Article on Beliefnet.com reprinted from Charisma News Service.

Nancy Ammerman is professor of sociology at Boston University and a leading expert on congregational dynamics, especially in mainline Protestantism. She is the author of Sacred Stories, Spiritual Tribes: Finding Religion in Everyday Life and Pillars of Faith: American Congregations and Their Partners. She is also an expert on religious movements and has written about the rise of fundamentalism.

Rabbi Rayzel Raphael leads drum circles in Philadelphia.

Adair T. Lummis is a religion sociologist and a faculty associate in research at Hartford Seminary in Hartford, Conn. Her research focuses on denominational policies; gender, spirituality and leadership in communities of faith; and clergy concerns. Her books include, as co-author, Clergy Women: An Uphill Calling.

Sarah Husain is a poet, activist and editor of Voices of Resistance: Muslim Women on War, Faith and Sexuality (2006). She is based in New York City.

Mona Eltahawy is a speaker, writer and commentator who focuses on issues concerning Islam. She is based in New York City.

Katherine Bullock is vice president of the Association of Muslim Social Scientists of North America and editor of Muslim Women Activists in North America: Speaking for Ourselves (2005). She is also the author of Rethinking Muslim Women and the Veil: Challenging Historical & Modern Stereotypes. She lives in Mississauga, Canada.

Read a 2013 report from the office’s advisory council about human trafficking, one of the target initiatives for the group.

Kecia Ali is a professor of religion at Boston University. She wrote Sexual Ethics and Islam: Feminist Reflections on Qur’an, Hadith and Jurisprudence. Her areas of expertise include progressive Islam and women, gender and Islamic law and Muslim societies. She taught a class in 2003 on marriage and divorce in Islamic law at Harvard University Divinity School.