Luke Smetters is a candle carver who has led workshops at the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago, Ill., where he is also a student. Contact him at Bethany Lutheran Church in Ishpeming, Mich., where he is the vicar.

Martin Marklin is a liturgical artist in Contoocook, N.H., who makes paschal candles.

Bryan F. Le Beau is a history professor and vice president of academic affairs at the University of St. Mary in Leavenworth, Kan. He is the author of The Atheist: Madalyn Murray O’Hair.

Michael Lackey is an associate professor of English at the University of Minnesota, Morris. His research interests include God and religion in literature, and atheism, and he is the author of African American Atheists and Political Liberation: A Study of the Sociocultural Dynamics of Faith (2007).

Annie Laurie Gaylor is co-founder and co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, a Madison, Wis.-based national association of atheists and agnostics working to keep state and church separate. She previously served as editor of Freethought Today, the nation’s only freethought newspaper. She is the author of Woe to the Women: The Bible Tells Me So and editor of Women […]

Jesse Galef is communications director for the Secular Student Alliance, which is based in Columbus, Ohio. He graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he was president of the nonreligious student group on campus. He was also active in religious groups there, including the Orthodox Christian Fellowship and Christian Apologetics of Carolina. […]

Marvin Belzer is an associate professor of philosophy at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio. In the essay “Mere Stranger” (in Philosophers Without Gods: Meditations on Atheism and the Secular Life), he tells of growing up in an evangelical Christian home but gradually dropping his religious beliefs through the process of reflection and study.

Hector Avalos is a professor of religious studies at Iowa State University and former executive director of the Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion, a division of the Council for Secular Humanism. He specializes in biblical studies. His books include Fighting Words: The Origins of Religious Violence; The End of Biblical Studies; and Se Puede Saber si Dios Existe? [Can […]

The Rev. Ann Fontaine is an Episcopal priest in Wyoming. She blogs at Green Lent.