Bishop Carlton Pearson is senior pastor of New Dimensions Worship Center in Chicago, a Pentecostal Christian church.

Craig Mousin is director of the Center for Church-State Studies at DePaul University law school in Chicago. The nondenominational center promotes debate and discussion about the First Amendment and the Establishment Clause.

Paul Jarzembowski is the USCCB representative to the National Catholic Young Adult Ministry Association, which is an outreach to singles and couples in their 20s and 30s.

Michelle McKinney Hammond of Chicago is a cable show co-host, public speaker and the author of several Christian books on living single, including Secrets of an Irresistible Woman: Smart Rules for Capturing His Heart and Ending The Search For Mr. Right: How to Be Found by the Man You’ve Been Looking For. She founded HeartWing Ministries.

Dan P. McAdams is a professor of psychology and director of the Foley Center for the Study of Lives at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. McAdams’ research examines how people develop their identities, and he has studied “generativity,” adults’ concern for the next generation. His book The Redemptive Self: Stories Americans Live By, which finds personal redemption a major […]

James Newton Poling is a professor of pastoral care, counseling and theology at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary in Evanston, Ill. He has written about domestic violence as a pastoral care issue.

Martha C. Nussbaum holds appointments in law, divinity and philosophy at the University of Chicago, where she is the Ernest Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics. Her wide-ranging interests include contemporary moral and political philosophy, the history of Western philosophy and the nature of emotions. She is the author of Liberty of Conscience: The Attack […]

Cure Violence, an initiative of the Chicago Project for Violence Prevention, takes a public health approach to reducing violence and strives to change community attitudes as one way to combat the problem. Tactics have included a “Covenant for Peace in Action,” which was joined by more than 170 of the city’s religious leaders. Other cities […]

The Rev. Sharon Ellis Davis is a United Church of Christ pastor who teaches seminary classes on sexual and domestic violence. She is co-founder and pastor emeritus of God Can Ministries as well as a retired Chicago police officer and police chaplain.