The Middle Project
A BRIDGE TO SOMEWHERE
Building a Progressive Think/Act Tank
December 7, 2008 | NYC

HOSTS:

Jacqueline Lewis is Senior Minister at Middle Collegiate Church in New York. Lewis is a graduate of Princeton Theological Seminary and received her doctorate from Drew University. Lewis, ordained in the Presbyterian Church (USA), serves on the Multiracial Congregation Task Force of the Reformed Church in America. She is a nationally recognized speaker and preacher on the topics of racial justice and reconciliation. Lewis is Adjunct Professor at The Graduate Theological Union, Wesley Theological Seminary, and at Union Theological Seminary. Lewis has been interviewed on NPR's Weekend Edition and in Forbes Magazine, and is the author of The Power of Stories: A Guide for Leaders in Multi-Racial and Multi-Cultural Congregations.

Ivan Petrella is an Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Miami. A citizen of Argentina, he is the author of Beyond Liberation Theology: a Polemic; The Future of Liberation Theology: an Argument and Manifesto; editor of Latin American Liberation Theology: the Next Generation; co-editor of Theology for Another Possible World; and executive editor, with Marcella Althaus-Reid, of the Reclaiming Liberation Theology book series.
 
 

MODERATOR:

Robert Chase is Director of Intersections, a justice-based global initiative of the Collegiate Church of New York. Previously, Chase served as Director of Communication for the United Church of Christ. He is an award-winning video producer with more than 100 productions to his credit and he has dual standing as an ordained minister in both the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and the United Church of Christ.

PARTICIPANTS:

Maxine Beach is Dean of Drew Theological School. Prior to her tenure at Drew, she was Associate General Secretary of the General Council on Ministries of the United Methodist Church. She also served as Vice President and Chief Academic Officer at United Theological School and was the first director of the Scarritt-Bennett Center.

Shaun Casey was the National Evangelical Outreach Coordinator for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. He is an Associate Professor of Christian Ethics at Wesley Theological Seminary and serves as a consultant to the Project on Religion and Post-Conflict Reconstruction at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He is the author of the forthcoming The Making of a Catholic President: Kennedy vs. Nixon 1960.

Dalton Conley is University Professor of the Social Sciences and Chair of Sociology at New York University. He also holds appointments at NYU's Wagner School of Public Service, as an Adjunct Professor of Community Medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, and as a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. In 2005, Conley became the first sociologist to win the NSF's Alan T. Waterman Award. He is the author of many books, including Being Black, Living in the Red: Race, Wealth, and Social Policy in America; The Pecking Order: A Bold New Look at How Family and Society Determine Who We Become; Honky; and the forthcoming Elsewhere, U.S.A.: How We Got from the Company Man, Family Dinners, and the Affluent Society to the Home Office, BlackBerry Moms, and Economic Anxiety; and You May Ask Yourself: An Introduction to Thinking Like A Sociologist.

Sheila Greeve Davaney is the Program Officer for Religion at the Ford Foundation. She is currently on leave from the Iliff School of Theology, where she has been the Harvey H. Potthoff Professor of Christian Theology. Davaney is the author of Historicism: The Once and Future Challenge for Theology; Pragmatic Historicism: A Theology for the Twenty-First Century; and co-editor of The Pragmatic Century with Warren Frisina; Identity and the Politics of Scholarship in the Study of Religion with Jose Cabezon; and Converging on Culture with Delwin Brown and Kathryn Tanner.

Erica Hunt is President of The Twenty-First Century Foundation. Hunt's professional involvement in philanthropy includes past and present committee service and board leadership of the National Network of Grantmakers, the Association of Black Foundation Executives, the New York Regional Association of Grantmakers and the Southern Funders Group. She is a member of the Board of the National Center for Black Philanthropy, a past fellow in the Duke University/University of Capetown Center for Leadership and Public Values, and is the author of numerous articles on black philanthropy.

Dale T. Irvin is President and Professor of World Christianity at New York Theological Seminary. He is the author of several books, including History of the World Christian Movement with Scott W. Sunquist, and is a frequent writer on topics ranging from the ecumenical movement to global Pentecostalism. An ordained minister in the American Baptist Churches USA, Irvin is a member of The Riverside Church in New York City.

Robert P. Jones is the President of Public Religion Research, a consulting firm advising national advocacy groups. Jones is also a Visiting Fellow in Religion at The Third Way, a progressive think tank, and a regular columnist for the online magazine Religion Dispatches. His firm specializes in research on religion and values, using national public opinion surveys and focus groups, as well as coalition building between progressive political groups and religious communities. Previously, Jones served as an affiliated scholar at the Center for American Progress and as the founding director and senior fellow at the Center for American Values in Public Life at People for the American Way Foundation. Prior to his work in DC, he was assistant professor of religious studies at Missouri State University. He is the author of Progressive & Religious: How Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and Buddhist Leaders are Moving Beyond the Culture Wars and Transforming American Public Life and Liberalism's Troubled Search for Equality: Religion and Cultural Bias in the Oregon Physician-assisted Suicide Debates.

Lyn Pentecost is co-founder and executive editor of the Lower East Side Girl's Club, a youth development and social justice organization. Pentecost received her doctorate from Temple University in urban anthropology and taught for ten years in the Metropolitan Studies Program at New York University. She studied with anthropologist and filmmaker Jean Rouch and conducted fieldwork in Mexico and New York City. Her ethnographic documentary films are in the collections of the New York Public Library, The Museum of Modern Art NYC, The Musee de L'Homme, Paris, the National Museum of Art, Tokyo, and Museo Na Balom in Chiapas, Mexico. Pentecost has served on the boards of several community organizations, among them The Lower Eastside Hispanic Housing Coalition, Children's Liberation Day Care Center, and The Collegiate Church of New York.

Ron Stief is Director of Organizing Strategy at Faith in Public Life. Stief served as Director of the Washington Office United Church of Christ (UCC) where he designed and oversaw the UCC's innovative national civic participation and election program, directed the implementation of state policy campaigns, and was instrumental in building the UCC's successful online advocacy site. Before coming to FPL, Stief was Director of the California Office of People for the American Way and Senior Advisor to the Center for American Values in Public Life.

Peter Teague is Program Director for Environment/Contemplative Practice at the Nathan Cummings Foundation. He served as senior environmental policy advisor to Congressman Leon Panetta, Senator Diane Feinstein, and Senator Barbara Boxer. Teague also worked as Senior Program Officer at the Tides Foundation, where his portfolio included the environment; economic, social and environmental justice; community organizing; gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights; harm reduction; AIDS; and democratic renewal. Before joining the NCF staff, Teague, a former business litigator and Peace Corps volunteer, led the Horizons Foundation, the nation's oldest and largest LGBT community foundation.

Mark Lewis Taylor is Princeton Seminary's Maxwell M. Upson Professor of Theology and Culture. Since 1987, he has studied regularly in Guatemala and Chiapas, Mexico, where he analyzes the cultural and political dynamics of the churches as they move closer to a contextualized Mayan theology that also facilitates resistance to military repression. He is coordinator for Educators for Mumia Abu-Jamal. He is the author of Remembering Esperanza: A Cultural Political Theology for North American Praxis; The Executed God: The Way of the Cross in Lockdown America; and Religion, Politics, and the Christian Right: Post 9/11 Politics and American Empire.

Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite is professor of theology at Chicago Theological Seminary and senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. An ordained minister of the United Church of Christ since 1974, she writes a weekly column for The Washington Post's “On Faith” blog. In addition to her online column, Thistlethwaite is a frequent media commentator on religion and public events.  She has appeared on Nightline and has written editorials that have appeared in the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Sun-Times, and Dallas Morning News. She is the author or editor of thirteen books and has been a translator for two translations of the Bible. Her works include Casting Stones: Prostitution and Liberation in Asia and the United States and The New Testament and Psalms: An Inclusive Translation. She is currently on sabbatical and working on a book called Between the Devil and Politics: Reinventing Religion in American Public Life.

Emilie Townes is President of the American Academy of Religion and Andrew W. Mellon Professor of African American Religion and Theology at Yale University. She is an ordained American Baptist clergywoman and the author of Breaking the Fine Rain of Death: African American Health and a Womanist Ethic of Care; Womanist Justice, Womanist Hope; In a Blaze of Glory: Womanist Spirituality as Social Witness; and Womanist Ethics and the Cultural Production of Evil. She is also the editor of A Troubling in my Soul: Womanist Perspectives on Evil and Suffering and Embracing the Spirit: Womanist Perspectives on Hope, Salvation, and Transformation.

Benjamin Valentin is Professor of Theology and Culture, and Director of the Orlando Costas Latino/a Studies Program at Andover Newton Theological School. He is the author of the award-winning Mapping Public Theology: Beyond Culture, Identity, and Difference; editor of New Horizons in Hispanic/Latino(a) Theology; and co-editor of The Ties that Bind: African-American and Hispanic-American/Latino(a) Theologies in Dialogue; and the forthcoming Creating Ourselves: African Americans and Latino/as, Popular Culture, and Religious Expression.

Mara Vanderslice is the organizing force behind the Matthew 25 Network. Prior to founding Matthew 25, Vanderslice worked with Common Good Strategies, a political consulting firm that worked on connecting elected officials, candidates, and state parties with America's diverse religious communities. CGS worked on numerous successful political campaigns in 2006. Prior to that, Vanderslice was the Director of Religious Outreach for the Kerry-Edwards 2004 campaign. Her work has been profiled in The New York Times, TIME magazine, The Washington Post, and on ABC News, and the Christian Broadcasting Network. Vanderslice has also appeared as a guest on The Colbert Report.

Traci West is Professor of Ethics and African American Studies at Drew University Theological School. She is the author of Disruptive Christian Ethics: When Racism and Women's Lives Matter and Wounds of the Spirit: Black Women, Violence, and Resistance Ethics, and the editor of Our Family Values: Same-Sex Marriage and Religion. She is an ordained elder in the New York Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church and previously served in campus and parish ministry in the Hartford, Connecticut area. She is a member of United Methodists of Color for a Fully Inclusive Church, participated in an interfaith clergy delegation to Baghdad Iraq, and was interviewed in NO!, Aishah Simmons’ documentary on violence against black women.

For more information contact:  kfarrell@middlechurch.org