Rabbi Arthur Waskow is a Reconstructionist rabbi who is director of the Shalom Center, which promotes activism and education around Jewish environmentalism. He is the author of Down-to-Earth Judaism: Food, Money, Sex and the Rest of Life. Read his essay “Passover as if Earth Really Matters” in the April 2008 online edition of The Nation.

Kimon Sargeant is vice president of human sciences at the John Templeton Foundation in West Conshohocken, Pa. Sargeant likens megachurches to shopping malls in his book Seeker Churches: Promoting Traditional Religion in a Nontraditional Way.

Michael Penn is a member of the Bahá’í Faith and a psychology professor and licensed clinical psychologist at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa. His research interests and publications include works in the pathogenesis of hope and hopelessness, adolescent psychopathology, the relationship between culture and psychopathology, and the epidemiology of gender-based violence.

J. Paul Rajashekar is dean and Luther D. Reed Professor of Systematic Theology at Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia.

David L. Eng is an associate professor of English at University of Pennsylvania, and his specialties include Asian-American literature. He wrote Racial Castration: Managing Masculinity in Asian America and co-edited Q & A: Queer in Asian America.

David S. Touretzky is a research professor in the computer science department at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and a longtime Scientology critic. He maintains an extensive collection of Scientology-related websites on his home page. He has given many radio interviews and appeared on Countdown with Keith Olbermann (twice) and CNN Headline News with Glenn Beck to discuss Scientology.

John Iceland is professor of sociology and demography at Penn State University. He is the author of Poverty in America: A Handbook and has authored numerous papers and reports on poverty patterns, causes and measurement.

Sister Joan Chittister, a Benedictine nun, lecturer and writer, has been especially active on peace issues. She was a guest on an April 16 Meet the Press panel about faith and politics.

Operation Safety Net is a health care outreach program operated through the Pittsburgh Mercy Hospital System and Catholic Health East. It provides medical care to homeless people living on the streets of Pittsburgh and recognized as one of nation’s first, targeted, full-time street medicine programs. Dr. Jim Withers started the program in 1992.