Kelly Bean is pastor of a Portland, Ore., house community, Third Saturday. She is a member of the founding team of the Emerging Women Leaders Initiative and served on the board of directors of Off The Map. Bean’s history included a painful departure from a beloved conservative congregation that excluded women from leadership.

The Da Vinci Hoax: Exposing the Errors in The Da Vinci Code by Carl Olson and Sandra Miesel answers the questions of fact and fiction posed by readers of Dan Brown’s novel. This book received attention as a Catholic debunking.

Read the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in the 1990 peyote case, Employment Division, Oregon Department of Human Resources v. Smith 494 U.S. 872.

Nancy L. Haigwood is a professor and senior scientist at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland as well as the director of the Oregon National Primate Research Center. She has written about how the use of primates has advanced HIV research.

Animal Law Review is a student-run law review at Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland, Ore. Their objective is to provide a balanced scholarly forum to discuss all aspects of animal law.

Pamela Frasch is the assistant dean of the animal law program at Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland, Ore., and the executive director of the Center for Animal Law Studies.

The Animal Legal Defense Fund pushes the U.S. legal system to end the suffering of animals and has blazed the trail for stronger enforcement of anti-cruelty laws and more humane treatment of animals. They maintain a national headquarters in San Francisco, Calif., and another office in Portland, Ore.  

Bob Hyatt is a pastor and elder at the Evergreen Community (Motto: “Life’s short, why not apply for an extension?”), a church plant that was founded in 2004 and which meets in a pub in Portland, Ore. Evergreen believes it is important to give the “unchurched” and the “formerly churched” a place to belong before they believe. […]

Part of the Evangelical Free Church of America responsible for church planting. Operations divided into 17 districts which support 1,500 congregations across the United States. Based in Minneapolis, Minn.