David Fillingim is the author of Redneck Liberation: Country Music as Theology (Mercer University Press, 2003), in which he discusses country music lyrics as the theological expression of a marginalized group, “the Rednecks.” He is a professor at Cape Fear Community College in North Carolina.

Erika Doss is a professor in the department of American Studies at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana. She has written about popular culture religious expressions involving Elvis Presley.

Ronnie Christian runs Christian Cowboys and Friends, a cowboy ministry through country music, in Blanco, Texas.

Ralph Wood is a professor of theology and literature at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. He has written about the religious themes of writers such as Flannery O’Connor, Walker Percy, P.D. James and others.

Erin Smith is associate professor of gender studies at the University of Texas at Dallas. She has spoken on the subject of religious book clubs at a conference on religion and the culture of print.

Darren Middleton is an professor in the department of religion at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth. He has written about religion in the literature of Nikos Kazantzakis. He says more non-Christian publishers are producing books with religious themes and material. He calls this the “Mel Gibson-Dan Brown effect,” but also says it moves into […]

John Morden is associate professor of religious studies at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa., and the author of The Bop Apocalypse: The Religious Vision of Kerouac, Ginsberg and Burroughs (University of Illinois Press, 2001).  

Matthew Hedstrom is an assistant professor of religious studies at the University of Virginia. He wrote his dissertation on the search for spirituality in mass-market books.

Jeanne Kilde is a professor of religious studies at the University of Minnesota. She has written about the Left Behind series of books.