Matthew J. Cressler is a writer, independent scholar, and chief of staff of the Corporation for Public Interest Technology. He’s the author of Authentically Black and Truly Catholic: The Rise of Black Catholicism in the Great Migrations and creator of Bad Catholics, Good Trouble, an educational webcomic series. He’s published numerous articles in public-facing magazines and academic journals. His co-reported Religion News Service series “Beyond the Most Segregated Hour” won a Wilbur Award from the Religion Communicators Council. He has two forthcoming books: the co-authored Body & Blood: Catholic Horror in America (NYU Press, 2026) and Catholics and the Making of MAGA (HarperCollins, 2027).

Atalia Omer earned her PhD at Harvard University in 2008. She is a Professor at the University of Notre Dame. Until recently, she served as a senior fellow at Harvard University’s Religion, Conflict, and Peace Initiative. Omer authored Decolonizing Religion and Peacebuilding (Oxford University Press, 2023), When Peace is Not Enough: How the Israeli Peace Camp Thinks about Religion, Nationalism, and Justice (University of Chicago Press, 2015), and Days of Awe: Reimagining Jewishness in Solidarity with Palestinians (University of Chicago Press, 2019). Omer is a co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of Religion, Conflict, and Peacebuilding (Oxford University Press, 2015) and Palestine/Israel Review, centering analysis of power.

Thelathia “Nikki” Young is Vice President for Institutional Equity and Access, Professor of Religion, and Professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies at Haverford College. She received her Ph.D. from the Graduate Division of Religion at Emory University, M.Div. and Th.M. from Candler School of Theology at Emory, and B.A. in biology from UNC-Asheville. Her research focuses on the intersection of ethics, race, gender, and sexuality, and she is interested in the impact of black queerness on moral reasoning. Nikki has published three books: Black Queer Ethics, 2016; (with Barreto and Myers) In Tongues of Mortals and Angels, 2018; and (with Schneider) Queer Soul and Queer Theology, 2021. She is currently working on a book about freedom.