Brooks Flippen is a professor of history at Southeastern Oklahoma State University in Durant, Okla., and a scholar of religion and American politics. He is the author of Jimmy Carter, the Politics of Family, and the Rise of the Religious Right.

Glenda Stansbury is dean of the In-Sight Institute and marketing and development director for In-Sight Books. She helps train nonreligious funeral celebrants and can discuss nonreligious funerals and contemporary funeral and memorial practices. She is based in Oklahoma City.

Phillip Larsen is a Christian and a writer based in Yukon, Okla. In October 2013, he wrote an essay for Ethics Daily that questioned holding up as heroes football players who misbehave off the field.

The Way is a Christian ministry to youth via sports camps in Europe. It is based in Fort Gibson, Okla.

The Rev. Anita Philips is an ordained minister in the United Methodist Church and heads its Native American United Methodist Clergywomen’s group. She serves in its Oklahoma Indian Missionary Conference.

Joseph A. Bessler is an associate professor of theology at Phillips Theological Seminary in Tulsa, Okla. He wrote a chapter on the endangered seminary for the book Revitalizing Practice: Collaborative Models for Theological Faculties.

Gary Peluso-Verdend is president of Phillips Theological Seminary in Tulsa, Okla., a multidenominational Protestant school. He is also an associate professor of practical theology and is an expert on congregational cultures and training for church leadership.

Read an Aug. 16, 2013, Religion News Service story about a federal judge striking down an anti-Shariah state constitutional amendment in Oklahoma. Voters had overwhelmingly approved the amendment in 2010.

The Native American Times is an independent Native American newspaper. It is based in Tahlequah, Okla. Lisa Snell is publisher.