Our Team – The Beatitudes Center for the Nonviolent Jesus

Board of Directors:

Terrence Rynne (Chairperson):

Terrence Rynne is founder of the Center for Peacemaking and instructor of theology at Marquette University. He has a doctorate in theology from Marquette. He is the author of Gandhi and Jesus: The Saving Power of Nonviolence, and Jesus the Peacemaker.

Cathy Crosby:

Cathy Crosby was taught by then Sister Elizabeth McAlister in the early 1970s. She worked with Interfaith Atlanta and as a spiritual director at Ignatius House near Atlanta. She and her husband Frank live in Greensboro, Georgia.

Sharon Halsey-Hoover:

Sharon Halsey-Hoover is a wife, mother, grandmother, great grandmother, and great-great grandmother. She holds a Master’s degree in Counseling and Psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies. She portrays Dorothy Day in a one woman play and helped coordinate Pax Christi Southern California. She and her husband David live in Joplin, Missouri.

Melanie Harris:

Melanie Harris is Professor of Black Feminist and Womanist Theologies jointly appointed with African American Studies at Wake Forest University. She also serves as the Director of Food, Health and Ecological Well Being at Wake Forest University. A graduate of the Harvard Leadership Program, she is the author of Gifts of Virtue: Alice Walker and Womanist Ethics, and Ecowomanism: Earth Honoring Faiths. She is a former broadcast journalist who worked as a news producer for ABC, CBS, and NBC affiliates. Dr. Harris earned her PhD and M.A. degrees from New York’s Union Theological Seminary and her M. Div. from Iliff School of Theology and a B.A. from Spelman College in Atlanta. She and her son John live in North Carolina.

Ray East (Emeritus):

Ray East is a priest of the Diocese of Washington, D.C. where he served for thirty years at St. Theresa of Avila parish, as well as with many national peace and justice church groups. He recently retired and lives in San Diego, California.