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Diane Winston, the Knight Chair in Media and Religion at the Annenberg School of the University of Southern California, is a Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist, author, and columnist. She has authored and edited numerous books on the connection between religion, media, American history, and politics, including Righting the American Dream: How the Media Mainstreamed Reagan’s Evangelical Vision, Red-Hot and Righteous: The Urban Religion of the Salvation Army, Religion and Reality TV: Faith in Late Capitalism, and The Oxford Handbook of Religion and the News Media. Between 1983 and 1995, Winston covered religion for the Raleigh News and Observer, Dallas Times Herald, and Baltimore Sun. Diane holds a Master of Theological Studies from the Harvard Divinity School, an MS in Journalism from Columbia University, and a PhD in Religion from Princeton University.
Richard Parker is an Oxford-trained economist who has taught at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government since 1993. His most recent book is an award-winning intellectual biography of John Kenneth Galbraith. He co-founded the magazine Mother Jones and sits on the board of The Nation and the Journal of Post-Keynesian Economics. He created for Sen. Edward Kennedy the country’s first major liberal PAC, The Fund for a Democratic Majority; served as president of Americans for Democratic Action; built Greenpeace USA from 2,000 to 600,000 members; and with Norman Lear created People for the American Way. His interest in religion stems from his upbringing as the son of an Episcopal clergyman, his 19th century abolitionist ancestor the Rev. Theodore Parker, and his personal and intellectual navigation of not just contemporary American politics and religion but marriage to a Jewish-Catholic wife. He has taught for many years an award-winning Harvard course, “Religion and Politics in America”, and served as advisor to the Episcopal House of Bishops on the Millennium Development Goals.