Eugene Kennedy is emeritus professor of psychology at Loyola University, Chicago and a columnist for National Catholic Reporter. Kennedy has argued that the Catholic church needs to go in a more reformist direction. He is author of several books, including The Unhealed Wound: The Church and Human Sexuality (St. Martins Press, 2001).

The Rev. Robert Wister is a leading expert on the history of the papacy. He is a professor of church history at Seton Hall University in New Jersey. He earned a doctorate in church history at the Gregorian University in Rome.

George Weigel is an orthodox-minded Catholic theologian and distinguished senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C. He is the author of God’s Choice: Pope Benedict XVI and the Future of the Catholic Church (2005) and Witness to Hope (1999), which is essentially the authorized biography of Pope John Paul’s papacy. Weigel also wrote The End […]

Anthony Gill, professor of political science at the University of Washington in Seattle, researches church-state relations from a microeconomic perspective. He teaches a course on religion, politics and economics. His books include Rendering Unto Caesar: The Catholic Church and the State in Latin America. Gill conducts research on community efforts to restrict the property rights of […]

Eli Berman, a professor of economics at the University of California at San Diego, specializes in the economics of religion. He is also research director for International Security Studies at the UC Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation. He wrote an essay in the Quarterly Journal of Economics in 2000 titled “Sect, Subsidy and Sacrifice: An Economist’s View […]

Fenggang Yang directs the Center on Religion and Chinese Society at Purdue University. He is the author or co-author of more than a dozen books, including Religion in China: Survival and Revival Under Communist Rule. He is also an expert in Asian immigration and Eastern religions.

Daniel Hungerman is the Stepan Family Associate Professor of Economics at the University of  Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind. He has researched public policy and religiosity. Read his paper “Race and Charitable Church Activity.”

Timur Kuran is professor of economics and political science and Gorter Family Professor of Islamic Studies at Duke University in Durham, N.C. He has researched economic issues involving Islam, and his books include Islam and Mammon: The Economic Predicaments of Islamism (Princeton University Press, 2004).

Mahmoud El-Gamal is a professor of economics and statistics at Rice University in Houston and holds the endowed chair in Islamic economics, finance and management. He has published about Islamic transaction law and finance.