William Michael Ashcraft is an associate professor of philosophy and religion at Truman State University in Kirksville, Mo. He has written about New Religious Movements.

Philip K. Goff is an associate professor of religious studies at Indiana University in Indianapolis, where he directs the Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture. He co-edited (with Paul Harvey) Themes in Religion and American Culture (University of North Carolina Press, 2004) and (also with Harvey) The Columbia Documentary History of Religion in America Since […]

Ruth A. Tucker is an independent scholar of religion based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She has taught courses on world religions, cults and New Age for 30 years, most recently at Calvin Theological Seminary. Tucker wrote Another Gospel: Cults, Alternative Religions and the New Age Movement.

Claudine Michel chairs the department of black studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She edits The Journal of Haitian Studies and co-edited (with Patrick Bellegarde-Smith) two books on Vodou, Haitian Vodou: Spirit, Myth, And Reality (Indiana University Press, 2006) and Invisible Powers: Vodou in Haitian Life and Culture (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006).

Mozella Gordon Mitchell is professor and chairwoman of religious studies at the University of South Florida in Tampa. Her expertise includes Afro-Caribbean religions and the history of African-American religion.

Survey Documentation and Analysis (using data from the General Social Surveys from 1972-2004) shows that 75.7 percent of blacks are Protestant, 6.5 percent are Catholic, 0.2 percent are Jewish, 7 percent are “Other” and 10.6 percent do not identify with a religious group.

When is it appropriate to use the words “fundamentalist” and “cult?” What are other terms with which I must be careful? By Don Lattin The San Francisco Chronicle* CULT is a word that should be used with care. Some of its dictionary definitions are value neutral, with such meanings as “formal religious veneration,” such as […]

Mary L. Smith is the president of the National Native American Bar Association.

Winona LaDuke, an Anishinaabe, is an author and program director of Honor the Earth, which supports Native environmental issues by working to break the geographic and political isolation of Native communities.