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.

Hugh LaFollette is the Cole Chair in Ethics at professor of philosophy at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg. He co-authored Brute Science: Dilemmas of Animal Experimentation and has written extensively on gun control and other issues.

Read a Jan. 16, 2005, Boston Globe article on a religious retreat in Tucson, Ariz.