Michael Stillwater is the founder of Inner Harmony. With his partner, Doris Laesser, he led a group of Americans on a dark retreat in Switzerland in January 2006. He lives in Marin County, Calif.

Mirabai Starr is an adjunct professor of religious studies and philosophy at the University of New Mexico in Taos. She is the translator of St. John of the Cross’ Dark Night of the Soul (Riverhead, 2002).

Joan Halifax is the author of Fruitful Darkness: A Journey Through Buddhist Practice and Tribal Wisdom (Grove Press, 2004). She is the founder of Upaya Zen Center in Santa Fe, N.M.

Martin Lowenthal is the founder and director of the Dedicated Life Institute in Newton, Mass. He is also the author of Dawning of Clear Light: A Western Approach to Tibetan Dark Retreat (Hampton Roads, 2003).

The Jewish Outreach Institute is an independent, national organization that works to bring unaffiliated and intermarried families closer to the Jewish community.

The National Center to Encourage Judaism encourages retention in Judaism and conversion.  

Rabbi Ephraim Buchwald is founder of the National Jewish Outreach Program, which tries to keep Jews engaged in Jewish life, particularly when the cause was assimilation or lack of Jewish knowledge. It sponsors the annual Shabbat Across America program.

Thomas Cahill, an Irish Catholic, is author of How the Irish Saved Civilization (Anchor, 1996) and served for a time as the North American education correspondent for the Times of London.

A 2000 poll from People for the American Way found that 66 percent of respondents say the issue of whether to teach evolution in public schools is too important to leave to individual localities to decide and say they favor a national approach.