Paul J. Dean is the pastor of Providence Baptist Church in Greer, S.C., and is a prominent radio host and commentator on conservative Christian activities. Dean wrote a January 2008 essay on Crosswalk.com titled “Cultural Engagement: Every Christian’s Obligation.”

David Neff is chief of Christianity Today, the leading evangelical periodical. It is based in Carol Stream, Ill. He continues to explore the relationship between history and current events in his bimonthly column, “Past Imperfect.” Contact through Paulette DePaul.

Kevin Phillips, former Republican strategist, is a political and economic commentator. He is the author of American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century (2006), in which he describes the Republican Party as “the first American religious Party” in America. Contact via Laura Tisdel.

Peter Wehner is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and a former deputy assistant to President George W. Bush. Wehner wrote a Dec. 31, 2007, National Review article titled “Among Evangelicals, a Transformation.”

Jimmy Carter is a former president of the United States and a Southern Baptist. In his book, Our Endangered Values: America’s Moral Crisis, he writes of an “unapologetic crusade underway to merge fundamentalist Christians with the right wing of the Republican Party.” Contact through Tony Clark at the Carter Presidential Library.

Walter B. Shurden is a retired professor of Christianity and the founding executive director the Center for Baptist Studies at Mercer University in Macon, Ga. In June 2006, he delivered an address before the Religious Liberty Council Luncheon at the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship General Assembly in which he outlined ways in which he thinks some American Christians have […]

Mark Rozell is a professor of public policy at George Mason University in Arlington, Va., and co-editor of Religion and the American Presidency, Religion and the Bush Presidency and The Values Campaign?: The Christian Right and the 2004 Elections.

Wilfred M. McClay holds the SunTrust Bank Chair of Excellence in Humanities at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, where he is also a professor of history. He is a widely published author on issues related to religion in America. He co-edited Religion Returns to the Public Square: Faith and Policy in America. He is also a […]

George Marsden is an emeritus professor of history at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind. His areas of expertise include evangelicalism and American religious and intellectual history. His books include Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism and American Culture: The Shaping of Twentieth-Century Evangelicalism.