Tonya Lovelace of the Women of Color Network in Harrisburg, Pa., spoke at a February 2007 This Far by Faith seminar of the Black Church and Domestic Violence Institute. The network works to eliminate violence against women and families.

Pamela Cooper-White is the Christiane Brooks Johnson Professor Emerita of Psychology and Religion at Union Theological Seminary at New York City. She is the author of The Cry of Tamar: Violence Against Women and the Church’s Response and Gender, Violence and Justice: Collected Essays on Violence Against Women.

Martin Seligman is one of the principal exponents of contemporary positive psychology. He is director of the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, where he is also a professor of psychology. He is familiar with psychological research on positive traits and virtues and can speak about gratitude research.

Deborah B. Creamer is director of accreditation and institutional evaluation at the Association of Theological Schools in Pittsburgh. She is the author of Disability and Christian Theology: Embodied Limits and Constructive Possibilities. Creamer is a former co-chair of the Religion and Disability Studies Group for the American Academy of Religion.

William Stillman wrote Autism and The God Connection: Redefining the Autistic Experience Through Extraordinary Accounts of Spiritual Giftedness. The Pennsylvania resident writes extensively on the subject, serves on several boards and has Asperger’s Syndrome, a mild form of autism.

Several high-profile hate crimes have made headlines in 2009, confirming fears for some that bias attacks are on the rise. They include the April killing of three Pittsburgh policemen by a right-wing extremist and the shooting in June at the Holocaust Museum in Washington by an elderly white supremacist that left a security guard dead.

Richard F. Holman is a physics professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. He specializes in the intersection between cosmology and particle physics.

Michael L. Coulter is a professor of humanities and political science at Grove City College in Grove City, Pa. He is the author of “Home School Legal Defense Association” in the Encyclopedia of American Religion and Politics.