Sam Kestenbaum is a journalist covering religion in America. He has written about religious life during and in response to the pandemic, including a profile of Clay Clark, the frontman of a prophecy-and-politics roadshow; New Age author Christiane Northrup’s conspiracy makeover; a faith-healing TikToker whose fandom grew during lockdown months; and a Pentecostal church that […]

Paul Christopher Johnson is professor of history at the University of Michigan. He has written extensively on religious practices, diaspora religions and the practice of secrecy in the Americas, especially in Brazil and the Caribbean.

Gerry Bowler teaches at the University of Manitoba. He is the author of Santa Claus: A Biography and The World Encyclopedia of Christmas, and the co-author of Europe in the Sixteenth Century. He has published works on topics ranging from Renaissance monarchy and Bloody Mary to the Simpsons, the Spice Girls and the history of […]

Emily D. Crews is the executive director of the Marty Center at the University of Chicago. Crews is a scholar of Christianities in Africa and the United States. Her scholarly research explores the ways that people’s religious lives are connected to their ideas about gender, race and the body. She is especially interested in how […]

UnidosUS, founded in 1968, is a national nonpartisan organization that serves as the nation’s largest Latino civil rights advocacy organization. Press contact is Ana Gabriela Fernández.

The Religious Freedom Institute advocates for religious freedom in the United States and abroad. RFI produces research and educational programs and maintains five regional action teams that lobby governments and civil leaders to protect religious freedom globally.

The Center for Global Indigenous Cultures and Environmental Justice at Syracuse University works across traditional disciplinary boundaries, and alongside Indigenous communities, to facilitate research and student engagement opportunities in cultural heritage preservation and language revitalization, defending political sovereignty, and climate change and the environment. Contact is for the director, Scott Manning Stevens.

Matthew J. Moore is a political scientist at Cal Poly University in Pomona, California. He has published a series of works on Buddhism in political perspective, including Buddhism and Political Theory; “Buddhism, Mindfulness, and Transformative Politics,” New Political Science; and “Buddhism and International Law” in Comparative Political Theory in Time and Place.

Ammiel Hirsch is the senior rabbi of Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in New York City. The Jerusalem Post named him among “The 50 Most Influential Jews of the Year.” City & State praised him as “the borough’s most influential voice” for Manhattan’s more than 300,000 Jews and The New York Observer named him among “New […]