Darrell J. Fasching is a professor of religious studies at the University of South Florida in Tampa. He is co-author of Comparative Religious Ethics: A Narrative Approach and can discuss the different attitudes toward lying and honesty among the world religions.

Douglas Porpora is the author of Landscapes of the Soul: The Loss of Moral Meaning in American Life and chairman of the department of culture and communications at Drexel University in Philadelphia. He also wrote “Methodological Atheism, Methodological Agnosticism, and Religious Experience” for the Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior in 2006.

Leo Ribuffo is a history professor at the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. He has written about the complex relationship between religion and American foreign policy.

Rebecca Lester is an assistant professor of sociocultural anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis. She contributed a chapter on the spiritual dimensions of Overeaters Anonymous to Interpreting Weight.

Michelle Lelwica is an associate professor of religion at Concordia College in Moorhead, Minn. She is the author of Starving for Salvation: The Spiritual Dimensions of Eating Problems Among American Girls and Women and The Religion of Thinness: Satisfying the Spiritual Hungers Behind Women’s Obsession With Food and Weight. She wrote a commentary for Newsweek and The Washington Post linking the quests for thinness and […]

Melani McAlister is an associate professor of American studies and international affairs at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. She participated in a February 2008 roundtable discussion about American evangelicals and the 2008 primaries at Princeton University’s Center for the Study of Religion. She is also at work on a book about American evangelicals and global vision.

David M. O’Leary is a Jesuit priest and a senior lecturer in comparative religions and medical ethics at Tufts University in Medford, Mass. He contributed articles on heaven and hell to The Encyclopedia of Religious and Spiritual Development.

John Byl is co-author of Christian Paths to Health and Wellness (2007). He is a professor of physical education at Redeemer University College in Ancaster, Ontario, Canada. He can discuss the biblical foundation behind the Christian fitness movement.

Peter Walters is co-author of Christian Paths to Health and Wellness (2007). He is an associate professor in the applied health science department at Wheaton College in Illinois.