Mark Juergensmeyer is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Global Studies, Sociology, and affiliate of Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he was the founding director of the Global and International Studies Program and the Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies. He is an expert on religious violence, conflict resolution and South […]

John Hospers is a philosopher, an emeritus professor at the University of Southern California and an editor at Liberty magazine. In 1972, he was the Libertarian Party’s first presidential candidate.

Mark D. Roberts is senior pastor of Irvine Presbyterian Church in Irvine, Calif., and author of Dare to Be True: Living in the Freedom of Complete Honesty. He says people separate their religious convictions from their everyday lives, and the challenge for the church is to teach people how to connect them. 

Drew Halfmann is an associate professor of sociology at the University of California, Davis, and an expert on abortion policies.

The University of San Diego Center for the Study of Latino/a Catholicism is an organization dedicated to studying the theological influence of hispanics and Catholicism on society and church in the U.S. The center maintains an extensive list of Internet resources related to U.S. Hispanic and Latin American Catholicism.

Tremper Longman III is the Robert H. Gundry Professor of Biblical Studies at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, Calif. He has been active in Bible translation and is a member of the committee that produced the New Living Translation.

Lori Anne Ferrell is a professor of early modern history and literature at Claremont Graduate University in California. She wrote The Bible and the People.

Robert Alter is the Class of 1937 Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has taught for more than 30 years. He has translated books of the Bible and written extensively on the literary aspects of the Bible, most recently Pen of Iron: American Prose and the King James Bible.

The Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University in Santa Clara, Calif., is dedicated to researching modern ethical issues and attempting to create solutions in diverse fields such as bioethics, the Internet, government and character ethics.