Phil Snider is an award-winning author, activist, public theologian, pastor, and teacher. His work has been featured in the Huffington Post, Religion Dispatches, Slate, USA Today, and numerous other local and national media outlets, including NPR affiliates and nationally-syndicated radio and television programming. He is perhaps best known for his speech on equal rights for LGBTQ+ persons, which has been viewed on YouTube over five million times. Phil’s books (as author or editor) include Preaching as Resistance, Justice Calls, Preaching After God, The Hyphenateds, and, with Emily Bowen-Marler, Toward a Hopeful Future (winner of the 2011 Mayflower Award for best book in church and society). Additional forthcoming titles include two volumes (edited with Katharine Sarah Moody) for the series Intersections: Theology and the Church in a World Come of Age. Phil is a pastor at Brentwood Christian Church in Springfield, MO, and he teaches religion at Missouri State University and Drury University.

Richard Becker is an organizer and Kentucky political director for the National Conference of Firemen and Oilers, a union affiliated with Service Employees International Union, one of the nations largest labor unions. In 2017 through 2018 Richard sought the Democratic nomination for state representative in Kentucky’s 35th district in Louisville. Richard is also a writer, with bylines at Vox.com, in these times, labor notes, and other publications, writing about the labor movement and wages.