Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss., is the ranking minority member of the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee.

Caryn McTighe Musil is a senior vice president for diversity, equity and global issues with the Association of American Colleges and Universities.

Peter Laurence is executive director of the Education as Transformation program at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. The program works with educational institutions that are considering the impact of religious diversity and the role of spirituality in education.

Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., chairs the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee.

Sharon M.K. Kugler is university chaplain at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, where students come from dozens of faith groups. She focuses on cultivating a chaplaincy for students, faculty and staff which defines itself by serving the needs of the diverse religious and spiritual traditions on campus.

The Rev. Paul Sorrentino is coordinator for religious life at Amherst College in Amherst, Mass. His doctoral work at Princeton Theological Seminary focused on religious pluralism in the academy and included a survey of Amherst students regarding their views on religious pluralism. While he advises the Christian Fellowship at Amherst, Sorrentino writes that “we respond best to religious plurality […]

Tom Vilsack is U.S. secretary of agriculture. See remarks he made in October 2011 about priorities for the 2012 farm bill.

On April 11, 2006, Harvard University’s Institute of Politics released a poll showing that seven of 10 college students in the U.S. say religion is somewhat important or very important in their lives. Morality played a strong role in their political views, and they see issues ranging from abortion to disaster relief as having moral implications.

June 1, 2013, Associated Press article about the Catholic Church’s waning influence in American politics. The article is posted on The Washington Post website.