Advisory Group

Megan Bissell

Executive Director

Future of Faith

Megan Bissell is a sociologist and Executive Director of Future of Faith, where she builds frameworks, shared language, and relational spaces that help people understand social dynamics, institutions, and relationships more clearly. She is the co-creator of Sacred Listening, a theory and practice shaped through real-world projects that centers attention, trust, and lived experience. Megan brings people together across research, practice, and leadership to learn alongside one another through stories, data, and reflection. Her work is grounded in narrative, presence, and care for how people experience the work itself, not just what it produces.

Tricia Bruce

Senior Research Fellow

Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies

Tricia C. Bruce, PhD, is a sociologist of religion, Senior Research Fellow with the Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies, and 2025-2026 Affiliate of the Center for the Study of Religion & Society at the University of Notre Dame. She is the author or editor of Faithful Revolution, Parish and Place, American Parishes, Polarization in the US Catholic Church, and Our Lives, as well as President-Elect of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, Past-President of the Association for the Sociology of Religion, and a papal-appointed consultor to the Synod on Synodality.

Christopher Cantwell

Assistant Professor of History

Loyola University Chicago

Christopher D. Cantwell is an assistant professor of history at Loyola University Chicago where he explores the relationships between religion, memory, and the built environment. His first book, The Gospel According to Frank Wood, considers nostalgia’s centrality to the American evangelical movement, while his public history work partners with congregations in transition to document this moment of religious change. His projects have been funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Academy of Religion, and Freedom’s Frontier National Heritage Area, and have appeared in Religion, Church History, the Public Historian, and The Atlantic. He is currently working on a religious history of birdwatching.

Jonathan Coley

Associate Professor of Sociology

Oklahoma State University

Jonathan S. Coley (Ph.D., Vanderbilt University) is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Oklahoma State University and Editor-in-Chief of The Sociological Quarterly. His research examines religion, social movements, education, and gender and sexuality. His first book, Gay on God’s Campus: Mobilizing for LGBT Equality at Christian Colleges and Universities, was published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2018. His forthcoming co-edited volume, LGBTQ Religious Activism: Rethinking Identity, Faith, and Social Change, is forthcoming from the University of North Carolina Press in 2026.

Sam Kestenbaum

Journalist

Sam is a journalist who covers religion in America for Harper’s Magazine, The New York Times, The Washington Post and other publications. He is a two-time winner of the Wilbur Award for magazine-writing and has earned top prizes from the Religion News Association, the Society for Features Journalism and the American Academy of Religion, where judges called his writing “remarkably fluent and engaging.” The Revealer says, “He has a particular talent for telling stories about complicated people with a kind of lucid nuance.” Longreads calls Sam’s reporting “fascinating… gonzo and empathetic at the same time.”

Jaime Kucinskas

Associate Professor of Sociology

Hamilton College

Jaime Lee Kucinskas is Associate Professor of Sociology at Hamilton College. In her research, she examines the multi-institutional contexts in which people experience spiritual states and meaningfulness, as well as the constitutive institutional conditions under which people engage in moral-sensemaking. She is the author of The Mindful Elite, The Loyalty Trap, and co-editor of Situating Spirituality: Context, Practice and Power. Her work has also been published in journals such as the American Journal of Sociology, the American Sociological Review, the Journal for the Social Scientific Study of Religion, and Sociology of Religion.

Nichole Renée Phillips

Director of Black Church Studies

Candler School of Theology

Dr. Nichole Renée Phillips is the Associate Professor in the Practice of Religion and Society and Director of Black Church Studies at Candler School of Theology, Emory University. A sociologist of religion and public theologian, she is also a Senior Faculty Fellow at Emory University’s Center for Ethics and Associate Faculty in the Emory’s Department of Sociology. Her academic interest in race and religion in U.S. politics and church in American society led to her first monograph, Patriotism Black and White: The Color of American Exceptionalism landing on the Best Sellers List for the Christian ecumenical and flagship magazine of U.S. mainline Protestants, The Christian Century in 2019.

A recipient of numerous recognitions, honors, and awards, Dr. Phillips is preparing for publication the results of her Templeton Religion Trust study on black faith, science and medicine. She was initiated into The Society for the Study of Black Religion (SSBR) in Spring 2018. In 2019, she was inducted into the Martin Luther King, Jr. International College of Ministers and Laity, and as a member of the Collegium of Scholars at Morehouse College.

She received the A.B. from Wellesley College, an M.Div. from Harvard University’s Divinity School, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Religion and Social Sciences with a minor in African American Cultural Studies and History from Vanderbilt University. She also holds an Executive MBA from Emory University, Goizueta Business School.

Michelle Scheidt

Senior Program Officer

Fetzer Institute

Michelle A. Scheidt serves as Senior Program Officer at the Fetzer Institute, whose mission is helping build the spiritual foundation for a loving world. Her current portfolio focuses on working with diverse spiritual leaders to build the nascent field of spiritual innovation. With 30 years in the nonprofit sector, she has experience in spirituality research, group facilitation, program development, nonprofit boards, and pastoral ministry. Michelle holds a Doctorate in Ministry from Chicago Theological Seminary. She is bilingual in Spanish and English and has worked in multicultural settings in the U.S. and Latin America.

Stephanie Spellers

Canon in Residence

St. Bartholomew's Church

The Rev. Canon Stephanie Spellers is a renowned preacher, teacher and leader around progressive Christianity in America. The author of The Church Cracked Open and Radical Welcome, her newest book – Church Tomorrow?: What the 'Nones' and 'Dones' Teach Us About the Future of Faith – wrestles with the decline of traditional religion and the spiritual wisdom of nonreligious young Americans. After nearly a decade overseeing The Episcopal Church's work on evangelism, racial reconciliation, social justice and church planting, she currently serves as Canon in Residence at St. Bartholomew’s Church in New York City. Learn more about her at www.stephaniespellers.com.

Jeremy Winaker

Executive Director

Greater Philly Hillel Network

Rabbi Jeremy Winaker is the Executive Director of the Greater Philly Hillel Network (Philly Hillel). Prior to Philly Hillel, he has served in a variety of Jewish communal roles: as Albert Einstein Academy's Head of School, as University of Delaware Hillel's Senior Jewish Educator, as a pulpit rabbi, and more. A Rabbis Without Borders Fellow, his primary interest is in bringing Jewish Wisdom and people together wherever they may be. Ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, Rabbi Winaker also holds a BA with Honors in Philosophy from Swarthmore College. He lives in Wilmington, DE with his family.

Richard Wood

President

Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies

Richard L. Wood is president of the Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies at the University of Southern California and professor emeritus of sociology at the University of New Mexico. He is the author of dozens of scholarly articles and book chapters on the sociology of religion, social movements, public Catholicism, and democratic theory, many of them focusing on faith-based community organizing. He is the author of Faith in Action: Religion, Race, and Democratic Organizing in America (named best book of 2002 in the sociology of religion by the American Sociological Association) and, with co-author Brad R. Fulton, of A Shared Future: Faith-Based Organizing for Racial Equity and Ethical Democracy (named best book of 2015 by ARNOVA Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Associations), both with the University of Chicago Press. In 2026, Oxford University Press will publish Bridging Social Divides: Increasing Social Cohesion in a Fragmented Society (co-authored with Brad R. Fulton); and Bloomsbury Academic will publish The Common Good in the Age of Artificial Intelligence co-edited with Jonathan Teubner and Ian Corbin. Currently under consideration at presses is Wood’s co-edited volume Understanding Social Movements: A Primer for Practitioners & Scholars on the Role of Spirituality in Movements. Previously, Wood served as president of the Faculty Senate, as senior vice provost, and as interim provost at the University of New Mexico. He serves as co-editor of the book series Cambridge Studies in Social Theory, Religion & Politics at Cambridge University Press.