Religion Council
The Religion Council consists of thirteen national religious spokespeople committed to equal rights for all Americans. As a group they embody the rich diversity of our faith communities in terms of theology, race, gender, geography and sexual orientation. They provide a prophetic voice on the critical issues affecting the GLBT community from marriage, to adoption, to reclaiming the inclusive foundations of religion.
Rabbi Denise L. Eger
Rabbi Eger is the founding rabbi of Congregation Kol Ami, West Hollywood's Reform Synagogue where she has served since 1992. Eger is President of the Pacific Association of Reform Rabbis and the first female Rabbi to be elected President of the Board of Rabbis of Southern California and is a member of the Human Rights Campaign Religion Council. She was recently named one of the FORWARD 50 by the Jewish Daily Forward national newspaper, as one of North America's most influential rabbis for her work on LGBT equality.
Harry Knox, M.Div.
Harry joined the Human Rights Campaign as the Director of the Religion and Faith Program in July 2005. Under his leadership, the Religion and Faith Program has developed a weekly preaching resource that provides scriptural commentary to ministers and lay people interested in an ecumenical GLBT perspective on the Bible. He has also been instrumental in creating a national network for 22 progressive state clergy coalitions around the country. Harry has been featured on programs as diverse as the Michael Medved Show, BBC News, PBS, NBC and CBS; he has also appeared in national and local newspapers and has co-authored an article on GLBT issues and world religions for Conscience Magazine. Harry is a former licensed pastor of a United Methodist Church in Georgia. He was the recipient of the 2000 Cordle Award for Promotion of God's Diversity and Lancaster Theological Seminary's 2005 Robert V. Moss Medal for Excellence in Ministry.
Rev. Dr. Cynthia H. Love
Rev. Dr. Love (Cindi) is an ordained minister in the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches (MCC) currently serving as Director of Advocacy Services for the West Texas Rehabilitation Center (Shelton Foundation), Founding Director of FAMLO, (http://www.famlo.org/), a nonprofit organization and Minister of Community Services for Exodus Metropolitan Community Church in Abilene, Texas. MCC, in 25 countries and 251 cities in North America, is the largest international ministry serving LGBT people. MCC was founded in 1968 by Rev. Elder Troy Perry as the first fully inclusive Christian church with an outreach to LGBT people. Dr. Love served as Executive Director of Metropolitan Community Churches from January 2005 to May 2009. She brings expertise as a multi-disciplinary leader in a Fortune 500 corporation (NYSE:TTC), as a INC 500 company founder, as an Executive in one of the largest public education systems in Texas and as an author and lecturer, trainer and facilitator. Dr. Love is the author of Would Jesus Discriminate? The 21st Century Question and developer of the multi-national campaign of the same name in behalf of MCC. GO NYC Magazine recently listed her as one of the 100 Women We Love Class of 2006 (out women making a difference across the continent).
Bishop Carlton Pearson
Bishop Pearson is the Senior Interim Minister at Chicago, Illinois’s Christ Universal Temple, a thriving, spirited and progressive New Thought Church that focuses on teaching truth principles that enable you to live a healthier, happier and more prosperous life. Prior to that calling, he founded and was the Senior Minister of New Dimensions Worship Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma for over 30 years. While serving in Oklahoma, Pearson was also the host and overseer of the annual AZUSA Conference, held in Tulsa, for more than 15 years. He has authored a variety of books and booklets, including his latest, The Gospel of Inclusion, and is an award-winning recording artist. He is the founder and President of "World Health and Harmony International," a humanitarian and philanthropic organization, addressing the AIDS epidemic in Africa. Pearson was recently featured as one of BeliefNet's "Most influential African American Clergy” and has appeared on television programs such as “CBS Evening News with Dan Rather,” “BET Tonight with Tavis Smiley,” “BET News,” “The Edge with Paula Zahn” and “Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher.” Recognized as one of “America’s 10 Most Influential Black Ministers” by Gospel Today, Pearson has received several honorary doctoral degrees and sees "Inclusion Consciousness" as a source of world peace, harmonious living and deep awakening for all. He earned his degree in Biblical Literature/English Bible with a minor in Theology/Historical Studies from Oral Roberts University where he has served for 15 years on the Board of Regents.
Rt. Rev. V. Gene Robinson
Rt. Rev. Robinson is the first openly gay bishop in the Episcopalian church, invested as the Ninth Bishop of New Hampshire on March 7th, 2004. In addition to his present ministry, he is the co-author of three AIDS education curricula for youth and adults and has done extensive work on AIDS in the United States and in Africa (Uganda and South Africa). He helped build the Diocese of New Hampshire's close working partnership with the New Hampshire Community Loan Fund, advocated for debt relief for the world's most impoverished nations, and lobbied for socially responsible investment within and beyond the Church. He currently serves on the Board of the New Hampshire Endowment for Health, which works for access to health care for the uninsured. He also serves as a Trustee of the Church Pension Fund.
Rev. Susan Russell
Rev. Canon Russell is the Senior Associate for Pastoral Life at All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena, CA. From 2003 to 2009 she also served as president of Integrity USA, the 30-year old national Episcopal LGBT advocacy organization and convener of “Claiming the Blessing”, a national collaborative ministry focused on the full inclusion of the LGBT baptized into the Episcopal Church. As a result of her tireless advocacy for equal rights, she was named an honorary canon in the Diocese of Los Angeles in the fall of 2009.
Bishop John L. Selders, Jr.
Bishop Selders is an ordained minister serving the United Church of Christ; the organizing pastor of Amistad United Church of Christ, Hartford, CT; Program Coordinator of Zezzo House (an 18-unit housing project) and Lead Principal for The Human Connection Project. In the fall of 2004, he was consecrated to the office of Bishop in the Church of god and set as Presider of a new religious body, The Inter-Denominational Conference of Liberation Congregations and Ministries (ICLCM), an interfaith, ecumenical fellowship of radical inclusivity. He is a teacher, lecturer, workshop leader, an HIV/AIDS educator and activist with numerous citation for his work.
Rev. William G. Sinkford
Rev. Sinkford was elected president of the Unitarian Universalist Association in June 2001. As president of this liberal denomination, he is responsible to the UUA Board of Trustees for administering staff and programs that serve its more than 1,000 member congregations. He also acts as principal spokesperson and minister-at-large for the Association. Prior to becoming the seventh president of the UUA, Sinkford served as the Association's director of Congregational, District and Extension Services. He earned his M.Div. in 1995, and was fellowshipped as a community minister and ordained by his home congregation, First Unitarian Church of Cincinnati, Ohio, in the same year.
Dr. Ken Stone
Dr. Ken Stone is Academic Dean and professor of Bible, Culture, and Hermeneutics at Chicago Theological Seminary. Dr. Stone holds degrees from Lee College (B.A.), Church of God School of Theology (M. Div.), Harvard Divinity School (Th.M.), and Vanderbilt University (M.A., Ph.D.). His scholarship has focused extensively on the relationship between biblical interpretation and matters of gender and sexuality. He is one of the foremost scholars today on the Hebrew Bible and sexuality and is the author of many books, articles and editions including: Practicing Safer Texts: Food, Sex and Bible in Queer Perspective (2005); Sex, Honor and Power in the Deuteronomistic History (1996). He won the 2001 Lambda Literary Award for Queer Commentary and the Hebrew Bible (2001). He is a member of the United Church of Christ.
Rev. Dr. Erin K. Swenson
The Rev. Erin K. Swenson, Th.M., Ph.D., was ordained as Eric Karl Swenson in 1973 by the Presbytery of Atlanta, which was then a part of the southern Presbyterian Church in the United States. Twenty-three years later, after completing a gender transition from male to female, that ordination was sustained by the Presbytery of Greater Atlanta, PCUSA, making Swenson the first known mainstream Protestant minister to transition from male to female while remaining in ordained office. Swenson continues to practice active ministry as a pastoral psychotherapist in Atlanta’s Midtown section, working primarily with individuals and families with gender identity issues. She is past Co-moderator of the National Board of More Light Presbyterians, an organization devoted to the full participation of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people of faith in the life, ministry and witness of the Presbyterian Church (USA), and has served as chair of the Health Ministries Committee and the Committee on Inclusion of the Presbytery of Greater Atlanta. In 1999 Swenson co-founded the Southern Association for Gender Education Inc., a non-profit organization devoted to educating institutions of higher learning, medical associations and practices and faith groups about diversity in gender expression and the place of gender in modern life. Swenson travels nationally presenting to conferences, churches, organizations, seminaries and universities.
Dr. Mary Ann Tolbert
Dr. Tolbert has been the George H. Atkinson Professor of Biblical Studies at Pacific School of Religion since 1994; since 2000 she has also been the Executive Director of PSR's Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies in Religion and Ministry, the first such center established at a seminary or school of religion in the world. Prior to coming to PSR, for fourteen years she was Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at Vanderbilt University Divinity School in Nashville, Tennessee. She received her Ph.D. in Biblical Studies from the University of Chicago.
Rev. Dr. Miguel A. De La Torre
Rev. Dr. De La Torre is associate professor of Social Ethics at Iliff School of Theology and director of Iliff's Justice and Peace Institute in Denver. He has published more than 10 books, including the award-winning Reading the Bible from the Margins (2002), Doing Christian Ethics from the Margins (2004) and Santería: The Beliefs and Rituals of a Growing Religion in America (2003). He has also published several articles, chapters in books and encyclopedia/dictionary entries. Presently he is writing three books, one of which deals with re-imagining Christian sexuality. More on Rev. Dr. De La Torre's work can be found on his website.
Rev. Rebecca Voelkel
Rev. Voekel, an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ, is the Program Director for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force's Institute for Welcoming Resources, a national, ecumenical collaboration of the Welcoming Church Movement. Before coming to the Institute for Welcoming Resources, she served as Interim National Coordinator for the United Church of Christ Coalition for LGBT Concerns, as pastor of Spirit of the Lakes United Church of Christ and as Program Staff for the Center for the Prevention of Sexual and Domestic Violence. She is the author of Preventing Sexual Abuse: A Course of Study for Teenagers (Pilgrim Press, 1996) as well as numerous articles and sermons that have appeared in such journals as Spirit Currents, The Journal of Religion and Abuse, and Parenting for Peace and Justice. She is a graduate of Earlham College and Yale Divinity School and is currently working toward a doctor of ministry at United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities.