Ross Stolzenberg is a sociology professor at the University of Chicago. He has written about Jewish concepts of the afterlife.

Donna Furmanek is a yoga teacher at the Academy of Creative Movement Yoga Studio in Orland Park, Ill. She is a Christian and wrote an article about the intersection of yoga and Christian spirituality as well as about the fear some Christians have of traditional yoga.

Peter Walters is co-author of Christian Paths to Health and Wellness (2007). He is an associate professor in the applied health science department at Wheaton College in Illinois.

David J. Scheffer is director of the Center for International Human Rights at Northwestern University and a frequent commentator on human rights issues.

The Rev. Thomas H. Tobin is a theology professor at Loyola University in Chicago.  He wrote Paul’s Rhetoric in Its Contexts: The Argument of Romans.

Garry Wills is an adjunct professor in the history department at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. He is one of the foremost popular scholars writing on Christianity and church history and is author of the 2006 book What Paul Meant.

John Dominic Crossan is emeritus professor of religious studies at DePaul University in Chicago. He is a prominent expert on historical Christianity and co-author of In Search of Paul: How Jesus’s Apostle Opposed Rome’s Empire With God’s Kingdom.

The Hamdard Center for Health and Human Services in Addison, in suburban Chicago, is a shelter that caters mainly to Muslim women; it does not serve pork and has prayer rugs available.

Abdul Basit, a clinical psychologist, is assistant professor of psychiatry at Northwestern University in Chicago. A former Fulbright Scholar, he is the former editor in chief of the Journal of Muslim Mental Health and a member of the National Advisory Mental Health Council.