Karen Dudley is the founder and senior pastor of Dallas International Street Church, a nondenominational church of homeless people in Dallas.

Read a May 14, 2004, article by Robert Parham in EthicsDaily.com, a publication of the Baptist Center for Ethics. It examines the “bad apples” explanation of the Abu Ghraib abuses in a Christian religious context.

Jay F. Hein, former director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, is Distinguished Senior Fellow and director of the Program for Faith and Service at Baylor University’s Institute for Studies of Religion in Waco, Texas. The Program for Faith and Service promotes cutting-edge approaches to social problems through faith-based organizations.

Baylor University, a private Baptist university, has an Interdisciplinary Poverty Initiative that focuses on engaging students in the issues of poverty, civic engagement, and social and economic justice. Contact project coordinator Kayla Mize.

Peter Laarman of Los Angeles is executive director of Progressive Christians Uniting and an ordained United Church of Christ minister. He is editor of the just-published Getting on Message: Challenging the Christian Right from the Heart of the Gospel (Beacon Press, 2006) and knows a lot of other groups active on this subject.

Room in the Inn is a coalition of nearly 200 congregations in Nashville, Tennessee, that provide shelter and other services to the city’s homeless. It has become a model for similar programs around the South. Contact executive director Rachel Hester.

Greg Boyd is senior pastor of Woodland Hills Church in St. Paul, Minn., and author of The Myth of a Christian Nation: How the Quest for Political Power is Destroying the Church, in which he says American Christians should seek to build the kingdom of God instead of building political power.

Jan G. Linn is author of Big Christianity: What’s Right with the Religious Left (Westminster John Knox, 2006) and a co-pastor of Spirit of Joy Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Minneapolis. A former college and seminary professor, Linn calls himself a “recovering fundamentalist” who wants to reclaim the idea of Christianity as generous, or liberal, and tolerant.

Sister Joan Chittister, a Benedictine nun, lecturer and writer, has been especially active on peace issues. She was a guest on an April 16 Meet the Press panel about faith and politics.