Thomas Cahill, an Irish Catholic, is author of How the Irish Saved Civilization (Anchor, 1996) and served for a time as the North American education correspondent for the Times of London.

Lawrence J. McCaffrey is author of The Irish-Catholic Diaspora in America (Catholic University of America Press, 1998) and professor emeritus of history at Loyola University in Chicago.

The National Anti-Vivisection Society (NAVS) is an educational organization based in Chicago, Ill., whose ultimate goal is the elimination of animal use in product testing, education and biomedical research.

Mitziut Jewish Community in East Rogers Park, Ill., has incorporated drum circles in its worship. Contact Rabbi Menachem Cohen.

Edith L. Blumhofer is director of the Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Ill. She has written extensively on Pentecostalism.

David Daniels, a professor at McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago, is an expert in African Pentecostalism.

Gary Rohrmayer, president and executive minister of Converge MidAmerica, overseeing its business and ministry interests that supports regional church planting and ongoing care of its partner churches.

Darren E. Sherkat is a professor of sociology at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. He studies the intersection of religion, family and politics, and he’s working on a book about marijuana legalization.

Gayle Woloschak is a molecular biologist and a professor of radiology at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. She is director of “The Epic of Creation,” a lecture series that approaches the origins of the Earth through both scientific and religious perspectives, at the Zygon Center for Religion and Science at the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago.