Jean Houston is the author of Mystical Dogs: Animals as Guides to Our Inner Life. She is based in Ashland, Ore.

Anita Guerrini is a history professor at Oregon State University. She has taught a course on the history of animal use in science and is the author of Experimenting With Humans and Animals: From Galen to Animal Rights. She can be contacted here.

Jane Rickenbaugh teaches sacred dance at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in Portland, Ore.

Kristen Johnson Ingram is the author of Beyond Words: 15 Ways of Doing Prayer. She explores the way nonverbal acts like listening to music or taking a walk can be performed as prayer. She is a preacher in the Episcopal Church and lives in Springfield, Ore.

The Rural Policy Research Institute is at the University of Missouri-Columbia and Oregon State University. Charles W. Fluharty, research professor at the Truman School of Public Affairs at the University of Missouri, is director. He has a degree from Yale Divinity School.

Dena Hassouneh-Phillips is an assistant professor at the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland. She has studied spousal abuse within the American Muslim community.

Carolyn Rexius is director of Christians Addressing Family Abuse in Eugene, Oregon.

Caitlin Baggott is the executive director of The Bus Project, an Oregon project which engages young people in democracy and works to make politics more accessible, more equitable and more innovative.

Stephen J. Shoemaker is an associate professor of Christian history in the department of religious studies at the University of Oregon in Eugene. He has written widely on the Virgin Mary in early Christianity and in Gnostic traditions and teaches a course on early Islam.