Noah Feldman is a professor at Harvard Law School whose specialties include the relationship between law and religion. He gave the keynote address, “Persecution and the Art of Secrecy: An Interpretation of the Mormon Encounter with American Politics,” at a 2007 conference on Mormonism and American politics. He also wrote a July 22, 2007, essay in The New […]

Damon M. Cann, an assistant professor of political science at Utah State University in Logan, conducted a 2008 study titled “Religious Identification and Legislative Voting: The Mormon Case,” in which he concludes that Mormon representatives are no more unified in their voting behavior than any randomly selected set of legislators.

Read a Pew Forum analysis (updated in February 2011) titled “Faith on the Hill: The Religious Composition of the 112th Congress.” It finds that Mormons are better-represented in Congress than they are in the U.S. population.

John Rustin is president and executive director of the North Carolina Family Policy Council, based in Raleigh. The council focuses on a variety of faith-related issues, including conversion therapy and gambling.

Michael Curtis is Judge Donald L. Smith Professor in Constitutional and Public Law at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C. He says the government can protect people from hate speech in public schools.

Timothy Johnson is Morse Alumni Distinguished Teaching Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis-St. Paul. His books include, as co-author, Religious Institutions and Minor Parties in the United States. He wrote the entry on Roe v. Wade for the Encyclopedia of American Religion and Politics.

A story on President Bush’s proposal of $1.9 billion in aid to students affected by Hurricane Katrina.

Read the government’s past updates on its “Hurricane Help for Schools” program (the site is no longer updated past August 2006). Private schools and religious schools are eligible for aid.

Ilyse Hogue is president of the Proactive Policy Institute of NARAL Pro-Choice America, formerly the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League.