David L. Weddle, a professor emeritus of religion at Colorado College in Colorado Springs, has written about Jehovah’s Witness and Christian Science faiths. Ask about the Sabbath, rest and restoration in those traditions.

Jacques B. Doukhan is a professor of Hebrew and Old Testament exegesis and director of the Institute of Jewish-Christian Studies at Andrews University, a Seventh-day Adventist school in Berrien Springs, Mich. He is an expert in the area of the Sabbath.

The Rev. Lizette Larson-Miller, a professor at Church Divinity School of the Pacific in Berkeley, Calif., wrote an article in the May 23, 2005, edition of America magazine (subscriber-only) titled “Holy Ground: Roadside Shrines and Sacred Space.” She identified five general characteristics of roadside shrines, and she ponders what liturgical churches might learn from this widespread trend.

Read a New York Times review of Roadside Religion: Cross Country. Contact Beal.

Tom Bruce is a psychologist, thanatologist and author who teaches a class in death and dying at Sacramento City College in California.

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.