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.

The Rev. Maria Erling is a Lutheran pastor and an associate professor of the history of Christianity and global missions at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg in Gettysburg, Pa. She contributed a chapter on mainline Protestants in New England to Religion and Public Life in New England: Steady Habits Changing Slowly.

Daniel Terris is director of the International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life at Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass. He contributed a chapter on Jews and African-Americans in the New England states to Religion and Public Life in New England: Steady Habits Changing Slowly.

David Hackett is an associate professor of religion at the University of Florida in Gainesville. He is an expert on American religious history and the sociology of religion.  

The Rev. Paul Barton teaches Hispanic church studies at Episcopal Theological Seminary of the Southwest in Austin, Texas. His expertise includes U.S. Hispanic Christianity, especially U.S. Hispanic Protestantism. His books include Hispanic Methodists, Presbyterians and Baptists in Texas (2006).