June 28
Sharon White
(Nondenominational) is tenant services coordinator for Housing + Solutions in Brooklyn. The agency provides supervised permanent housing for chronically homeless women and their children. Previously program manager at Exodus Transitional Community in Manhattan, she spent 11 years in Bedford Hills Correctional Facility before being released in 2005. She is a trustee of New Jerusalem Church, a nondenominational congregation in the Bronx.
July 4
Lay-Led Service
July 12
Imam Shamsi Ali
(Sunni Muslim) is the acting imam at The Islamic Cultural Center of New York and director of the Jamaica Muslim Center in Queens. Also chairman of Masjid Al-Hikmah in Queens, he leads the city’s annual Muslim Day Parade. He was appointed “Ambassador for Peace” by the International Religious Federation in 2002 and chosen one of the seven most influential religious leaders in New York City by New York Magazine in 2006. He participated in the International Conference of Imams and Rabbis for Peace in Seville in 2006 and in an interfaith dialogue at the White House that same year. In cooperation with the Foundation of Ethnic Understanding, he organized an Imams and Rabbis National Summit in New York last year and recently took part in a transatlantic dialogue in Frankfurt, Germany. He is the author of several second books, including Young Preacher in New York City (2007) and The True Love in America (2009).
July 19
The Reverend Dana Fenton
(American Baptist) teaches sociology at Lehman College. She earned M.Div. and M.Phil. degrees at Union Theological Seminary and has an M.Phil. in sociology from the CUNY Graduate Center. Her research is on the crisis in the Anglican Communion. She is a former pastor of churches in Long Beach and Queens.
July 26
The Reverend Vincent Corso
(Roman Catholic) is manager of spiritual care and bereavement services at Hospice Care of the Visiting Nurse Service of New York. A member of Celibacy Is the Issue, a consortium of married Roman Catholic clergy, he received an M.Div. degree from St. Anthony on Hudson and an M.S.W. from Syracuse University.
