Berkley Center

Terrence L. Johnson is a professor of African American religious studies at Harvard Divinity School. He was a senior fellow at the Berkley Center from February to September 2022, after having previously served as a senior research fellow from April 2019 to January 2022. From 2015 to 2022 he was an associate professor of religion and politics at Georgetown University's Department of Government, as well as an affiliate member of the Department of African American Studies and member of the executive committee of the Center for Jewish Civilization. Johnson’s research interests include African American political thought, ethics, American religions, and the role of religion in public life. He is the author of Blacks and Jews in America: An Invitation to Dialogue (2022, with Jacques Berlinerblau); We Testify with Our Lives: How Religion Transformed Radical Thought from Black Power to Black Lives Matter (2021); and Tragic Soul-Life: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Moral Crisis Facing American Democracy (2012). He also serves as co-editor of the Duke University Press Series Religious Cultures of African and African Diaspora People. Johnson holds a B.A. from Morehouse College, an M.Div. from Harvard Divinity School, and a Ph.D. from Brown University.

Rev. Dr. Yolanda Pierce is professor and dean of the Howard University School of Divinity in Washington, D.C. She is a scholar of African-American religious history, womanist theology, African-American literature, and race and religion.

Jalane Schmidt is an associate professor in the University of Virginia’s Department of Religious Studies. Her research and teaching are focused upon African diaspora religions of the Caribbean and Latin America, and particularly festivity and ritual. She teaches courses which consider the effects of colonization and the slave trade upon religious practice in the Americas.

Reverend Jim Wallis is a bestselling author, public theologian, and commentator on religion and public life, faith, and politics who serves as the inaugural Archbishop Desmond Tutu Chair in Faith and Justice and leader of the Center on Faith and Justice in the Georgetown University McCourt School of Public Policy; he has been a research fellow at the Berkley Center since 2010. Wallis is the founder and ambassador of Sojourners, a progressive Christian grassroots movement that advocates spirituality and social change in America. His publications include Christ in Crisis: Why We Need to Reclaim Jesus (2019); America's Original Sin: Racism, White Privilege, and the Bridge to a New America (2016); The (Un)Common Good: How the Gospel Brings Hope to a World Divided (2014); On God's Side: What Religion Forgets and Politics Hasn't Learned about Serving the Common Good (2013); and Rediscovering Values: On Wall Street, Main Street, and Your Street — A Moral Compass for the New Economy (2010).