The Rev. Warner H. Brown Jr. is a United Methodist Church bishop and head of its California-Nevada Council. He has also served as president of the UMC’s council of bishops. He is based in Sacramento, Calif.

The Rev. William Pfohl is senior pastor of Jesse Lee Memorial United Methodist Church in Ridgefield, Conn. He is the chair of the Board of Ordained Ministry  for the church’s New York Conference, which announced in March 2016 that, in defiance of church rules, it would not consider an ordination candidate’s sexual orientation.

Read this Feb. 2016 reporting guide published by GLAAD in collaboration with a coalition of state and national LGBT advocacy organizations.

Laura Vance is a professor of sociology and women’s studies at Warren Wilson College in Asheville, N.C. She is the author of Women in New Religions. She is also an expert on Mormon women.

Cynthia Eller is a professor of religion at Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, Calif., where she specializes in women and religion and New Religious Movements. She has written several books on women and religion in prehistory and contemporary feminism.

Ruqayya Khan is an associate professor of religion at Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, Calif. She is an expert on women in Islam and Islam in the digital age. She teaches courses on feminism in the Quran and Islam and environmentalism.

Miriam Robbins Dexter is a research scholar at the Center for the Study of Women at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is co-editor of Foremothers of the Women’s Spirituality Movement: Elders and Visionaries.

Anni Daulter is the author of Sacred Pregnancy: A Loving Guide and Journal for Expectant Moms and the founder of the Sacred Living Movement, a series of workshops on pregnancy, birth, menopause and other milestones of women’s lives, aimed at making them more spiritual.

Rose Cole describes herself as a “visionary” and is frequently on television describing spirituality and womanhood. She promotes something she calls “rituality” — the creation of rituals for women based on their everyday lives — and offers private coaching and training for “high priestesses.” She offers coaching classes in “sacred motherhood.”