Dr. Carmelo Santos is a theologian whose work bridges biblical scholarship, decolonial thought, and neuroscience. Trained first as a chemist before turning to theology, he brings an unusual interdisciplinary lens to questions of power, embodiment, and liberation. He served on the ELCA's Civic Life and Faith Task Force, helping draft the 2025 social statement Faith and Civic Life: Seeking the Well-Being of All, and has been deeply involved in the multi-year process of communal discernment that produced it. His broader research explores how colonization shapes not only political and economic structures but emotion, perception, and the body itself — drawing on the Latin American concept of sentir-pensar ("to think-feel"), the Hebrew yada, and the wisdom of African and Indigenous traditions to develop a decolonial, embodied theology of healing and justice. He writes and speaks on faith, the brain, and liberation at godandthebrain.com.

Rev. Dr. Laurie Jungling has served the church in nearly every capacity since 1990 — as a parish pastor, seminary and university professor, synod bishop, and now churchwide staff. She pastored a three-point parish in South Dakota and served as an interim pastor in congregations across Montana and Wyoming before completing her Ph.D. in Ethics, Social Theory, and Lutheran Theology. She went on to serve as interim director of the Northern Rockies Institute of Theology and to teach ethics and religion at Augustana University in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. In 2019, she was elected Bishop of the Montana Synod, and she currently serves as Program Director for Theological Discernment at the ELCA Churchwide Office. Her approach to Lutheran ethics centers on a Spirit-driven faith in the transforming power of God's grace to seek, be, and do God's love for all. She lives in Great Falls, Montana.

Dr. Kyle Pasewark holds an M.A. and Ph.D. in Christian Theology from the University of Chicago Divinity School and a J.D. from Yale Law School — a combination that shapes his distinctive work on power. After teaching in liberal arts colleges, he practiced Mergers & Acquisitions law for a decade at Debevoise & Plimpton in New York City, then founded Advise-In Solutions in 2010, advising hundreds of prospective law students on admissions and the LSAT until his retirement from the business in 2024. He is the author of A Theology of Power: Being Beyond Domination and co-author, with Garrett E. Paul, of The Emphatic Christian Center: Reforming Christian Political Practice, along with numerous academic articles and reviews. Pasewark served on the ELCA's Civic Life and Faith Task Force and its writing team, helping produce the 2025 social statement Faith and Civic Life: Seeking the Well-Being of All. He is a founding director of Wyoming Indigenous Scholars, and lives with his spouse, Suzanne, in rural Clark, Wyoming.

Dr. Samantha Bise is a scholar of language, literacy, and religious culture whose work traces how Christian vocabulary — words like Lord, salvation, and Kingdom of God — carries hidden political and social weight. Raised without religion and an atheist through her twenties, she came to faith unexpectedly in her late twenties and found herself baffled by the language surrounding her in the pews. That puzzlement became a research agenda: she earned her doctorate in Literacy, Culture, and Language Education from Indiana University, where her dissertation examined the language of the Genesis creation narratives across Hebrew, Jewish, and Christian interpretive traditions, drawing on interviews with women about how those stories shaped their lives. Her subsequent research turned to the political context of first-century Judaism and the Roman Empire, uncovering the justice-oriented meaning behind language many Christians use without fully understanding. She writes and teaches to reclaim the language of faith from Christian nationalism and patriarchal power, restoring it as a vocabulary of liberation.