Elizabeth McKeown is a professor of theology at Georgetown University, Washington, D.C. McKeown focuses on American studies. She is co-editor of Public Voices: Catholics in the American Context (Orbis Books, 1999).

Samuel C. Heilman is a sociologist at the City University of New York in New York City. He is the author of Sliding to the Right: The Contest for the Future of American Jewish Orthodoxy, which argues that the ultra-Orthodox are gaining the upper hand over the Modern Orthodox. He is also co-editor of the annual periodical Contemporary Jewry, […]

Samuel Freedman is a journalism professor at Columbia University whose books include Jew vs. Jew: The Struggle for the Soul of American Jewry. He can comment about rifts between different Jewish groups and denominations.

Jim Towey is a Catholic who succeeded DiIulio as head of the White House’s faith-based program, serving as director until he left that post to become the president of Saint Vincent College in Latrobe, Pa., in July 2006. On Aug. 3, 2006, President Bush appointed Jay Hein, president of the Sagamore Institute for Policy Research in Indianapolis, as Towey’s […]

Beth Wenger is an associate professor of American Jewish history at the University of Pennsylvania and author of The Jewish Americans: Three Centuries of Jewish Voices in America. She wrote the chapter titled “The Politics of Women’s Ordination: Jewish Law, Institutional Power and the Debate Over Women in the Rabbinate” in Tradition Renewed: A History of the Jewish Theological Seminary.

Mary Jo Weaver is an emeritus professor of religious studies at Indiana University, Bloomington. She has written on American Catholics in the 20th century, with a focus on the conservative strain among American Catholics.

Stuart Rockoff is the current executive director of the Mississippi Humanities Council and former director of the history department at the Goldring/Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life in Jackson, Miss. He is an expert on this history of Southern Jews.

Michael Horan is a theologian at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles who can relate Catholic beliefs to Catholic practice, particularly in the political realm. Horan believes hard-line tactics by bishops to deny communion to abortion rights politicians can backfire.

David J. O’Brien is a professor of Catholic studies at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass. He has written and commented widely about Catholics and politics.