Linda B. Hess is a lecturer in religious studies at Stanford University in Stanford, Calif. She is an expert in the poetry of 15th- and 16th-century Hindu saints and can discuss their continued influence.

Brad Pellish is the outreach pastor at Bethany Bible Church in Phoenix, Ariz., which performs outreach to local sex workers, including teenage prostitutes. Read an article about the church’s work.

Guy L. Beck is an adjunct professor at Tulane University in the Asian studies and religion studies departments. He is the author of Sonic Theology: Hinduism and Sacred Sound.

Chanchanit Martorell is executive director of Los Angeles’ Thai Community Development Center‘s Slavery Eradication and Rights Initiative. She advocates on behalf of Thai men, women and children trafficked to the U.S.

Thomas E. Buckley is a Jesuit who teaches American religious history at the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley, Calif. He wrote Church and State in Revolutionary Virginia, 1776-1787 and is working on a study of Jefferson and religious freedom.

Mike Howerton is the lead pastor at Overlake Christian Church in Redmond, Wash., which has been involved locally and internationally in the fight against trafficking.

Dianne Amato is program director of the Mary Magdalene Project, a Los Angeles-based outreach to sex workers.

Bruce Braden edited ‘Ye Will Say I Am No Christian’: The Thomas Jefferson/John Adams Correspondence on Religion, Morals, and Values (Prometheus, 2005), source documents that trace the views of Jefferson and Adams over time.

Karre Shaefer is director of the Kansas branch of Not for Sale: Re-Abolish Slavery and focuses on human rights and ethnic conflict.