Rhonda Mawhood Lee

Priest and author

The Rev. Rhonda Mawhood Lee is a priest, writer and spiritual director currently serving St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Durham, North Carolina. Her most recent book is “Seek and You Will Find: Discovering a Practice of Prayer.”

Assistant Professor of Theological Ethics at Duke Divinity School

Wylin D. Wilson is an assistant professor of theological ethics at Duke Divinity School. Her academic interests include the intersection of religion, gender and bioethics; rural bioethics; and Black church studies. Before joining Duke, she was a teaching faculty member at the Harvard Medical School Center for Bioethics and a senior fellow at the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School.

She formerly served in positions at Tuskegee University, including as associate director of education at the Tuskegee University National Center for Bioethics in Research and Health Care. She is a member of the American Academy of Religion’s Bioethics and Religion program unit steering committee and is the author of “Economic Ethics and the Black Church.”

In addition, she has served as a volunteer spiritual care giver for Somerville-Cambridge Elder Services in Somerville, Massachusetts.

Minister and religious educator

Minister Candace Simpson is a religious educator serving at the Concord Baptist Church of Christ in Brooklyn, NY. She is a graduate of Trinity College and Union Theological Seminary. She also is the voice of the Fish Sandwich Heaven Podcast and lead designer for the Fish Sandwich Heaven website. In the fall of 2022, she will begin PhD studies at Garrett Seminary. It is Candace’s philosophy that heaven is a revolution that must begin here on Earth.

Lead pastor of Abundant Life AME Church

Michael W. Waters is the founder and lead pastor of the Abundant Life African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church in Dallas, Texas. A pastor, professor, national award-winning author, activist and social commentator, he has appeared on ABC Nightline, CBS This Morning, National Public Radio and numerous other media outlets. As a current Emerson Collective Fellow, Waters is researching storytelling as pedagogy for inspiring civic action. You can find him at michaelwwaters.com and in the documentary “Juneteenth: Faith & Freedom.”