Jennifer Hancock is a former executive director of the Humanists of Florida Association. She writes a freelance column on humanism for the Bradenton Herald; her Aug. 21, 2010, column discusses how humanism helped her cope with tragedies in her life.

Ryan T. Cragun is an associate professor of sociology at the University of Tampa, where he studies secularization, the nonreligious and members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The Institute for Science and Human Values is committed to scientific inquiry and the enhancement of human values and seeks to combine reason and compassion to achieve ethical wisdom. Toni Van Pelt is director of public policy.

Stephen Golant is a geographer at the University of Florida-Gainesville who specializes in gerontology and housing arrangements for senior citizens. He has written or edited more than 100 papers or books on the subject.

Kenneth W. Goodman is a professor of medicine at the University of Miami and the founder and director of the University of Miami Bioethics Program and its Pan American Bioethics Initiative. He is also the co-director of the university’s Ethics Programs.

Lars Noah is a law professor at the Fred G. Levin College of Law of the University of Florida in Gainesville and author of Law, Medicine and Medical Technology: Cases and Materials, 2nd ed. (Foundation Press, 2006).

Leon J. Podles, who lives in Baltimore and in Naples, Fla., wrote The Church Impotent: The Feminization of Christianity (Spence, 1999).

Mozella Gordon Mitchell is professor and chairwoman of religious studies at the University of South Florida in Tampa. Her expertise includes Afro-Caribbean religions and the history of African-American religion.

Felicia Dix-Richardson is assistant professor of sociology and criminal justice at Florida A&M University in Tallahassee. She has studied religious conversion in prisons, particularly among African-American women, and is expert on the topics of race, religion and inmate culture.