Selena Fox is a high priestess and senior minister of Circle Sanctuary, a Wiccan church and pagan resource center near Mount Horeb, Wisconsin. Wicca is a neopagan faith that relies heavily on nature and a belief in some forms of magic and the supernatural.

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.”

Kimberley Campbell runs Memorial Ecosystems Inc., a company that promotes using memorial parks to restore and protect nature by allowing only biodegradable caskets. It is based in Westminster, S.C.

Read an Aug. 2, 2009, article from the New York Times about how declining funds have led to turmoil in cemeteries.

Read a Nov. 8, 2011, article from Bloomberg Businessweek about eco-friendly burials and cemeteries.

Charles M. North, associate professor of economics at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, has written about the links between religion and economic growth. He co-wrote the 2008 book Good Intentions: Nine Hot Button Issues Viewed Through the Eyes of Faith.

Robert H. Nelson is Senior Fellow at the Independent Institute, Professor of Environmental Policy in the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland, and Senior Scholar at the Mercatus Center. He has expertise in economic ethics. His books include Economics as Religion: From Samuelson to Chicago and Beyond (Pennsylvania State Press, 2001) and The New Holy Wars: Economic […]

Rosemary Chinnici, a disaster specialist, Roman Catholic nun and pastoral theologian, considered the psychological and theological aftermath of disasters in a talk she gave after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. In every disaster, she says, after an initial “honeymoon” time of helping, sharing and altruism comes a period of disillusionment with aid efforts before rebuilding begins […]

Merle Jordan wrote “A Spiritual Perspective on Trauma and Treatment” for the National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. The center offers resources on the psychological impact of disasters.