Karla Holloway is a professor of English at Duke University in Durham, N.C., and author of Passed On: African American Mourning Stories (Duke University Press, 2002), in which she examines African-American burial and embalming rituals, funeral services and the undertaking industry.

Wendy Brown Scott teaches law at North Carolina Central University and specializes in law and religion. Contact 504-865-5933, [email protected].

William P. Marshall is Kenan Professor of Law and a constitutional lawyer at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.

Richard Barrett is a North Carolina-based consultant who speaks to groups about how bringing spirituality into the workplace can improve business achievement.

Leslie Strohm is vice chancellor and general counsel for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which denied recognition to a Christian fraternity that wouldn’t sign the university’s nondiscrimination policy.

Mark A. Chaves is professor of sociology at Duke University in Durham, N.C. He is an expert on religious organizations in the United States and leads the National Congregations Study.

Richard Walsh, professor of religion at Methodist University in Fayetteville, N.C., writes about portrayals of Jesus in film. He says there have always been implicitly Christian movies because the Christian narrative and vision of life is so deeply ingrained. Walsh is author of Reading the Gospels in the Dark: Portrayals of Jesus in Film (Trinity Press International, […]

Conrad Ostwalt is Department Chair  of Philosophy and Religion at Appalachian State University in Boone, N.C. He co-edited a book with Joel Martin, Screening the Sacred: Religion, Myth and Ideology in Popular American Film (Westview Press, 1995). He has written extensively about religion in the movies, with an emphasis on depictions of the Apocalypse, and is the author […]

John S. Friedman is rabbi of the Judea Reform Congregation in Durham-Chapel Hill, N.C. He has received awards for his activism in peace and social justice causes. He has been president of Durham Congregations in Action and the Mid-Atlantic Association of Reform Rabbis and has chaired the Interreligious Affairs Committee of the Central Conference of […]