Robert V. Kemper, an anthropology professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, co-authored The World As It Should Be: Faith-Based Community Development in America, on his website.

Jimmy Dorrell is co-founder and executive director of Mission Waco, a ministry to empower the poor, mobilize middle-class Americans and address systematic social injustices. He is pastor of Church Under the Bridge and also teaches classes at Baylor University and Truett Seminary in Waco.

Helen Rose Ebaugh is a professor of sociology at the University of Houston who specializes in the sociology of religion as well as religion and new immigrants.

Kathleen Flake is Richard Lyman Bushman Professor of Mormon Studies at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. She has written extensively on Mormons and is the author of The Politics of American Religious Identity: The Seating of Senator Reed Smoot, Mormon Apostle.

Charles Marsh is a professor of religious studies at the University of Virginia and director of the university’s Project on Lived Theology, which aims “to understand the way theological commitments shape the social patterns and practices of everyday life.”

Tracey Meares is a professor at Yale Law School in New Haven, Conn. She has given several presentations on the relationship between black churches and communities and organized a conference on “Faith-Based Initiatives and Urban Public Policy.”

Read “New Hampshire’s Social Service Contracts with Faith-Based Organizations,” an April 2004 report from the NH Center for Public Policy Studies

Peter Dobkin Hall is a lecturer in public policy and a senior research fellow at the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations in the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He does research on social welfare policy and civic engagement and has held a teaching appointment in the Divinity School.

Nancy Ammerman is professor of sociology at Boston University and a leading expert on congregational dynamics, especially in mainline Protestantism. She is the author of Sacred Stories, Spiritual Tribes: Finding Religion in Everyday Life and Pillars of Faith: American Congregations and Their Partners. She is also an expert on religious movements and has written about the rise of fundamentalism.