Madelon Maupin
Madelon Maupin holds a Master's degree from San Francisco Theological Seminary, gives lively talks on many Bible books and scriptural subjects, and provides Bible study resources—online courses, workbooks, CDs, and MP3 recordings—on her website, BibleRoads.com. As a cultural historian for Princess Cruises, she has lectured throughout the Mediterranean and the Middle East and led groups of Bible students to Turkey, Greece, Jordan, and Israel. Madelon served on the Board of Trustees for the launch of the New Theological Seminary of the West in Southern California and on the National Ecumenical Team of her church. Even though she has moved to Arizona, she remains an active member of the Southern California Faith and Order Commission. In addition, she has written over 70 articles about the Bible and spirituality, all published in weekly and monthly religious magazines.
Angelique Walker-Smith
Rev. Dr. Angelique Walker-Smith presently serves as the Strategist for Pan African and Orthodox Faith Engagement at Bread for the World in Washington, DC. She brings extensive global, national, and local
experience as a faith and public engagement thought leader, journalist, speaker, broadcaster, scholar, preacher, and author.
Michael R. Fisher, Jr.
Michael R. Fisher Jr., Ph.D. is Assistant Professor in the political economy of race/racism in the Department of African American and African Studies at The Ohio State University. He has research appointments at the Metropolitan Policy Center at American University, the National Initiative of Mixed-Income Communities at Case Western Reserve University, and the Institute for Gender Studies at the University of South Africa. He is also a 2023–25 Public Fellow with the Public Religion Research Institute, a 2023 Pardee RAND Faculty Leader Fellow, and a 2022–23 Public Voices Fellow with the OpEd Project.
Trained as an interdisciplinary scholar, Dr. Fisher’s areas of specialization include race, policy, and socio-economic inequality and race and religion. He is editor of Confronting Racism and White Supremacy in the US: Twenty-First-Century Theological Perspectives (Friendship Press, 2024), an anthology on contemporary issues in the ongoing fight against racial oppression and inequality in the US by scholars of religion, activists, and religious leaders published by Friendship Press. He is currently working on his first monograph, titled Black Community Building: Public Housing Reform and the Promise of an Alternative Model to Mixed-Income Neighborhoods (under contract with Georgetown University Press). The book reorients the debate on public housing reform by arguing that mixed-income housing creation as market-driven urban policy must be abandoned given its disparate impact on Black communities living in high-poverty neighborhoods in U.S. cities.
Dr. Fisher earned his Ph.D. in Religion and African American and Diaspora Studies at Vanderbilt University and is a proud alumnus of Howard University. Before his career as an educator, Dr. Fisher was a public policy advocate on Capitol Hill. His policy portfolio focused on federal social welfare programs addressing poverty. He later transitioned to local politics and public policy when he became the inaugural Director of Advocacy at a nonprofit organization. There he was responsible for the development of the organization’s policy agenda and advocacy strategy for affordable housing creation and the elimination of chronic homelessness in the nation’s capital, working with other activists, agencies, D.C. residents, and elected officials in the process. Currently, he serves as a founding steering committee member of the DC Legacy Project: Barry Farm-Hillsdale, a group dedicated to uplifting the Black-led struggle for land and housing in D.C.
Don Thorsen
Don Thorsen, PhD, is Professor of Theology in the Seminary at Azusa Pacific University. He has degrees from Stanford University, Asbury Theological Seminary, Princeton Theological Seminary, and Drew University. Thorsen has published more than twenty books, along with numerous book chapters and journal articles. He lectures, teaches, and preaches nationally and internationally, and has done so in more than a dozen countries. He works ecumenically with the Wesleyan Holiness Connection and Wesleyan Theological Society, serving on Convening Tables for the National Council of Churches, both with Faith and Order and with Interreligious Dialogue and Collaboration.