Hugh B. Urban is a professor of comparative studies at Ohio State University in Columbus. He contributed a chapter about Osho to Gurus in America.

Theresa Flores is the author of The Slave Across the Street, a memoir of her time as a child prostitute. She is the founder of Gracehaven, a home for rescued or escaped child prostitutes. She launched Save Our Adolescents from Prostitution, an awareness program aimed at hotel and motel workers, at the 2011 Super Bowl in Dallas. She […]

Brian Tome is senior pastor at Crossroads Community Church in Cincinnati. Crossroads has made a major commitment of finances and resources to International Justice Mission and works with the organization to end human trafficking overseas.

Joseph Cistone is CEO of International Partners in Mission, which offers immersion trips. The organization is based in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. He is a board member of a number of national and international organizations including the Mandel Center for Nonprofit Organizations at Case Western Reserve University.

The Rev. Linda Mercadante is a professor of theology at Methodist Theological School in Delaware, Ohio. She is the author of Belief Without Borders: Inside the Minds of the Spiritual but not Religious (2014). Her focuses are spirituality, victimization, gender, addiction, sin and evil, imagery of God, and the Shakers.

Self-Management and Recovery Training in Mentor, Ohio, uses rational emotive behavior therapy and cognitive behavior therapy in a self-help, abstinence-based addiction recovery program. SMART does not accept the disease concept of alcoholism and is not a 12-step program. It was founded in 1992 when it split off from Rational Recovery.

Noted Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann is an appreciative observer of the emergent conversation. He is professor emeritus from Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Ga. and author of over 100 books and scholarly articles.

Pamela Thimmes is an associate professor of religious studies at the University of Dayton and past chair of the Feminist Hermeneutics of the Bible section within the Society of Biblical Literature. She has written about trends in research on Mary Magdalene.

Joseph F. Kelly is chairman of the department of religious studies at John Carroll University and is also  active in the religious education apostolate of the Diocese of Cleveland. He is author of multiple religious books, including