Pulpit is a speakers' stand in a church. In many Christian churches, there are two speakers' stands at the front of the church. Typically, the one on the left (as viewed by the congregation) is called the pulpit. Since the Gospel lesson is often read from the pulpit, the pulpit side of the church is sometimes called the gospel side.

The other speaker's stand, usually on the right (as viewed by the congregation), is known as the lectern. The word lectern comes from the Latin word "lectus", past participle of legere, meaning "to read", because the lectern primarily functions as a reading stand. It is typically used by lay people to read the scripture lessons (except for the Gospel lesson), to lead the congregation in prayer, and to make announcements. Because the epistle lesson is usually read from the lectern, the lectern side of the church is sometimes called the epistle side. In other churches, the lectern, from which the Epistle is read, is located to the congregation's left and the pulpit, from which the sermon is delivered, is located on the right (the Gospel being read from either the center of the chancel or in front of the altar).

Doris Kearns Goodwin (born Doris Helen Kearns; January 4, 1943) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American biographer, historian, and an oft-seen political commentator. She is the author of biographies of several U.S. Presidents, including Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream; The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys: An American Saga; No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt (which won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1995); and her most recent book, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln.

Doris Kearns was born in Brooklyn, New York, and grew up in Rockville Centre, New York. She attended Colby College in Maine, where she was a member of Tri Delta and Phi Beta Kappa and graduated magna cum laude in 1964 with a Bachelor of Arts degree. She was awarded a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship in 1964 to pursue doctoral studies. In 1968 she earned a Ph.D. in government from Harvard University, with a thesis entitled "Prayer and Reapportionment: an Analysis of the Relationship between the Congress and the Court."^{[citation needed]}

Lonnie Bradley Holley, sometimes known as The Sand Man (Born February 10, 1950 in Birmingham, Alabama), is an African American artist and art educator.

Holley began his artistic life in 1979 by carving tombstones for his sister's two children who died in a house fire. He used blocks of a soft sandstone-like by-product of metal casting which was discarded in piles by a foundry near his sister's house. He believes that divine intervention led him to the material and inspired his artwork.

Inspired to create, Holley made other carvings and assembled them in his yard along with various found objects. In 1981 he brought a few examples of his sandstone carvings to Birmingham Museum of Art director Richard Murray. The BMA displayed some of those pieces immediately and Murray introduced him to the organizers of the 1981 exhibition "More Than Land and Sky: Art from Appalachia" at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Soon his work was being acquired by other institutions, such as the American Folk Art Museum in New York and the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. His work has also been displayed at the White House.