The Finger Lakes Ekklesia Network is an organization of four house churches in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York.

Jared Looney is a church planter involved in house churches in the Bronx, N.Y. He is part of MetroSoul, a cooperative organization of church organizations and church planters working to plant simple churches throughout the New York metropolitan area. He blogs at Urban Ekklesia.

Maurice Isserman is a professor of history at Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y., and co-author of America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s. He is regarded as one of the leading historians on the era.

Efrain Agosto is a professor of New Testament and directs the Hispanic ministries program at Hartford Seminary. His expertise includes Bible scholarship and Hispanic theology across the U.S. Christian denominations.

Edwin David Aponte is a research professor of Latina/o and Latin American Christianity in the Center of World Christianity at New York Theological Seminary. He co-edited Handbook of Latina/o Theologies (Chalice Press, 2006).

The Rev. Jean-Pierre Ruiz, a Catholic priest who teaches biblical studies and Hispanic theology at St. John’s University in New York, is editor in chief of the Journal of Hispanic/Latino Theology. Hispanic religious issues he can discuss include Bible translations, end-times perspectives, ecumenism, relations with Jews and Muslims, immigration and immigration, and clergy.

At an April conference at Fordham University in New York, called “Moral Outrage and Moral Repair: Reflections on 9/11 and its Afterlife,” many speakers explored the connections between violence and religion. Transcripts of their presentations are available on the website.

Becky Garrison, a Manhattan-based freelance writer and senior contributing editor for the religious satire magazine The Wittenburg Door, is the author of Red and Blue God, Black and Blue Church: Eyewitness Accounts of How American Churches are Hijacking Jesus, Bagging the Beatitudes, and Worshipping the Almighty Dollar ( Jossey-Bass, 2006).

Rabbi Eugene Borowitz is a professor of Jewish religious thought at the Jewish Institute of Religion at Hebrew Union College in New York City. His books include Exploring Jewish Ethics and, as co-author, The Jewish Moral Values.