Michael Plekon is professor of religion and culture at City University of New York in New York City. He wrote a chapter titled “The Russian Religious Revival and Its Theological Legacy” in The Cambridge Companion to Orthodox Christian Theology (2008).

Eugene J. Clay is an associate professor in religious studies at Arizona State University in Tempe. His publications include “Russian Orthodoxy,” published in Religion and American Cultures: An Encyclopedia of Traditions, Diversity and Popular Expressions.

Peter C. Bouteneff is a professor of systematic theology at St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary in Yonkers, N.Y. He is interested in popular culture and has worked for the World Council of Churches. He wrote the article “All Creation in United Thanksgiving: Gregory of Nyssa and the Wesleys on Salvation” in the book Orthodox and Wesleyan Spirituality.

Theodore Stylianopoulos is professor of Orthodox theology and the New Testament at Hellenic College and Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology in Brookline, Mass.

Stephen K. Batalden is a history professor at Arizona State University in Tempe. He is the editor of Seeking God: The Recovery of Religious Identity in Orthodox Russia, Ukraine and Georgia.

George Dion Dragas is professor of patrology/patristics at Hellenic College and Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology in Brookline, Mass.

James Childress is the John Allen Hollingsworth Professor of Ethics in the department of religious studies at the University of Virginia. His research interests include religious ethics, social and political ethics, biomedical ethics and methods in ethics.

Read a Feb. 1, 2009, New York Times story on the installation of a new patriarch for the Russian Orthodox Church. He was the first patriarch elected since the fall of the Soviet Union.

Read an April 2009 National Geographic story on the new Russian Orthodox Church rising after the fall of the Soviet Union.