The Layman is a conservative journal published by the Presbyterian Lay Committee, a North Carolina-based action group. Contact through PLC president and executive director Carmen Fowler LaBerge.

George G. Hunter III is a professor of church growth and evangelism at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Ky. He is the author of Christian, Evangelical & … Democrat? (2006), in which he questions the identification of the gospel with the Republican Party. He writes, “I am especially concerned for the soul and the credibility of evangelical Christianity […]

Kenneth J. Collins studies American Christianity at the Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Ky. He can comment on the evolution of evangelicalism in the United States.

Clarke E. Cochran is an expert on religion and politics in America. His numerous books include, as co-author, Catholics, Politics and Public Policy: Beyond Left and Right and the 2007 release Church, State and Public Justice: Five Views.

P. Kent Smith is a professor of missions at the graduate school of theology at Abilene Christian University in Texas, where he teaches a course on culture and evangelism in North America. Smith has ministered for churches in Texas, Wisconsin, Indiana and Missouri.

Allison Calhoun-Brown is associate professor of political science at Georgia State University. She specializes in religion and politics and African-American politics.

Jimmy Carter is a former president of the United States and a Southern Baptist. In his book, Our Endangered Values: America’s Moral Crisis, he writes of an “unapologetic crusade underway to merge fundamentalist Christians with the right wing of the Republican Party.” Contact through Tony Clark at the Carter Presidential Library.

Walter B. Shurden is a retired professor of Christianity and the founding executive director the Center for Baptist Studies at Mercer University in Macon, Ga. In June 2006, he delivered an address before the Religious Liberty Council Luncheon at the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship General Assembly in which he outlined ways in which he thinks some American Christians have […]

Wilfred M. McClay holds the SunTrust Bank Chair of Excellence in Humanities at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, where he is also a professor of history. He is a widely published author on issues related to religion in America. He co-edited Religion Returns to the Public Square: Faith and Policy in America. He is also a […]