Read a June 24, 2010, story published in the Los Angeles Times about the change of leadership in Afghanistan from Gen. Stanly McChrystal to Gen. David Patraeus.

Pamela Wesley Gomez is director of development and external church affairs at the Berkeley Divinity School at Yale University in New Haven, Conn.

Read the June 22, 2010, profile published by Rolling Stone about Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the former commander of all U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan. After the article was published, McChrystal was removed from his post for the unflattering comments he made about the Obama administration.

empty tomb inc. is a nonprofit that tracks religious giving in the United States.

Kristen Monroe is a professor of philosophy and political science at the University of California, Irvine, and director of its Interdisciplinary Center for the Scientific Study of Ethics and Morality. She is the author of The Heart of Altruism: Perceptions of a Common Humanity.

William K. Mahony is a religion professor at Davidson College in Davidson, N.C. He is an expert in contemplative and Vedic Hinduism.

The Pluralism Project of Harvard University maintains a page on religious statistics and relies on various sources to count 1.2 million Hindus in the U.S. The project lists Hindu temples and centers in the U.S.

The World Christian Database at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary provides statistics on world religions, denominations, and groups. It estimates that there are slightly more than 1.1 million Hindus in America.

Dan Hotchkiss is a Unitarian Universalist pastor and a senior consultant with the Alban Institute. In July 2009, he wrote an article for Church Executive magazine about how churches are making do with less from donors in the current economy.