Helen M. Alvaré is a professor of law at George Mason University in Virginia. Alvaré chaired the commission investigating clerical abuse in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia and was an adviser to Pope Benedict XVI’s Pontifical Council for the Laity, as well as an ABC News consultant. Her scholarship regularly addresses current controversies about marriage, parenting and the […]

The Rev. Robert Wister is a leading expert on the history of the papacy. He is a professor of church history at Seton Hall University in New Jersey. He earned a doctorate in church history at the Gregorian University in Rome.

Eli Berman, a professor of economics at the University of California at San Diego, specializes in the economics of religion. He is also research director for International Security Studies at the UC Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation. He wrote an essay in the Quarterly Journal of Economics in 2000 titled “Sect, Subsidy and Sacrifice: An Economist’s View […]

Carmel Chiswick was a professor emerita of economics at the University of Illinois at Chicago until her retirement. She focuses on the economics of religion, especially involving the American Jewish family, Jewish religious observance and American Jewish communal institutions.

Barry Chiswick is chair of the department of economics at Columbian College of Arts and Sciences, George Washington University in Washington D.C.  He specializes in the economics of religion. During his former post at the University of Illinois at Chicago, he published widely on the topic of economic issues involving Jewish people.

Fenggang Yang directs the Center on Religion and Chinese Society at Purdue University. He is the author or co-author of more than a dozen books, including Religion in China: Survival and Revival Under Communist Rule. He is also an expert in Asian immigration and Eastern religions.

Daniel Hungerman is the Stepan Family Associate Professor of Economics at the University of  Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind. He has researched public policy and religiosity. Read his paper “Race and Charitable Church Activity.”

Charles M. North, associate professor of economics at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, has written about the links between religion and economic growth. He co-wrote the 2008 book Good Intentions: Nine Hot Button Issues Viewed Through the Eyes of Faith.

Economist Robert B. Ekelund is Lowder Eminent Scholar Emeritus at Auburn University in Auburn, Miss. His books include, as co-author, Sacred Trust: The Medieval Church as an Economic Firm (Oxford University Press, 1996). He has co-written a draft manuscript, Economics and Christianity. His paper “An Economic Analysis of the Protestant Reformation” was published in the 2002 Journal of Political […]