William T. Cavanaugh is a professor of Catholic studies at DePaul University in Chicago, Ill., who has written and researched extensively on the relationship between religion and violence. He is the author of The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict (2009).

Right-wing extremist violence — against Muslims, Jews, abortion clinics and providers, and the government, for example — is sometimes perpetrated by suspects using Christianity as a justification or motivation. Suspect groups and individuals have drawn scrutiny from the FBI, but the extent and risk of the threat remains a matter of debate, as a July […]

One challenge in writing about the Eastern Orthodox is the debate over numbers. A figure often cited is 3 million adherents in the U.S., with about 2 million in the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, 1 million in the Orthodox Church in America, and some tens of thousands in the other 20 major Eastern Orthodox churches. In a […]

Becky Garrison, a Manhattan-based freelance writer and senior contributing editor for the religious satire magazine The Wittenburg Door, is the author of Red and Blue God, Black and Blue Church: Eyewitness Accounts of How American Churches are Hijacking Jesus, Bagging the Beatitudes, and Worshipping the Almighty Dollar ( Jossey-Bass, 2006).

Craig Keener is a professor of New Testament at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky. He co-authored an article on the Nation of Islam for A Guide to New Religious Movements. He is an ordained minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church.

The Albert Gnaegi Center for Health Care Ethics at Saint Louis University brings the Catholic, Jesuit tradition into interdisciplinary discourse with health care. Cynthia McKenna is the coordinator of the Center.

Paul Weithman is a professor of philosophy at Notre Dame University and the author of Religion and the Obligations of Citizenship.

The Rev. Rebecca Larson is director of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s Division for Church in Society, which publishes a magazine on Lutheran ethics.

Read an April 2007 study by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life and the Pew Hispanic Center about the effects the booming Hispanic population is having on U.S. religious practices.