Mathew N. Schmalz is a professor of religious studies at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. He specializes in global Catholicism, the papacy and Catholicism/culture issues in the U.S. He is the founder of the Journal of Global Catholicism and author of Mercy Matters (2015).

Herbert Kelman is Richard Clarke Cabot Professor of Social Ethics, Emeritus, in the psychology department at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., and co-author of Crimes of Obedience: Toward a Social Psychology of Authority and Responsibility.

Barbara Kellerman is the James McGregor Burns Lecturer in the Leadership at the Center for Public Leadership of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and the author of Bad Leadership: What It Is, How It Happens, Why It Matters.

Dan Wakefield is a veteran writer and Unitarian in Boston whose newest book is The Hijacking of Jesus: How the Religious Right Distorts Christianity and Promotes Prejudice and Hate (Nation Books, 2006). Read an excerpt in the April 24, 2006, issue of The Nation.

The Progressive Interfaith Alliance formed in Delaware in 2009 to focus on finding ways to ease poverty in its area. It now works on a variety of social justice issues. Contact the Rev. Michael Smith of the Unitarian Universalists of Southern Delaware in Lewes.

Aviva Luz Argote is executive director of the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass.

Christopher Jencks is the Malcolm Wiener Professor of Social Policy in the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He is the author of The Homeless and has written about poverty, welfare reform and changes in American family structure.

Doris Kearns Goodwin is one of America’s most popular historians and the best-selling author of Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln.

The Rev. Victoria Weinstein is pastor of First Parish Church of Norwell, Mass., a Unitarian Universalist congregation. In May 2006, she delivered a sermon on the spiritual value of animals.