Read the First Amendment Center’s article on the free exercise clause, which includes a discussion of how Employment Division v. Smith, the 1990 peyote case, changed the legal precedent for religious groups whose practices conflict with state law.

Read the First Amendment Center’s resource page on Gonzales v. O Centro Espirita Beneficiente Uniao Do Vegetal. It includes amicus briefs filed for both sides of the case.

The UDV religion in the United States has a website with resources for covering the case, including a FAQ and background links.

Read the petition to the U.S. Supreme Court in Gonzales v. O Centro Espirita Beneficiente Uniao Do Vegetal.

Anthea Butler is the Geraldine R. Segal Professor in American Social Thought and chair of religious studies at the University of Pennsylvania. A historian of African American and American religion, she specializes in the history of Pentecostalism and is the author of White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America.

Cheryl J. Sanders is professor of Christian ethics at Howard University School of Divinity and senior pastor of the Third Street Church of God in Washington, D.C. She has written extensively on race and culture and on the holiness-Pentecostal experience in African-American religion and culture. She can discuss the tradition of community work among black churches.

Arlene Sánchez-Walsh is a religious studies professor at Azusa Pacific University in Azuza, California. She is an authority on Latino evangelicals, and her current research is on the rise of nonbelief among Latinos and Latinas. Her books include Latino Pentecostal Identity: Evangelical Faith, Self and Society.  

Read an Aug. 25, 2002, Baltimore Sun article republished by Religion News Blog describing the growth of black megachurches and neo-Pentecostalism.

Manuel Ortiz, professor emeritus professor of ministry and urban mission at Westminster Theological Seminary in Glenside, Pa. Has focused his work on multicultural churches and the religious lives of American Hispanics.