Alan Branch is a professor of Christian ethics at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City, Mo. He wrote an article for The Baptist Messenger about prosperity gospel and Joel Osteen’s relation to it.

Joerg Rieger is a professor of constructive theology at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. He is an expert on mainline Protestant denominations and says some of those churches, while they do not teach a prosperity gospel, share a “prosperity mentality” when they preach that “good things happen to good people.”

Shayne Lee is an assistant professor of sociology at Tulane University in New Orleans. He is the author of T.D. Jakes: America’s New Preacher (New York University Press, 2005).

Stephanie Mitchem is a professor of womanist theology and African-American spirituality at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, S.C. She is the author of Name It and Claim It? Prosperity Preaching in the Black Church (Pilgrim Press, 2006).

The Rev. John Sewell is rector of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Memphis, Tenn.

Roy Heller is a professor of Old Testament at Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University in Dallas and focuses on the use of the Bible in ethics and theology.

Dennis E. Smith teaches New Testament at Phillips Theological Seminary in Tulsa, Okla., and is a fellow of the Westar Institute, which studies Jesus and early Christianity. He can speak about the role of Mary in the New Testament from a Protestant perspective.

Susan J. White is the Alberta H. and Harold L. Lunger Professor of Spiritual Resources and Disciplines at Brite Divinity School at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas. She is also author of A History of Women in Christian Worship (Pilgrim Press, 2003).

John Martin is a professor of history at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, professor-in-residence at Duke University and the representative for church history for the Renaissance Society of America.