Peter Laarman of Los Angeles is executive director of Progressive Christians Uniting and an ordained United Church of Christ minister. He is editor of the just-published Getting on Message: Challenging the Christian Right from the Heart of the Gospel (Beacon Press, 2006) and knows a lot of other groups active on this subject.

Michael N. Nagler founded the Peace and Conflict Studies program at the University of California, Berkeley, where he is an emeritus professor. He is the author most recently of The Search for a Nonviolent Future: A Promise of Peace for Ourselves, Our Families and Our World (Inner Ocean, 2004), and he is a follower of the Indian […]

Heather Larkin is an assistant professor in the school of social welfare at the State University of New York in Albany. She has done research on the impact that childhood neglect and abuse has had on homeless people in Albany and Petaluma, Calif.

David A. Snow is a professor of sociology at the University of California, Irvine. He has studied and written widely on homelessness and poverty.

Ronald C. White Jr. is the author of two best-selling books on Lincoln, Lincoln’s Greatest Speech and The Eloquent President. White’s newest, A. Lincoln: A Biography, was published to coincide with the bicentennial. In 2006, White gave a sermon at the National Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C., titled “Abraham Lincoln’s Sermon on the Mount.”

Ronald D. Rietveld is professor of history emeritus at California State University at Fullerton. He has written extensively on Lincoln, the antebellum period, the Civil War and Reconstruction, and the history of religion in America. He was a historical consultant for the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum and is known as the only person who found […]

David Gordon White is a professor of religious studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is an expert on the religions of South Asia and contributed an entry on dogs to The Encyclopedia of Religion.

Michal R. Belknap is an emeritus professor of law at California Western School of Law in San Diego. He wrote the essay “Cults and the Law” for the book Religion and American Law: An Encyclopedia.

John Young is director of comparative medicine at Los Angeles Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and chairman of Americans for Medical Progress, a pro-animal testing group.