Juan M. Floyd-Thomas is associate professor of African-American religious history at Vanderbilt University’s Divinity School and a member of the cultural resources team for the African American Lectionary. He is also an expert on religion and protest music and black religious experience in America.

The National Campus Ministry Association is a professional organization for those working in Christian ministry in higher education. It’s based in Charlotte, N.C.

Cultivating the Spirit: How College Can Enhance Students’ Inner Lives (November 2010) is based on a five-year study of the changes students go through during their college years and the role schools can play in spiritual development. Alexander Astin, Helen Astin and Jennifer Lindholm are co-authors of this just-released book.

Some contend that clearing out clutter – simplifying, paring down – can have spiritual benefits as well. Read an Oct. 3, 2004, story in The Washington Post about how traditions from feng shui to Roman Catholicism teach about the spiritual joys of living with less.

Some set up sacred spaces or altars in their homes – with candles, keepsakes, photographs, a bit of blue glass that seems exactly right – a window, almost, to the divine. Read a Beliefnet.com story about women who set up personal altars in their homes.

Bread for the World is the largest faith-based advocacy movement against hunger, a collective of Christian groups. It posts hunger facts and figures. It is based in Washington, D.C.

Read a Jan. 24, 2011, statement from the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service saying the agency is “gravely concerned that the punitive immigration bills being considered by many state legislatures would contradict the biblical mandate to care for sojourners in our midst.”

Russell D. Moore, dean of the School of Theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, wrote a June 20, 2011, column in The Christian Post, “Immigration and the Gospel,” that calls on evangelicals to be welcoming to immigrants.

Southern Baptist delegates in Phoenix, gathered for the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting, adopted a resolution on immigration June 15, 2011, after sharp debates and divided votes on amendments regarding amnesty and enforcement. Read about it in a story from Ethics Daily.