Arthur Derse is director of medical and legal affairs, associate director of the Center for the Study of Bioethics, and clinical professor of bioethics and emergency medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin. He serves as a consultant and board member of a many nationally known bioethics groups.

Daniel Callahan is a co-founder of the Hastings Center in Garrison, N.Y., director of its international program and a senior fellow at the Harvard Medical School, directing its ethics track. Much of his recent research focuses on health-care and research policy. His project on medicine and the market is examining the impact of market theory on […]

James Trapp is CEO of the Association of Unity Churches, based in Lee’s Summit, Mo. Unity claims about 100,000 members in some 700 churches.

Michael Bernard Beckwith is minister of the 8,000-member Agape International Spiritual Center in Culver City, Calif. He is one of the spiritual leaders featured in The Secret, and the Agape Center is part of the New Thought tradition.

Tom Beauchamp is a professor of philosophy and a senior research scholar at Georgetown University’s Kennedy Institute of Ethics in Washington, D.C. In 1976, he joined the staff of the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, where he wrote the bulk of The Belmont Report (1978), the first and still-definitive document […]

Dell deChant is an instructor and associate chairman of the religious studies department at the University of South Florida in Tampa. He has written numerous entries on New Thought and New Age movements for various encyclopedias of religion.

Carl A. Raschke is professor of religious studies at the University of Denver. He is particularly interested in postmodernism, popular culture and religion. He wrote The Interruption of Eternity (Nelson-Hall, 1980), a reference on the origins of the New Age movement. He is co-founder and senior editor of The Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory.

Blaine Mays is president of the International New Thought Alliance, which holds, among other things, that mental states are manifested in daily experience. He can describe the New Thought movement and discuss whether the blockbuster success of The Secret has created demand for New Thought churches and spiritual centers.

Kathryn Lofton is a professor of religious studies, American studies and  history and divinity at Yale University in New Haven, Conn. She has written about the religious content of Oprah Winfrey’s media empire and is knowledgeable about American religion and materialism, especially Christian kitsch.