The Rev. Victoria Weinstein is pastor of First Parish Church of Norwell, Mass., a Unitarian Universalist congregation. In May 2006, she delivered a sermon on the spiritual value of animals.

The Rev. Nancy Taylor is senior pastor of the Old South Church, a United Church of Christ congregation in Boston. In May 2006, she preached a sermon on the blessings given and received by animals.

Rabbi Harold S. White is Jewish chaplaincy director and senior Jewish chaplain at Georgetown University, where he also teaches in the theology department. He is deeply involved in animal protection issues.

Read a July 18, 2008, article in the Columbia Missourian about the religious underpinnings for Rabbi Yossi Feintuch’s decision to be a vegetarian.

Summum is a religion and philosophy founded by Claude Nowell in 1975. Contact through the website.

Read a July 5, 2013, article from the Associated Press about the clearing of two former popes to become saints. Pope John Paul II was canonized as a result of a medical miracle in Costa Rica.

Kristen Johnson Ingram is the author of Beyond Words: 15 Ways of Doing Prayer. She explores the way nonverbal acts like listening to music or taking a walk can be performed as prayer. She is a preacher in the Episcopal Church and lives in Springfield, Ore.

Jane Vennard is a United Church of Christ pastor and retreat leader. She is the author of Praying With Body and Soul: A Way to Intimacy With God. She lives in Denver.

Ken Wilson is senior pastor at the Vineyard Church of Ann Arbor, Mich., which encourages its members to make fixed-hour prayers, an unusual thing for a nondenominational church to do.