Jok Madut Jok is Executive Director of the Sudd Institute. Jok joined the Government of South Sudan as undersecretary in the Ministry of Culture and Heritage. He was an associate history professor at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles and author of Sudan: Race, Religion and Violence (OneWorld Publications, 2007) and War and Slavery in Sudan (The Ethnography of […]

Patrick A. Polk is a lecturer in the Department of World Arts and Cultures at the University of California, Los Angeles. In 2004, he was the guest curator of an exhibit at the Fowler Muesum on roadside religious displays found throughout Los Angeles.

Bernadette Murphy is the author of Zen and the Art of Knitting: Exploring the Links Between Knitting, Spirituality and Creativity (Adams Media Corp., 2002). She is a fiction writer and instructor at Antioch University in Los Angeles.

Christina Cabeena wrote a paper on Las Vegas and nuns while she was doctoral student at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Robin Sylvan is an adjunct professor of art and religion at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, Calif. He has written about religion and rave culture, popular music, rap and hip-hop.

Kate McCarthy is an associate professor of religious studies at California State University, Chico. She has written about religious expression in rock music, including the music of Bruce Springsteen.

The International Church of the Foursquare Gospel in Los Angeles builds churches and has trained local people to carry on the work in east, west and south Africa.

• Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., has an HIV/AIDS initiative to bring churches together to help stop the spread of HIV and AIDS globally. Contact initiative founder Kay Warren.

Rabbi Joseph Telushkin was spiritual leader of the Synagogue for the Performing Arts in Los Angeles. He wrote Jewish Humor: What the Best Jewish Jokes Say About the Jews, as well as several books on Jewish ethics, such as The Book of Jewish Values: A Day-by-Day Guide to Ethical Living and The Ten Commandments of Character: Essential Advice for Living […]