Cari Leversee is director of Thresholds Home Funerals. Founded in 2003, Thresholds is a non-embalming funeral establishment in San Diego, Calif. It has offered classes on “reclaiming death as a sacred event.”

David Zinner is executive director of Kavod v’Nichum, a nonprofit resource group in the greater Washington, D.C., area that educates and advocates for Chevra Kadisha groups in North America.

Katherine (Stenger) Knutson is an assistant professor of political science at Gustavus Adolphus College in Saint Peter, Minn. Her focus is on the effect of religious interest groups on American politics.

Christine Sierra is an emeritus professor of political science at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, where she also is the director of the Southwest Hispanic Research Institute.

Steven P. Brown is a professor of political science at Auburn University in Auburn, Ala., where he specializes in religion and politics.

Marc Hetherington is a professor of political science at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn. He lectures on political parties.

David Dalin is a Conservative rabbi and a professor of history and political science at Ave Maria University in Naples, Fla. He has written about Jews and American political history and about the influence of Jews on the presidency.

Louis H. Bolce teaches a course on religion and politics at Baruch College in New York City. Bolce’s research interests include what he calls the anti-Christian fundamentalist factor in contemporary politics, and he and Gerald De Maio (also at Baruch College) are working on a book about the rise of secularist influence in the Democratic Party.

Dale Kuehne is a professor in the department of politics at St. Anselm College, a Benedictine school in Manchester, N.H., and focuses on the intersection of religion, politics and sexuality.  He also is an ordained pastor in the Evangelical Covenant Church of America and is the founding director of the New Hampshire Institute of Politics.