Luis Alberto Urrea is a writer and a professor of creative writing at the University of Illinois-Chicago. Urrea, a native of Tijuana, was a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction for his book The Devil’s Highway: A True Story (Little, Brown & Co., 2004). The book chronicles the attempt 26 Mexican men made in May […]

A.K.M. “AKMA” Adam, an Episcopal priest and taught New Testament and early church history for nine years at Seabury-Western Theological Seminary in Evanston, Ill. He has written numerous books and articles, including Faithful Interpretation: Reading the Bible in a Postmodern World (Fortress, October 2006).

Donald A. Carson is research professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Ill. A critic of emerging church, he wrote Becoming Conversant With the Emerging Church: Understanding a Movement and Its Implications (Zondervan, 2005). He is founding chair of The GRAMCORD Institute, a research and educational organization dedicated to providing computer tools to help […]

Margaret M. Mitchell teaches New Testament and the history of early Christianity at the University of Chicago Divinity School. She is the author of four books, including The “Belly-Myther” of Endor: Interpretations of 1 Kingdoms 28 in the Early Church (with Rowan A. Greer, 2007), and a number of articles.

Martin Marty, retired professor of religion at the Divinity School at the University of Chicago, is the author of Education, Religion and the Common Good: Advancing a Distinctly American Conversation About Religion’s Role in Our Shared Life.

Leland Ryken is Clyde S. Kilby Professor of English at Wheaton College in Illinois. His expertise includes the teaching of the Bible.

Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. is pastor emeritus of Trinity United Church of Christ, a predominantly African-American megachurch in Chicago. He participated in a conference of African-American pastors concerned with the effect of prosperity gospel in their churches. Trinity’s mission statement includes a “disavowal of the pursuit of middleclassness” and commitment to work toward economic parity.

Johnnie Colemon is founder of Christ Universal Temple in Chicago, where the first statement of belief is “We believe that it is God’s will that every individual on the face of this earth should live a healthy, happy and prosperous life.” She blends traditional prosperity gospel with New Thought theology – the belief that one’s mind creates […]

Read a Feb. 17, 2013, New York Times article about the debate over religious federal holidays in the U.S.