Read a March 15, 2006, story from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America News Service about Katrina’s impact on Lutheran congregations along the Gulf Coast.

Lee Shai Weissbach is a history professor at the University of Louisville in Kentucky. He is an expert on small-town Jewish life in America, especially in the South, where surveys show traditional observance tends to be lower than in other areas.

Michael Weil heads the Jewish Federation of Greater New Orleans. The federation is working to revitalize the local Jewish community in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, which cut the city’s Jewish population by one-third.

Read an November 2006 commentary from Rabbi Jeffrey Kurtz-Lendner of New Orleans, published in Smartphone & Pocket PC Magazine, about how wireless technology helped him keep in touch with his congregation in the weeks after Katrina.

Read an April 4, 2006, Beliefnet story from a Katrina survivor who writes that “the only thing that keeps me sane is knowing that God has a purpose for me.”

May 20, 2013, article about the Church of Scotland moving towards allowing liberal congregations to ordain gay men or women if they wish.

Read this May 11, 2011, Christian Post article about the Presbyterian Church (USA) lifting its ban on gay clergy. The decision led dozens of congregations to leave the PCUSA.

Shimon Shokek is a professor of Jewish philosophy and mysticism at Baltimore Hebrew Institute at Towson University. He has written about Jewish mysticism, including the Kabbalah.

Sheldon R. Isenberg is an associate professor of religion at the University of Florida in Gainesville. He specializes in Jewish mysticism and comparative mysticism.