Read a 2005 Science Direct Study that found spirituality and mindfulness effective treatments of disorders and addictions.

Rachelle Mee-Chapman is abbess and founder of a small urban abbey, ThPM (Thursday Night Gathering) in Seattle.

Rose Madrid-Swetman is a pastor and social justice worker in Seattle.

Mark Driscoll is the founding pastor of Mars Hill Church, a fast-growing, nondenominational, theologically conservative congregation in Seattle’s urban Ballard neighborhood. He was named one of the 25 most influential pastors of the past 25 years by Preaching magazine in 2010.

Read a Christianity Today blog post on Out of Ur about pastor Dan Kimball’s thoughts on leadership in the emergent church from March 7, 2006.

Michael Allen Williams, an adjunct religions professor at the University of Washington in Seattle, has written on gnosticism, ancient texts and religious secrecy.

Margaret Starbird has written extensively about Mary Magdalene and the sacred feminine, including The Woman With the Alabaster Jar: Mary Magdalen and the Holy Grail (Bear & Co., 1993), which is selling as a result of interest prompted by The Da Vinci Code. She has traveled widely in Europe, including pilgrimages to Black Madonna and Mary Magdalene shrines and […]

Steven Buri is president of the Discovery Institute in Seattle. The think tank is a prominent opponent of Darwinian orthodoxy and has found many instances in which it says Texas biology textbooks are inaccurate or misleading. It also pushes school districts to have textbooks that teach the controversy over creationism and evolution.

The Rev. James Eblen is a professor emeritus in Seattle University’s school of theology and ministry who can speak about the papacy.