Ronald Barrett is a psychology professor at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. He is an expert on African-American contemporary funeral practices.

Brendan Freeman is a Cistercian monk and abbot of New Melleray Abbey, a community of about 30 monks in Peosta, Iowa. The monks hand-make wooden caskets and urns that they bill as a “soulful alternative” to more elaborate caskets.

Gayden Metcalfe is co-author, with Charlotte Hays, of Being Dead Is No Excuse: The Official Southern Ladies Guide to Hosting the Perfect Funeral (Miramax Books, 2005). She lives in Greenville, Miss.

Christopher Leevy Johnson is a funeral director and was an African-American studies professor at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, S.C. He researches the role of African-American funeral directors in the black church, politics and community affairs.

Sarah York is author of Remembering Well: Rituals for Celebrating Life and Mourning Death (Jossey-Bass, 2000). She conducts workshops based on her book and is a Unitarian Universalist minister who lives near Asheville, N.C.

Edward Searl is author of In Memoriam: A Guide to Modern Funeral and Memorial Services (Skinner House Books, 2000). He is a Unitarian Universalist minister in Hinsdale, Ill.  

Thomas G. Long is a professor of preaching at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta. He frequently speaks and writes about Christian funeral practices and wrote Accompany Them with Singing: The Christian Funeral (2009) and, with Thomas Lynch,  The Good Funeral: Death, Grief and the Community of Care (2013).  He is also […]

Stephen Prothero is former professor of Religion in America in the Department of Religion at Boston University. He is the author of numerous books including Religion Matters: An Introduction to the World’s Religions (W.W. Norton 2020), Why Liberals Win the Culture Wars (HarperOne, 2016), God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions that Run the World—and Why Their Differences Matter (HarperOne, 2010), and […]

Katherine (Stenger) Knutson is an assistant professor of political science at Gustavus Adolphus College in Saint Peter, Minn. Her focus is on the effect of religious interest groups on American politics.