Blaine Mays is president of the International New Thought Alliance, which holds, among other things, that mental states are manifested in daily experience. He can describe the New Thought movement and discuss whether the blockbuster success of The Secret has created demand for New Thought churches and spiritual centers.

Kathryn Lofton is a professor of religious studies, American studies and  history and divinity at Yale University in New Haven, Conn. She has written about the religious content of Oprah Winfrey’s media empire and is knowledgeable about American religion and materialism, especially Christian kitsch.

J. Gordon Melton is a distinguished professor of American religious history at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. Formerly, he directed the Institute for the Study of American Religion at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has written about New Religious Movements and about Christian Science and is an expert on American-born religions. He co-wrote Perspectives on […]

Beryl Satter is associate professor of history at Rutgers University. She can discuss the development of New Thought philosophy and religion in the United States. She wrote Each Mind a Kingdom: American Women, Sexual Purity and the New Thought Movement, 1875-1920 (University of California Press, 1999).

The Rev. Temple Hayes is pastoral care minister of First Unity Church and spiritual leader of Unity Campus, a New Thought center, in St. Petersburg, Fla.

Tommie Novick-Lunsford is a minister of the Universal Foundation for Better Living who leads the Christ Delta study group in Indianola, Miss.

Catherine Wessinger, professor of religious studies at Loyola University in New Orleans, has written widely on theosophy, millennialism, New Religious Movements and New Age religions. She is co-editor of Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions.

John K. Simmons is professor and chairman of the department of religious studies at Western Illinois University in Macomb. He has written about metaphysics, the Unity Church and Christian Science.

Robert M. Fowler chairs the religion department at Baldwin-Wallace College in Berea, Ohio. He is a member of the Journal of Religion and Popular Culture editorial board. His focus is on unconventional U.S. religions.