Maria Luisa Tucker is program director and multimedia editor at Youth Communication in New York. In January 2006, she posted a blog entry linking the rise and fall of prosperity gospel to national politics.

Kirbyjon Caldwell is senior pastor of Windsor Village United Methodist Church in Houston. He is the co-author of Entrepreneurial Faith: Launching Bold Initiatives to Expand God’s Kingdom (WaterBrook Press, 2004) and author of The Gospel of Good Success: A Road Map to Spiritual, Emotional and Financial Wholeness (Fireside, 2000). He was a spiritual adviser to President George W. Bush.

R. Drew Smith is a Baptist minister and professor of urban ministry at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. He has studied and written about black megachurches and has edited four volumes on American religion and public life, including New Day Begun: African American Churches and Civic Culture in Post-Civil Rights America.

Tony Campolo is a prominent evangelical pastor who helps lead Red Letter Christians, a progressive Christian movement aimed at building a more just society. He is also an author and a professor emeritus at Eastern University in St. Davids, Pennsylvania. Campolo served as a spiritual adviser to President Bill Clinton.

Catholic World News article about Pope Benedict’s decision to consolidate the leadership of four Vatican councils under two presidents, one of his first reforms of the Curia.

Read about Torie Bosch’s personal account of celebrating and recognizing Christmas as a secular holiday.

Read the opinion of Annie L. Gaylor, co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, to remove Christmas as a federally recognized holiday and replace it with a more secular holiday.

Read a Dec. 21, 2000, Associated Press story posted by the Cincinnati Enquirer about a U.S. Court of Appeals ruling that Christmas can continue to be a legal holiday, as it has been since 1870, because it has a secular purpose.

Read a Feb. 17, 2013, New York Times article about the debate over religious federal holidays in the U.S.