Christopher L. Webber, a graduate of Princeton University and the General Theological Seminary in New York, is the author of a number of books ranging from Dear Friends: Letters of St. Paul to Christians in America to The Beowulf Trilogy and American to the Backbone, the biography of fugitive slave and abolitionist, James W.C. Pennington. He has served congregations in New York, Connecticut, and Tokyo, Japan, but recently moved to San Francisco where he is learning about city life after spending 20 years in rural Connecticut.