Blaine Mays is president of the International New Thought Alliance, which holds, among other things, that mental states are manifested in daily experience. He can describe the New Thought movement and discuss whether the blockbuster success of The Secret has created demand for New Thought churches and spiritual centers.

Kathryn Lofton is a professor of religious studies, American studies and  history and divinity at Yale University in New Haven, Conn. She has written about the religious content of Oprah Winfrey’s media empire and is knowledgeable about American religion and materialism, especially Christian kitsch.

J. Gordon Melton is a distinguished professor of American religious history at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. Formerly, he directed the Institute for the Study of American Religion at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has written about New Religious Movements and about Christian Science and is an expert on American-born religions. He co-wrote Perspectives on […]

Carol MacPherson Kauffman is assistant clinical professor of psychology at Harvard University Medical School. She founded Positive Psychology Coaches, which helps clients by focusing on their strengths rather than their weaknesses and stresses research-based measurement and exercises. Kauffman is an adherent of the new field of positive psychology and the scientific study of happiness.

Beryl Satter is associate professor of history at Rutgers University. She can discuss the development of New Thought philosophy and religion in the United States. She wrote Each Mind a Kingdom: American Women, Sexual Purity and the New Thought Movement, 1875-1920 (University of California Press, 1999).

Phyllis Nelson is the teacher and director of Christ’s Jewels of Truth, a Nashville study group affiliated with the Universal Foundation for Better Living.

The Rev. Temple Hayes is pastoral care minister of First Unity Church and spiritual leader of Unity Campus, a New Thought center, in St. Petersburg, Fla.

Amanda Porterfield, historian of American religion, is a religion professor at Florida State University in Tallahassee. She is particularly interested in the interplay of religion and culture and has written about Mary Baker Eddy.

Henry S. Levinson is a professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He wrote The Religious Investigations of William James (University of North Carolina Press, 1981) and is an expert on 19th-century American transcendentalist thinkers.