Mark Blum is a University of California, Berkeley professor and Shinjo Ito distinguished chair in Japanese studies. He specializes in Pure Land Buddhism throughout East Asia and also works in the area of Japanese Buddhist responses to modernism, Buddhist conceptions of death in China and Japan and historical consciousness in Buddhist thought.

Walter Truett Anderson is an independent writer, lecturer, political scientist, social psychologist and author of Open Secrets: A Western Guide to Tibetan Buddhism and The Next Enlightenment, which highlights the similarities between Western constructivist thought and Eastern spiritual traditions such as Buddhism.

The Sikh Sport Association organizes sporting events for Sikhs and tracks Sikh athletes in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond. It is based in Danville, Calif., and the organization maintains a list of contacts by sports.

Jewish Sports Review is a bimonthly, subscription-only online publication that covers Jewish sports figures — both on the field and in the front office. It also covers Israeli sports. It is based in Los Angeles, and Shel Wallman is the editor.

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.