Tommie Novick-Lunsford is a minister of the Universal Foundation for Better Living who leads the Christ Delta study group in Indianola, Miss.

Risa Levitt Kohn is a professor of Hebrew Bible and Judaism at San Diego State University. She was also curator of the June 2007 Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit at the San Diego Natural History Museum.

Catherine Wessinger, professor of religious studies at Loyola University in New Orleans, has written widely on theosophy, millennialism, New Religious Movements and New Age religions. She is co-editor of Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions.

The Rev. Donald Senior is a Passionist priest and president of the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago. He is a well-known New Testament scholar and a member of the Vatican’s Pontifical Biblical Commission.

John K. Simmons is professor and chairman of the department of religious studies at Western Illinois University in Macomb. He has written about metaphysics, the Unity Church and Christian Science.

Stuart A. Irvine is an associate professor of Old Testament and Israelite religion at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge.

Robert M. Fowler chairs the religion department at Baldwin-Wallace College in Berea, Ohio. He is a member of the Journal of Religion and Popular Culture editorial board. His focus is on unconventional U.S. religions.

William Michael Ashcraft is an associate professor of philosophy and religion at Truman State University in Kirksville, Mo. He has written about New Religious Movements.

James F. Strange is a professor of religious studies and a biblical archaeologist at the University of South Florida in Tampa.