The Rev. Alex da Silva Souto is pastor of New Milford United Methodist Church in New Milford, Conn. He is one of the authors of the Simple Plan, a plan for the future of the United Methodist Church that would involve eliminating all restrictions on LGBTQ clergy and church members from the denomination’s guiding documents. […]

Kathleen A. Green is the executive director of the Yale Humanist Community. Yale Humanists worked with the city of New Haven to add a humanist monument to the group of religious symbols displayed downtown each December.

Christel J. Manning is a religious studies professor at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Connecticut. She is the author of Losing Our Religion: How Unaffiliated Parents Are Raising Their Children.

Shauna Lee Lange is an artist, illustrator and designer who is also a liturgical arts adviser to churches and other sacred spaces. She has identified trends in North American contemporary sacred arts that include a return to organic materials, a focus on mysticism and exoticism and a preference for minimalism. She is based in Connecticut.

David Gelernter is a professor of computer science at Yale University in New Haven, Conn. where he studies, among other things, artificial intelligence. He is also the author of Judaism: A Way of Being (2009) and can discuss Judaism and artificial intelligence.

The Rev. William Pfohl is senior pastor of Jesse Lee Memorial United Methodist Church in Ridgefield, Conn. He is the chair of the Board of Ordained Ministry  for the church’s New York Conference, which announced in March 2016 that, in defiance of church rules, it would not consider an ordination candidate’s sexual orientation.

Chris Stedman is the executive director of the Yale Humanist Community at Yale University in New Haven, Conn. He is the author of Faitheist: How an Atheist Found Common Ground With the Religious.

Elizabeth Dreyer is a professor of religious studies at Fairfield University in Fairfield, Conn. She is the editor of a series of books, Called to Holiness: Spirituality for Catholic Women.

Yale Divinity School professor Tisa Wenger researches the cultural history of the categories of religion and secularism, the politics of religious freedom and the intersections of race and religion in American history.