Christopher R. Smit teaches mass media, including television, gender and sexuality, and popular music at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich. Smit’s essays on disability, media, popular music and culture have appeared in Disability Studies Quarterly, Studies in Popular Culture and elsewhere. His current book project concerns theology, disability and the Christian faith. He is also a singer/songwriter.

Erik Carter is the author of Including People With Disabilities in Faith Communities: A Guide for Service Providers, Families & Congregations and an associate professor of special education at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn.

Jeff McNair is professor of education at California Baptist University in Riverside. He directs the Center for the Study of Religion and Disability and maintains the blog Disabled Christianity.

Bill Gaventa is associate professor of pediatrics at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey and director of community and congregational supports at the Elizabeth M. Boggs Center on Developmental Disabilities in New Brunswick, N.J. Gaventa served 14 years as editor of the Journal of Religion, Disability & Health […]

Ginny Thornburgh is director of the Interfaith Initiative at the American Association of People with Disabilities, where she works to help the disabled and their families gain access to spiritual and religious resources. She previously served for many years as director of the National Organization on Disability’s Religion and Disability Program. Thornburgh is co-author and editor […]

ReligiousTolerance.org has a Web page of hate-crime definitions and existing laws and another on hate-crime laws and sexual orientation. It also has a page dedicated to the question of whether hate-crimes legislation limits free speech.

Partners Against Hate maintains a state-by-state database of hate-crime statistics and hate-crime laws.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has a state-by-state map of identified hate groups. The center says that in 2012 there were 1,007 hate groups operating throughout the United States, an increase of more than 50 percent since 2000.

An April 8, 2009, story in The Washington Post, “Some Link Economy With Spate Of Killings,” examines links between the recession and 57 killings in eight mass-murder crimes over the course of a single month last spring.