The Rev. David M. Rhoads is a professor emeritus of New Testament at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago. He is the editor of a collection of sermons called Earth and Word: Classic Sermons on Saving the Planet and director of the Green Congregation Program, which works to help Lutheran congregations in the Midwest become […]

Steven Bouma-Prediger is the author of For the Beauty of the Earth: A Christian Vision for Creation Care. He is a professor of religion at Hope College in Holland, Mich., where he leads the environmental studies program.

Thomas R. Dunlap is a history professor at Texas A&M University in College Station with an expertise in environmental history. He is the author of Faith in Nature: Environmentalism as Religious Quest.

Tim Reed is a professor of English and American studies at Washington State University in Pullman. He is responsible for the website Popular Culture, which looks at mostly American popular culture.

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.

William Weston is a sociology professor at Centre College in Danville, Ky. At his blog, “Gruntled Center,” he wrote of Jackson, “Michael Jackson is being inducted into the musical pantheon of American civil religion.”

Alison Hill is a television and radio producer and contributor to the website AssociatedContent.com. She has written about the religion of celebrity in the U.S. Hill lives in Asheville, N.C.

The Rev. Peter Colapietro is pastor at St. Malachy’s Catholic Church in New York City. The church calls itself “the actors’ chapel” and ministers to a large number of actors who live and work in New York City.

The Rev. Kurt C. Wiesner is an Episcopal priest in Littleton, N.H., and author of the blog One Step Closer: Religion & Popular Culture. See his blog entry after the death of Michael Jackson.