Read a 2012 Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals article about the politically active evangelical community, their influence in the polls and the transformation of their political ideologies throughout history.

Hugh B. Urban is a professor of comparative studies at Ohio State University in Columbus. He contributed a chapter about Osho to Gurus in America.

Khyati Joshi is an associate professor of education at Fairleigh Dickinson University in Teaneck, N.J., and a scholar on cultural and religious pluralism in the United States. Her books include New Roots in America’s Sacred Ground: Religion, Race and Ethnicity in Indian America. She is also co-founder of the Institute for Teaching Diversity and Social Justice (IDSJ), […]

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.

Robert Hanser is the head of the criminal justice department and the assistant professor of criminal justice at the University of Louisiana at Monroe.

Brittney Thomas is director of the Kentucky branch of Not for Sale: Re-Abolish Slavery. She says she believes that with increased awareness, human trafficking can be extinguished within her lifetime.

Rachel Braver is the coordinator of the North Carolina Coalition Against Human Trafficking, a coalition of state agencies and nonprofit groups that respond to human trafficking violations in the state.

Kay Buck is executive director of the Coalition to Abolish Slavery & Trafficking, a nonprofit that seeks to serve victims of trafficking. It is based in Los Angeles.

Melissa Broudo is a staff attorney at the Sex Workers Project at the Urban Justice Center in New York, where she focuses on the legal concerns, safety and rights of sex workers.