The Beatitudes Society Advisory Board

Kat Banakis

Community Connector, St. Luke's Evanston

A founding member of the Beatitudes Society at Yale Divinity School, Kat is a Candidate for Holy Orders in the Episcopal Church.  She is a tentmaker, living out her ministry working in fundraising consulting and at St. Mary's Episcopal Church (Park Ridge, IL).  

Kat began her career as a lobbyist in Washington DC on issues of community development and urban planning.  She holds a Master's of Divinity from Yale Divinity School/ Institute of Sacred Music, a certificate in Anglican Studies from Berkeley Divinity School, and a BA in religious studies, also from Yale.

Diana Butler Bass

Author

Diana Butler Bass is an expert in American religion who works as an author, speaker, and independent scholar. She holds a Ph.D. in religious studies from Duke University and is the author of seven books on American religious practice including Christianity for the Rest of Us, 2006. The Practicing Congregation: Imagining a New Old Church, 2004, has been lauded as one of the most important books on mainline Protestantism in the last two decades.

Diana has taught church history, American religious history, history of Christian thought, religion and politics, and congregational studies. From1995-2000 she wrote a weekly column on American religion for the New York Times Syndicate. She has written widely in the religious press, including Sojourners, Christian Century, Clergy Journal, and Congregations. [top]

Rev. Jennifer Butler

Executive Director, Faith in Public Life

Rev. Jennifer Butler is Executive Director of Faith in Public Life, a strategy center advancing faith in the public square as a positive and unifying force for justice, compassion and the common good. Butler most recently served as the Presbyterian Church (USA) Representative to the United Nations (UN). During her nine years at the UN, Butler represented the denomination on a range of issues, including women’s rights, genocide in the Sudan, and the war in Iraq. Her book Born Again, The Christian Right Globalized (University of Michigan, 2006) explores the  Christian Right’s impact on the global women’s movement through its growing activism at the United Nations and globally. Her work on religion, human rights and politics has been featured in articles in The Nation, Mother Jones, The American Prospect and the Washington Post.  Butler served in the Peace Corps from 1989 to 1991 in a Mayan village in Belize, Central America. A graduate of Princeton Seminary, she holds a Master of Social Work from Rutgers University and Bachelor of Arts from the College of William and Mary. [top]

Alexander Carpenter

Recent GTU graduate; Instructor, Pacific Union College

In 2006, Alexander was a Beatitudes Society Fellow with the Center for American Progress' Faith in Public Life initiative. He worked as the Online Communications Manager for the San Francisco-based The Regeneration Project + Interfaith Power and Light environmental while completing his M.A. in Art and Religion at the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, California. In addition, Alexander runs media projects for Spectrum magazine's blog. A graduate of Andrews University - English Literature and Religion - he's spent a year in Bangladesh assisting with micro-credit projects with Muslim and Hindu women and another year in India working in Bollywood. He lives in Napa, Ca and teaches in the Visual Arts Department at Pacific Union College, Angwin, CA.   [top]

The Rev. Ronald David, M.D.

Chaplain and CPE supervisor, Hospital of the Good Samaritan, Los Angeles, CA

Ronald David is a pediatric neonatologist, Episcopal priest, chaplain, and recently certified Diplomate in CPSP. As a supervisor in clinical pastoral education at the Hospital of the Good Samaritan in Los Angeles, California, he experiences chaplaincy as the perfect melding of clinical theology and medicine. Troubled by the distortions and misunderstandings of theological concepts as represented in medical science and care, Ronald is writing a book on the relationship between health, spirituality, and religion. [top]

Rev. Patricia de Jong

Senior Minister, First Congregational Church of Berkeley, CA

Patricia de Jong has been Senior Minister of First Congregational Church of Berkeley, United Church of Christ, in Berkeley, California since 1994. She was the first woman to be called to that position.

She is a graduate of Western Michigan University and Pacific School of Religion and has served as a Campus Minister at the University of Oregon, the University of California at Berkeley and San Francisco State University. Before coming to Berkeley she served as Minister of Education for Christian Discipleship at The Riverside Church in New York City (1984-88) and as Senior Minister of the Urbandale United Church of Christ in Des Moines, Iowa (1988-94).

At First Congregational, Pat has focused on creating a welcoming community that can respond to the neighborhood, the nation and the world. The church is a vibrant presence in downtown Berkeley with strong connections to the University of California at Berkeley and Pacific School of Religion. She is an avid world traveler and often combines that love with her concerns for peace and social justice which were motivations for recent trips to South Africa and Iran. Pat is married to Sam Keen, a writer and philosopher.  [top]

Rev. James Gertmenian

Senior Minister, Plymouth Congregational Church, Minneapolis
Founder, Plymouth Center for Progressive Christian Faith

Jim Gertmenian is Senior Minister of Plymouth Congregational Church and a founder of the Plymouth Center for Progressive Christian Faith.   His leadership at Plymouth has advanced a nationally recognized progressive Christian pulpit rooted in a vibrant, living congregation.  His vision has led to the creation of the emerging leaders conferences, bringing together seasoned leaders of progressive Christianity with younger seminarians from around the country.  Jim is a graduate of Oberlin College and Union Theological Seminary and has served pastorates in New York, Connecticut and Minnesota.   In Minneapolis he has worked closely with the city’s Mayor, co-chairing a commission of eighty people to formulate a ten-year plan for ending homelessness, and he currently serves on the steering committees of Heading Home Minnesota and Heading Home Hennepin, organizations that address homelessness issues.  He has served for ten years on the Board of United Theological Seminary.   He is a hymn-writer, and several of his works appear in various denominational hymnals. [top]

The Rev. Frances Hall Kieschnick

Founding Director, The Beatitudes Society

Frannie was ordained 23 years ago at All Saints in Pasadena, a church renowned for its prophetic and progressive Beatitudes spirit. Having served at All Saints for five years, she moved to the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband, Michael, to raise their family. She served in various parochial positions, including Interim Rector, for the next 10 years before moving on to found alternative, in formal, interfaith and family friendly congregations within two parish communities. Reaching out to those questioning the relationship between their faith and the rest of their lives, these faith communities ask what it means to be a follower of Jesus in today's world. A graduate of Yale University and the Episcopal Divinity School, Frannie now serves on the Advisory Board of the Yale Divinity School. She is the Founding Director of The Beatitudes Society and parent of two teenagers. [top]

Michael Hall Kieschnick

President and Co-founder, CREDO (formerly Working Assets)

 Michael is the president and a co-founder of Credo (formerly Working Assets), a leading social change business. He also serves on the boards of Sojourners, the League of Conservation Voters Education Fund, and the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center Foundation. He has helped to found a number of organizations, including Dads and Daughters and the Secretary of State Project. In his spare time, he teaches a course on social innovation at Stanford University and plays tennis and basketball with enthusiasm. He has a PhD in Public Policy from Harvard and undergraduate degrees in biology and economics from Stanford. [top]

John Lindner

Director, Department of External Relations, Yale Divinity School

John B. Lindner serves as Director of the Department of External Relations at Yale Divinity School since 2002.  Among the spectrum of his responsibilities, he has given leadership to Reflections magazine, a national publication of theological and ethical inquiry.

A minister in the PCUSA, he spent over a quarter century providing leadership for international, ecumenical/interfaith programs of the PCUSA, the National Council of Churches (NCCCUSA) and the World Council of Churches (WCC).  He served as writer for the NCCCUSA’s Middle East Policy and directed its program of US-USSR Church Relations. He served the WCC as director of planning and development for the Ecumenical Institute at Bossey.

Lindner is co-author of “By Faith: Christian Students Among the Cloud of Witnesses” (1991, Friendship Press) a history of the ecumenical Christian student movement in the US and co-issue editor of a special issue of the journal Theological Education (vol. 34, autumn 1997) on “Ecumenical Formation: A Methodology for a Pluralistic Age.  The Case of the Ecumenical Institute at Bossey”.

Currently, he is active in programs supporting peace initiatives for the Middle East.  He serves as a member of the Leadership Council of Churches for Middle East Peace and on the Executive Committee of A Different Future.  [top]

Iara Peng

Former Director, Young People For
Former Deputy Director, National Programs and Outreach, People for the American Way Foundation

Iara was the director of Young People For, a program of People For the American Way Foundation (PFAWF) that is committed to identifying, engaging and empowering the next generation of young progressive leaders and activists across the country. Before joining Young People For, she was the Executive Director of the Youth Justice Funding Collaborative (YJFC), a nonprofit that supports communications strategies that contribute to real change throughout the country's juvenile justice systems. She is a member of the Board of YJFC. She worked for two years as the Vice President of Doble Research Associates, a public interest consulting firm that researches public opinion and presents a detailed map of how and why people think the way they do about complex public issues. She was also Vice President of Marga, Inc., a consulting firm to nonprofit organizations specializing in strategic planning, board development, fundraising and communications. Iara was a contributing author to A Global Agenda: Issues Before the 57th General Assembly of the United Nations and Education for Civic Engagement in Democracy and has co-authored several publications including Our Nation's Kids: Is Something Wrong and Protecting Our Rights: What Goes on the Internet. Iara holds a Master of Public Administration, with a concentration in nonprofit management, from Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs and a BA in Political Science and Communications from Rollins College.  [top]

Honorary Advisors

Macky Alston, AuburnMedia
Doug Bailey, Wake Forest University School of Divinity
David Batstone, Not for Sale
Sally Bingham, The Regeneration Project
Kim Bobo, Interfaith Worker Justice
Marcus Borg, Canon Theologian, Trinity Episcopal Cathedral Portland
Frederick Borsch, Lutheran Theological Seminary Philadelphia
Michael Christensen, Communities of Shalom Initiative
Marty Coleman, Conscientious Projector
Gary Dorrien, Union Theological Seminary
Eric Elnes, author, The Phoenix Affirmations
Katherine Henderson, Auburn Seminary
Robert Jones, Public Religion Research Institute
Serene Jones, Union Theological Seminary
Harry Knox, Human Rights Campaign
Peter Laarman, Progressive Christians Uniting
Jacqui Lewis, Middle Collegiate Church
Stephen Lewis, The Fund for Theological Education
Brian McLaren, Author
Ellen Ott Marshall, Candler School of Theology
Carol Howard Merritt, God Talk Radio
Jane Olson, Human Rights Watch
Paul Raushenbush, Princeton University
David Schlafer, Homiletical Formation
Timothy Sedgwick, Virginia Theological Seminary
Glen Stassen, Fuller Theological Seminary
Becca Stevens, Thistle Farms; Chaplain, Vanderbilt University
Susan Thistlethwaite, Chicago Theological School