Laura Hobgood-Oster is a professor of religion at Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas. Her areas of expertise include animals in the history of the Christian tradition and contemporary religious-ethical issues related to other-than-human animals. She is the author of Holy Dogs and Asses: Animals in the Christian Tradition (2008).

Carol J. Adams is an independent scholar and self described “feminist-vegan” based in Dallas, Texas. She writes and lectures widely. She has written about the relationships between religion and animals.

Stephen Kaufman is a physician and a clinical assistant professor of surgery at Northeast Ohio Medical University in Canton, Ohio. He has been involved in leadership of the Christian Vegetarian Association. He has written on animal experimentation as well as Christian spirituality and vegetarianism.

James P. Sterba is a professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana. He has written about animal rights and environmental ethics.

David H. Smith is a professor emeritus of religious studies at Indiana University in Bloomington, Ind. He has studied religious and medical ethics.

William Greenway is an associate professor of philosophical theology at the Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Austin, Texas. He is a member of the Christian Vegetarian Association.

Read a September 2005 Christianity Today article on New Monasticism.

Read an account of the New Monasticism movement in the fall 2005 issue of the journal Divinity from the Duke Divinity School.

A Feb. 18, 2005, New York Times article describes an Eastern Catholic Maronite monastery in Massachusetts that offers spiritual retreats. The story also has links to other monasteries around the country that open their doors to the public for spiritual retreats.