Dan Wakefield is a veteran writer and Unitarian in Boston whose newest book is The Hijacking of Jesus: How the Religious Right Distorts Christianity and Promotes Prejudice and Hate (Nation Books, 2006). Read an excerpt in the April 24, 2006, issue of The Nation.

John Turner teaches American history at the University of South Alabama in Mobile. He specializes in 19th-century American civil religion.

Professor and Chair of Theological Studies at Concordia University in Montreal. His research focuses on early Christianity and on the relationship between religion and politics.

Director of the Centre for Post-Communist Studies and the Department of Political Science at Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Nova Scotia. She researches church-state relations in European Union member states. She regularly serves as an expert witness for cases involving immigration and deportation.

Lucas Morel is an associate professor of politics at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va. He is the author of Lincoln’s Sacred Effort: Defining Religion’s Role in American Self-Government.

Coleman is an associate professor of history and classics at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. She studies religion in Russia. Her current research is based on a book project, “Holy Kyiv: Priests, Communities, and Nationality in Imperial Russia, 1800-1917,” which explores the ethno-religious diversity of Kyiv diocese its relationship with the pastoral mission of […]

Stephen Matthew Feldman is a professor at the college of law at the University of Wyoming in Laramie. He edited the book Law and Religion: A Critical Anthology (New York University Press, 2000).

James T. Richardson is Emeritus Foundation Professor of Sociology and Judicial Studies at the University of Nevada, Reno. He wrote the essay “Public Policy Toward Minority Religions in the United States: A Model for Europe?” for the book Religion and Public Policy.

Michal R. Belknap is an emeritus professor of law at California Western School of Law in San Diego. He wrote the essay “Cults and the Law” for the book Religion and American Law: An Encyclopedia.