Read a May 27, 2010, column at the Huffington Post by Jim Wallis of Sojourners, a leader of the religious left.

Elizabeth A. Segal is a professor of social work at Arizona State University in Phoenix. She is a co-founding editor of Journal of Poverty and co-edited The Promise of Welfare Reform: Political Rhetoric and the Reality of Poverty in the Twenty-First Century (Haworth Press, 2006).

Ellen K. Scott teaches in the sociology department of the University of Oregon in Eugene and has written extensively about welfare reform and its effect on family well-being.

Art Farnsley  directed the research of the Project on Religion and Urban Culture at the Polis Center of Indiana University. He has extensively studied congregations and social services and is one of the authors of Sacred Circles, Public Squares: The Multicentering of American Religion (Indiana University Press, 2004). His most recent work is “Flea Market Jesus,” on […]

Sheldon H. Danziger is an economist at the University of Michigan’s Ford School of Public Policy who has extensively studied the effects of welfare reform on work and earnings. He teaches courses on welfare policy and poverty and co-directs the National Poverty Center. At a July 25, 2006, roundtable on welfare, he outlined four lessons learned from […]

Ronald Angel, a sociology professor at University of Texas at Austin, is a principal investigator in a multiyear research project on children and welfare reform.

Anne M. Hallum chairs the political science department of Stetson University in DeLand, Fla. A specialist in religion and politics, she has written about the anti-poverty dynamic of religion.

Sociologist John Bartkowski at Mississippi State University has studied faith-based poverty relief in Mississippi. He co-authored Charitable Choices: Religion, Race, and Poverty in the Post-Welfare Era (New York University Press, 2003).

Bishop E. Roy Riley of the New Jersey Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America testified about welfare reform July 19, 2006, before the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee. He expressed concern about persistent poverty and a growing gap between rich and poor in America.