Angel Kyodo Williams, an ordained Zen priest, is founder of New Dharma Meditation Center for Urban Peace in Oakland, Calif., and the author of Being Black: Zen and the Art of Living With Fearlessness and Grace (Viking Press, 2000). She can be contacted through her website.

Jon B. Eisenberg is an appellate lawyer who was part of the legal team of Schiavo’s husband, Michael Schiavo. He also teaches appellate procedure at University of California Hastings College of the Law. Eisenberg wrote Using Terri: The Religious Right’s Conspiracy to Take Away Our Rights (HarperSanFrancisco, 2005).

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).

What may houses of worship do to advance political causes or candidates? By Ira Rifkin Freelance Writer The Church at Pierce Creek was a non-denominational, conservative Protestant congregation outside Binghamton, N.Y., until the Internal Revenue Service revoked its tax-exempt status for sponsoring a 1992 newspaper ad attacking then-presidential candidate Bill Clinton’s stands on abortion and […]

Monte Sahlin is vice president for creative ministries with the Seventh-day Adventist Church, in which blacks make up 31 percent of members and which has 750 multiethnic congregations in which no ethnic group is more than 51 percent.

Cancer Patients Alliance is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization led by a Medical Director and a five-member scientific board of highly regarded specialists in oncology from around the world. Their mission is to promote awareness, increase education and further pancreatic cancer research.

Helen Ann Halpin is director of the Center for Health and Public Policy Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. She is an expert on access to health insurance and health care reform.

Alain C. Enthoven is a professor emeritus at the Center for Health Policy/Center for Primary Care and Outcomes Research at Stanford University. His research focuses on financing and delivery of health care in the United States.

Clayborne Carson is a Stanford University history professor and founding director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute. He is an expert on the interface between faith and social justice.