Julia A. Upton is professor and provost at St. John’s University in Queens, N.Y. She is author of A Time for Embracing:  Reclaiming Reconciliation.

Read a July 25, 2012, Politico article about a coalition of U.S. mayors who are pressing both major presidential candidates to give voters more details about their stances on gun control.

Louise Desalvo is the Jenny Hunter Endowed Scholar for Creative Writing and Literature at Hunter College at the City University of New York. She is the author of the memoirs Crazy in the Kitchen: Food, Feuds and Forgiveness in an Italian American Family and the book Writing as a Way of Healing: How Telling Our Stories Transforms Our […]

Ellis Cose, a former contributing editor to Newsweek, is author of Bone to Pick: Of Forgiveness, Reconciliation, Reparation and Revenge and End of Anger (2011).

Fellowship of Reconciliation is an interfaith organization that promotes nonviolence, peace and justice, partly through forgiveness. It was formed in 1915 in response to World War I and has programs in many countries. It’s based in Nyack , N.Y. Rev. Kristin Gill Stoneking is executive director.

The Institute for Research on Unlimited Love does research on benevolent love and encourages dialogue in international and spiritual communities as well as among the wider public with the goal of “global human enhancement.” Stephen G. Post is president.

Paul Knitter is the Paul Tillich Professor of Theology, World Religions and Culture at Union Theological Seminary in New York. He is an expert in religious pluralism and can talk about how the election can affect the nation’s religious dynamics.

Serene Jones is president of Union Theological Seminary in New York and Roosevelt Professor of Systematic Theology. She can discuss the ways in which Obama’s presidency could move the religious focus from hot-button issues of sexuality to social justice issues, such as poverty and homelessness.

Kent Greenawalt is a professor at Columbia Law School in New York City. He is the author of publications on church and state issues. He is the author of Religious Conviction and Political Choice (1991).