William Swatos Jr. is executive director of the Religious Research Association, a group of academic and religious professionals that applies scientific research methods to the study of religion. It is a project of the Hartford Seminary. He is located in Illinois.

Tom Smith is a senior fellow and director of the General Social Survey at the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. He is at work on a study of religious change, including how people think about God. He served as a consultant to the Religious Landscape study and is an expert on Catholics and Protestants.

Vinita Hampton Wright is a Chicago-based novelist and religion editor who wrote A Catalogue of Angels: The Heavenly, the Fallen and the Holy Ones Among Us (2006), about angels in the three Abrahamic traditions.

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.