Shawn Sorenson is the director of the Spirituality and Sports program at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, Calif. The program brings in speakers and hosts events on the intersection of sports and faith.

Varun Soni is dean of religious life at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, where there is a Spirituality and Sports Program. He wrote an essay for The Huffington Post about how his Hinduism is affected by following the perennially last-place Los Angeles Clippers, and he was part of a panel discussion that […]

Ghazala Anwar is an associate professor of Quranic studies at Starr King School for the Ministry, a Unitarian Universalist school, at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, Calif. She is also on the steering committee of GTU’s Women’s Studies in Religion program. Among her areas of interest are women in Islam and gender equality.

Jules Hart is the director of the 2011 documentary Pink Smoke Over the Vatican, about Roman Catholic Womenpriests and the fight for women’s ordination in the Catholic Church. She is based in Carmel, Calif.

Kathleen Kunster is an ordained Womanpriest who lives in the Sonoma County area of California.

Read a July 7, 2014, New York Times story about a 2008 law that may be behind the rise in children crossing the U.S.-Mexican border.

Minerva G. Carcano is bishop of the Phoenix Episcopal Area, Desert Southwest Conference of the United Methodist Church, which is based in Pasadena, Calif. She is spokeswoman for the Council of Bishops on the issue of immigration.

Andrew Johnson is a research associate with the University of Southern California’s Religious Competition and Creative Innovation initiative. He is conducting a research project, “Religion Behind Bars: Pentecostalism in Brazilian Prisons and the Social Consequences of Religious Prisoners,” through a grant from USC’s Pentecostal and Charismatic Research Initiative. He has conducted research on Pentecostalism inside […]

Gordon Hanson is a professor of economics and holds the Pacific Economic Cooperation Chair in International Economic Relations at the University of California at San Diego. He is conducting a research project, “The Global Marketplace for Christianity,” through a grant from the University of Southern California’s Pentecostal and Charismatic Research Initiative.