The Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty promotes a free and virtuous society characterized by individual liberty and sustained by religious principles. The institute is ecumenical and defines itself as conservative. It is based in Grand Rapids, Mich. The Rev. Robert A. Sirico is president. Contact John Couretas, director of communications.    

The J.M. Dawson Institute of Church-State Studies at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, is devoted to research in the broad area of religion, politics and society and committed to the separation of church and state and the advancement of religious liberty around the world.

The Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University in Atlanta focuses on religion and the law worldwide. It is headed by John Witte Jr., a professor of law and ethics and an expert on religious liberty.

Robert Wineburg is the Jefferson Pilot Excellence Professor of social work at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro who has looked at IRS investigations of churches for political activities related to elections. He is the author of the Faith-Based Inefficiency: The Follies of Bush’s Initiatives, and he has been writing comprehensively about faith-based politics and social services […]

J. Bryan Hehir is the Parker Gilbert Montgomery Professor of the Practice of Religion and Public Life at the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. He is an expert on religion and American society.

U.S. Rep. Walter Jones Jr., R-N.C., sponsored the failed “Houses of Worship Free Speech Restoration Act of 2005” which would have amended the IRS code to state that churches and other houses of worship will not lose their tax-exempt status because of the “content, preparation or presentation of any homily, sermon, teaching, dialectic or other presentation […]

Nancy Ammerman is professor of sociology at Boston University and a leading expert on congregational dynamics, especially in mainline Protestantism. She is the author of Sacred Stories, Spiritual Tribes: Finding Religion in Everyday Life and Pillars of Faith: American Congregations and Their Partners. She is also an expert on religious movements and has written about the rise of fundamentalism.

John DiIulio Jr. is a professor of politics, religion and civil society at the University of Pennsylvania and was the first director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. A frequent speaker and writer on faith-based social services, he is co-editor of What’s God Got to Do With the American Experiment? (Brookings, 2000).

V.V. Raman, emeritus professor of physics and humanities at the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, N.Y., writes and speaks about Hinduism, ethics and altruism.