoir, The Last Days: A Son's Story of Sin and Segregation at the Dawn of a New South (Basic, 2001), The Beloved Community: How Faith Shapes Social Justice, from the Civil Rights Movement to Today (Basic, 2005), and his most recent book, Wayward Christian Soldiers: Freeing the Gospel from Political Captivity (Oxford, June 2007). Marsh is currently in the early stages of writing a new biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. This will be first major trade biography in several decades of the German theologian and dissident. The book will be published by Knopf. He is also co-authoring a book with John M. Perkins titled Building Beloved Communities: The Witness of Peace and the Practices of Mercy in Post-Civil Rights America, to be published in Fall 2008 by Intervarsity Press. The book is based on lectures by Marsh and Perkins at the Teaching Communities Conference at the Duke Divinity School Center for Reconciliation.
Charles Mathewes is associate professor of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia where he teaches religious ethics and religious thought. Educated at Georgetown University and the University of Chicago, he is the author of Evil and the Augustinian Tradition and A Theology of Public Life, both with Cambridge University Press. He is also Associate Editor of the forthcoming third edition of the Westminster Dictionary of Christian Ethics, and has edited several other volumes. In 2003 at the age of 34 he was appointed Editor of The Journal of the American Academy of Religion, the flagship journal in the field of religious studies, and is the youngest editor ever of that journal. He is currently completing two books: one on comparative religious ethics, and one about an Augustinian response to 9/11 and everything after.
Eugene McCarraher is associate professor of Humanities and Director of the Liberal Studies Program at Villanova University. Trained as a historian, his research interests have branched out to cover cultural and intellectual history, theology, and economics. He is the author of Christian Critics: Religion and the Impasse in Modern American Social Thought, published by Cornell University Press in 2000. He has also taught in the history or religion departments at Rutgers, the University of Delaware, and Princeton. His scholarly articles have appeared in Modern Theology, the Journal of the Historical Society, and Religion and American Culture. He has also written for Commonweal, Books and Culture, In These Times, the Nation, the Hedgehog Review, the ChicagoTribune, and the L. A. Weekly. He has been a fellow of the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Council of Learned Societies. He is completing a cultural history of corporate business, tentatively entitled The Enchantments of Mammon: Corporate Capitalism and the American Moral Imagination.
Rhonda Miska has served as the Social Justice Minister/Hispanic Ministry Coordinator at the Roman Catholic Church of the Incarnation in Charlottesville since 2004. At Incarnation, she has been active in the creation of IMPACT, a congregation-based community organization, and in the creation of Creciendo Juntos, a network for service providers working with Latino immigrants. She also oversees social justice education, and justice and charity projects such as hosting the homeless through PACEM and promoting fair trade through an alternative gift-giving fair. Rhonda is an extended community member at the Little Flower Catholic Worker Farm. Previous to moving to Charlottesville, she served as a Jesuit Volunteer in Cusmapa, Nicaragua for two years. Rhonda has an undergraduate degree from the University of Wisconsin, and is working on a masters' degree in pastoral ministry through Boston College's Institute of Religious Education and Pastoral Ministry.
Rydell Payne has been the Executive Director of Charlottesville Abundant Life Ministries since September 1999 when he brought a wealth of new ideas and energy to Abundant Life. Rydell and his wife, Hope, have three small boys and are members of Christ Community Church. Rydell has a passion for seeing the Body of Christ "unleashed" in ministry in the local community and has a heart for the poor and needy. Prior to working for Abundant Life, Rydell served at-risk youth at the Charlottesville’s Community Attention program for twelve years. He is a former board member of Love, INC and a graduate of JMU (and of Fluvanna County High School).
Gerald W. Schlabach is associate professor of Theology and Director of Justice and Peace Studies at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota. During much of the 1980s Professor Schlabach worked with Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) in Nicaragua and Honduras on church-related peace and justice assignments. Together with Philip McManus he also edited, Relentless Persistence: Nonviolent Action in Latin America (New Society Publishers, 1991), and contributed two chapters to that volume. While Professor Schlabach’s interests continue to range widely in issues of peacemaking, social justice, globalization, and the integrity of traditional communities, a unifying theme in his work is his concern to link Christian social ethics with ecclesiology and missiology. His critical appropriation of Augustinian thought is reflected in his book, For the Joy Set Before Us: Augustine and Self-Denying Love ( University of Notre Dame Press, 2001). Recently, together with Duane Friesen, he co-edited, At Peace and Unafraid: Public Order, Security, and the Wisdom of the Cross (Herald Press, 2006). He is lead author and editor of, Just Policing, Not War: An Alternative Response to World Violence (Liturgical Press, 2007). Schlabach is co-founder of Bridgefolk, a movement for grassroots dialogue and unity between Mennonites and Roman Catholics. He has also moderated the Mennonite-Catholic Theological Colloquium, and is a member at large on the Peace Committee of Mennonite Central Committee. At Pentecost 2004 he was received into the Roman Catholic Church, and maintains associate membership at Faith Mennonite Church in Minneapolis.
Manuel Vásquez is associate professor of religion and Latin American/Latino studies at the University of Florida , Gainesville . He received his Ph.D. in religion from Temple University in 1994. His first book, The Brazilian Popular Church and the Crisis of Modernity, which was published by Cambridge University Press, received the 1998 award for excellence in the descriptive-analytical category from the American Academy of Religion. His most recent publications include, Latin American Religions: Histories and Documents in Context (NYU 2008), co-authored with Anna Peterson, Globalizing the Sacred: Religion across the Americas, (Rutgers 2003), which he co-authored with Marie Friedmann Marquardt, and a co-edited volume entitled, Immigrant Faiths: Transforming Religion in America (AltaMira 2005). He is currently co-directing "Latin American Immigrants in the New South: Religion and the Politics of Encounter," a multi-year interdisciplinary research project focusing on inter-ethnic relations in new immigrant destinations, which is supported by the Ford Foundation.
Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove is an author, preacher, and new monastic. A native of North Carolina, he is a graduate of Eastern University and Duke Divinity School. Jonathan is an Associate Minister at the historically black St. Johns Baptist Church, and is engaged in peacemaking and reconciliation efforts in Durham, North Carolina. The Rutba House, where Jonathan lives with his wife Leah, their son JaiMichael, and other friends, is a new monastic community that prays, eats, and lives together, welcoming neighbors and the homeless. Jonathan is the author of Free to be Bound: Church Beyond the Color Line, New Monasticism: What it Has to Say to Today’s Church, Becoming the Answer to Our Prayers: Prayer for Ordinary Radicals, and To Baghdad and Beyond: How I Got Born Again in Babylon.
Craig Wong currently serves as Executive Director of Grace Urban Ministries (GUM), a congregation-based ministry nonprofit founded by Grace Fellowship Community Church in San Francisco’s Mission District. Born and raised in the Bay Area, he graduated from UC Berkeley in 1984 and served for seven years with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. After a few years working for an environmental consulting firm, Craig joined the staff of GFCC in 1994 and founded GUM a couple years later. He also serves on the board of the Christian Community Development Association, and as a columnist for Evangelicals for Social Action’s PRISM magazine. Craig and his wife Tina are the busy but grateful parents of four budding disciples, Jeremy, Kiana, Jacob and Kirby.