Jack David Eller is an assistant professor of anthropology at Community College of Denver and the author of Cruel Creeds, Virtuous Violence: Religious Violence Across Culture and History (October 2010) and Natural Atheism, Atheism Advanced: Further Thoughts of a Freethinker (2007). He also contributed two chapters to the anthology Atheism and Secularity (2009).

James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy, based at Rice University in Houston, Texas, is one of the premier nonpartisan public policy think tanks in the country. Edward P. Djerejian is the founding director.

Beliefnet.org’s article that explores the meaning of suffering in different faiths.

The Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals, based at Wheaton College in Illinois, provides leadership in the study of evangelicals, informs the public and seeks to support evangelical scholars from a variety of disciplines who seek to apply Christian truths to intellectual and cultural endeavors.

David J. Wolpe is senior rabbi of Temple Sinai, a Conservative congregation in Los Angeles. A well-known speaker and writer, he has written several books, among them The Healer of Shattered Hearts: A Jewish View of God (Henry Holt & Co., 1990) and (with Mitch Albom) Making Loss Matter: Creating Meaning in Difficult Times (Riverhead Trade, 2000).

Raphael Grunfeld is a New York attorney and Jewish scholar who can explain Jewish philosophy and religious thought regarding suffering.

Jerry Walls, philosophy of religion professor at Houston Baptist University, has written about making sense of evil and Christian conceptions of God. He is co-editor of The Chronicles of Narnia and Philosophy (Open Court Press) and co-author of C.S. Lewis & Francis Schaeffer: Lessons for a New Century From the Most Influential Apologists (InterVarsity Press, 1998).

The Institute for Practical Ethics & Public Life provides an intellectual home for professors and students from across the University of Virginia who wish to purse interdisciplinary scholarship, research and teaching on the complex ethical issues that underlie contemporary professional, organizational and public life. The Institute is directed by James F. Childress.

Sharon D. Welch is provost and professor of religion and society at Chicago’s Meadville Lombard Theological School, which educates students in the Unitarian Universalist tradition. She is also a senior fellow at the Institute for Humanist Studies.