Rabbi Kerry M. Olitzky is a Reform rabbi, executive director of the Jewish Outreach Institute in New York City and co-author of Twelve Jewish Steps to Recovery (Jewish Lights, 1991) and author to a number of books and articles on a variety of topics.

Joseph Nevins is an assistant professor of geography at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. He is the author of Operation Gatekeeper: The Rise of the ‘Illegal Alien’ and the Making of the U.S.-Mexico Boundary (Routledge, 2002).

Aaron Gershowitz is director of refugee and immigrant services at the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, or HIAS. Gershowitz is responsible for the overall direction and management of HIAS’ domestic refugee resettlement and immigration services programs.

Deborah Stein is the director of the Episcopal Migration Ministries, the refugee resettlement program of the Episcopal Church.

The Rev. James W. Fraser is professor of history and education at the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development at New York University. He wrote Between Church and State: Religion and Public Education in a Multicultural America.

Maria Luisa Tucker is program director and multimedia editor at Youth Communication in New York. In January 2006, she posted a blog entry linking the rise and fall of prosperity gospel to national politics.

Deirdre Good teaches at General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church in New York. She has written about early writing outside the accepted body of Christian texts. She writes and lectures widely on the role of women in historical Christianity and in the present.

Some Catholics were angry about the portrayal of Catholicism in the book, finding it prejudiced. Linked to the novel’s villains, the organization Opus Dei rebuts at length the book’s characterization of the group and offers speakers about the organization.

Sam Pollard is a professor of film and television at New York University in New York, N.Y. He has produced and directed several documentaries, including one about black preachers for the History Channel.