Our Team

President. Naim Stifan Ateek is a Palestinian priest in the Anglican Communion and founder of the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center in Jerusalem. He has been an active leader in the shaping of the Palestinian liberation theology. He was the first to articulate a Palestinian theology of liberation in his book, Justice, and only Justice, a Palestinian Theology of Liberation, laying the foundation of a theology that addresses the conflict over Palestine and explores the political as well as the religious, biblical, and theological dimensions. A former Canon of St. George's Cathedral, Jerusalem, he lectures widely both at home and abroad.

Co-Chair. Rev. Dr. Brian Grieves is the former Director of the Episcopal Church’s Peace and Justice Ministries and has been a key leader in the Episcopal Church’s global peace, justice, and advocacy work for over two decades, serving three presiding bishops.

Co-chair. Saleem Alhabash is an Associate Professor at the Department of Advertising and Public Relations, Michigan State University. Saleem's research focuses on digital persuasion, of changing attitudes and behaviors through digital media. Saleem also teaches courses on consumer behavior, digital media strategies, and research methods, to name a few. He received his MA and PhD degrees from the University of Missouri School of Journalism, and his BA from Birzeit University. Saleem grew up in a Catholic family in Ramallah, Palestine. His research, teaching, and service are largely inspired by social justice. Prior to academia, he worked at the Palestinian Youth Association for Leadership and Rights Activation, where he was managing editor of the first youth newspaper in Palestine and supervised a youth TV program. Saleem believes in the importance of leveraging a multi-pronged approach to telling the Palestinian narrative and motivating actions around the world to realize a just and equitable solution of the conflict. Saleem is married to Dr. Anastasia Kononova, and both have two children, Lily and Basel!

Treasurer. Professor emerita at Case Western Reserve University, Gordon served as senior Fulbright scholar at Birzeit University in Palestine. A lifelong Presbyterian, Gordon is a church elder and serves on several Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) committees. She is a Palestinian-American who experienced, first hand, the 1948 Palestinian Nakba, illustrated in her book, Palestine is Our Home: Voices of Loss, Courage, and Steadfastness. Gordon has also published articles on Palestine in The Electronic Intifada, Mondoweiss, CounterPunch, and Unbound.

Vice Chair. Catherine Anne Nichols is the executive for mission personnel at Common Global Board for World Ministries. She manages and directs all overseas staff, volunteers, and associates. She was the coordinator of the Sabeel International Department in Jerusalem from 2001 to 2008 as an employee of United Church of Christ and the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). She is a walking library of all things Sabeel.

Secretary. Diane Dulin is Secretary of the FOSNA Board. She is a retired United Church of Christ pastor, having served congregations in Oregon and California over 34 years of ministry. Her Palestine justice advocacy has taken place primarily through United Church of Christ auspices. She has also invested efforts in ecumenical and interfaith advocacy through Occupation Free Portland (Oregon), Kairos USA and FOSNA. Diane shares a substantial portion of her justice activism efforts as a joint effort with her husband Thomas Beilman.

Fr. Paul Abernathy is an Orthodox Christian priest and the founding CEO of the Neighborhood Resilience Project. Since 2011, Fr. Paul has labored with his community to address Community Trauma with Trauma Informed Community Development. Under Fr. Paul’s leadership, innovative trauma-informed grass-roots strategies have been developed and implemented to address acute, historical, transgenerational and complex trauma on a community level. Fr. Paul is also an author, and his work has been featured in film as well as local, national, and international media. Fr. Paul is the pastor of St. Moses the Black Orthodox Church, a husband, and father of two children.

He has a B.A. in International Studies from Wheeling Jesuit University and holds a Master in Public and International Affairs from the University of Pittsburgh. He also holds a Master of Divinity from St. Tikhon’s Orthodox Theological Seminary and was selected for Harvard Business School’s Young American Leaders Program. A former Non-Commissioned Officer in the U.S. Army, Father Paul is also a combat veteran of the Iraq War.

Roos is an ordained pastor in the Mennonite Church USA and has served churches in Washington, DC, Maryland, India, and California. He is one of the founders of Sojourners Magazine and served as its publisher and managing director for 27 years.

Thanh Nguyen is a graduating senior at the University of Notre Dame, with bachelors in Political Science and Peace Studies. Before being involved with Sabeel as a summer volunteer, she led organizing efforts on and off campus, mobilizing students in support of Palestinian rights. Alongside her campus advocacy, she also worked for the Telos Group in Washington D.C. and while there, focused on issues of Christian Zionism and the U.S. evangelical community. Thanh's bachelors thesis focused on the evolution of the settler-colonial paradigm in Palestinian discourse and the paradigm's relevance for articulating political visions within religious spaces in Palestine/Israel. Her research and projects have centered on the nexus of religion and peace.

nyle fort is a minister, organizer, and scholar. His work addresses issues of social justice through activist-scholarship, community-based organizing, and large-scale social movements. nyle is an Assistant Professor of African American and African Diaspora Studies at Columbia University.

Marie-Claire Klassen is a PhD student in theology with a focus on morality and ethics. Before coming to Notre Dame to study theology, she completed an MA in Global Studies through the Erasmus Mundus Global Studies program, which provided her the opportunity to study at the University of Vienna (Austria), Roskilde University (Denmark), and Stellenbosch University (South Africa). This sparked her interest in the role religion can play in development and peacebuilding. Currently, her research is focused on the role religion can play in nonviolent resistance and the impact of women in nonviolent liberation movements.

M. Theresa Basile is a co-founder, Communications Director, and Education Chair of United Methodists for Kairos Response (UMKR), an international grassroots church movement working for freedom, justice and equality for all Palestinians and Israelis. A former Steering Committee member of US Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR), she currently moderates an interfaith working group established by USCPR. For over 25 years, Theresa has embraced intersectional justice work among diverse movements and communities, engaging in the ongoing struggles for LGBTQ equality, dismantling structural racism, labor justice, immigration justice, gender equality, indigenous rights, and sustainable environmental policy. Today, she serves in leadership in two such multi-issue organizations: Methodist Federation for Social Action (MFSA) and the Western Methodist Justice Movement (WMJM).

Mary Segall is a registered nurse with graduate degrees in public health, education, and nursing. She taught community health nursing at the graduate level at the University of Colorado and Case Western Reserve University for half of her long career and then worked on improving the quality of health care in the Middle East including the West Bank, Jordan, and Iraq, Southern and Eastern Africa, and Southeast Asia. It was while on a USAID contract based in Ramallah where she witnessed Operation Cast Lead in 2009 that she became a passionate fighter for the rights of Palestinians. She volunteered as a nurse consultant to help the Princess Basma Centre for Children with Disabilities to help them prepare for accreditation by the Joint Commission International in 2014. Upon her return to the United States and moving to Seattle, she joined the Bishop’s Committee for Peace and Justice in the Holy Land. She chaired the Mideast Focus Ministry at St. Mark’s Cathedral for 6 years and co-founded the Kairos Puget Sound Coalition, an affiliate of Kairos-USA, for 6 years. She moved to Pueblo, Colorado in August, 2021, but continues her involvement with advocating for justice for Palestinians.

The Reverend Canon Walter Brownridge is an Episcopal (Anglican) Priest. He is currently serving as Canon to the Ordinary & Canon for Cultural Transformation. A Canon serves on the staff in the office of a Bishop, or the staff of a Cathedral. A Canon to the Ordinary often serves Chief of Staff for the Bishop. In addition to his role as Chief of Staff, Canon Brownridge is responsible for inspiring, forming, and gathering the clergy and laity to become what Martin Luther King described as the Beloved Community in Vermont. This work involves the areas of racial reconciliation and creation care.

Walter has served as a Cathedral Dean at St. Andrew’s Cathedral in Honolulu, Hawaii (2011 – 2016). It was during this time that Walter made his first visit to Jerusalem as part of a delegation of North American Cathedral Deans, at the invitation of the then-Dean of St. George’s Cathedral and now Archbishop Hosam Naoum. Dean Brownridge also served as a Cathedral Canon at St. George’s Cathedral in Cape Town, South Africa. He has been a seminary Associate Dean and Lecturer Missiology, Canon Law and Ethics (focusing on Church and Society, Public Theology).

Fr. Brownridge has long maintained a scholarly and personal interest in political theology and the role of religion and faith-based organizations in public policy. In Honolulu he was elected to serve as President of The Board of Directors of Faith Action for Community Equity (FACE) for 2016 – 17. FACE is Hawaii's faith-based community organizing group. In addition, he maintained an active public ministry of reconciliation as a member of the Hawaii Reconciliation Committee, and globally as a member of the North American Board of the Community of the Cross of Nails based at Coventry Cathedral in Great Britain. In service to the wider Episcopal Church at the national level, Canon Brownridge served as a Deputy to the 78th General Convention in 2015. The Episcopal Peace Fellowship. Fr. Brownridge was a member of the Episcopal Church's National Public Policy Network.

Prior to entering seminary to study for the Episcopal Priesthood, Walter practiced law for ten years serving as a federal prosecutor and in public policy in Washington, D.C. Walter served as Special Counsel and Assistant to a U.S. Senator. Walter served for four years as a Trial Attorney in the Criminal Division of the U.S. Justice Department and later as Executive Assistant to the Mayor of Cleveland, Ohio.

Dean Brownridge is a U.S. Marine Corps veteran, who served as a Lieutenant in the Corps 1979-1982.

While resident in San Francisco, Ben Dinglasan is a student at Bexley Seabury Seminary in Chicago completing their final year of the distance learning Masters of Divinity program as part of the ordination process in the Episcopal Diocese of California. Ben was born in the Philippines and immigrated to the US, settling in New York City with his family. After earning a Bachelor’s degree in Russian from Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, Ben returned to New York and began building a career as a development professional in the nonprofit sector managing grant writing, annual giving, and major donor campaigns for the Alan Guttmacher Institute, the ACLU’s Lesbian & Gay Rights Project, and the Hetrick-Martin Institute. Responding to a call from God to “feed people,” Ben then went to culinary school and worked as a professional pastry chef in New York and in Portland, Maine before discerning a call to feed people’s spirits through ministry in the church. In 2007 they uprooted themselves to move to San Francisco and join the American Province of the Society of Saint Francis (SSF) – a Franciscan religious order in the Anglican Communion. This was a pivotal moment in Ben’s faith journey as they continue to seek peace through authentic relationships grounded in attending to the presence of the Divine made manifest in all of Creation, but most especially in the lives of the marginalized and outcast. As a friar Ben was trained in the art of spiritual direction, which they continue to offer as part of their ministry. Ben left SSF in 2015 and eventually became one of the founding members of the Companions of Dorothy the Worker (CDW), a dispersed international ecumenical religious community that witnesses to God’s love for and within the LGBTQIA+ community. As part of their seminary Field Education for the next year Ben is serving at the Episcopal Church of Saint John the Evangelist in the Mission Neighborhood of San Francisco where he preaches, serves on the altar party, offers pastoral care to the unhoused, and facilitates a weekly Lectio Divina group that meets on Zoom. It was during a trip to Israel/Palestine in January 2023 where they visited the offices of Sabeel that Ben began discerning a call to minister in contexts of conflict, seeking especially to participate in a Christian presence in the region beyond serving as caretakers of pilgrimage sites. Ben is slated to be ordained to the transitional diaconate in December of 2023 and then to the priesthood in June of 2024.