Cheryl Townsend Gilkes is a professor of sociology and African-American studies at Colby College in Waterville, Maine. She is an expert on black churches. She has written widely, including If It Wasn’t for the Women: Black Women’s Experience and Womanist Culture in Church and Community (Orbis Books, 2000).

The Institute of Islamic Studies is a Protestant network of scholars in Islamic studies that is carried out by the Evangelical Alliance in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Churches, the political arena, and society at large are provided foundational information relating to the topic of “Islam” through research and the presentation thereof via publications, adult education seminars, and […]

Stephen Bainbridge is a professor of law at the University of California at Los Angeles. He has written about the Roman Catholic bishop in Colorado Springs who sent out a church letter saying Catholics should not receive communion if they voted for politicians who supported abortion rights.

Vaughn E. James is a law professor at Texas Tech University. He wrote the article “Reaping Where They Have Not Sowed: Have American Churches Failed to Satisfy the Requirements for the Religious Tax Exemptions?” for the Catholic Law Review (2004).

Natalie Davis is a political science professor at Birmingham-Southern College in Alabama. She is an expert on religion and taxes.

Robert Wineburg is the Jefferson Pilot Excellence Professor of social work at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro who has looked at IRS investigations of churches for political activities related to elections. He is the author of the Faith-Based Inefficiency: The Follies of Bush’s Initiatives, and he has been writing comprehensively about faith-based politics and social services […]

William Mumma is president and general counsel of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. Organization officials have said preachers should be free to say whatever they want without threatening their churches’ tax-exempt status.

Focus on the Family is a conservative group that supports churches’ right to campaign. The founder of this organization is James C. Dobson who was also former chairman and president.

Rabbi Daniel Lapin is a prominent Washington-based rabbi who supported the Houses of Worship Free Speech Restoration Act of 2005.