The Public Influences of African-American Churches Project conducted focus groups and surveyed black congregations and church leaders over three years to learn about congregational involvement in elections and setting public policy since the civil rights era. Despite the existence of 8,000 black elected officials and dozens of black civic and lobbying organizations, the survey found that black churches […]

Miguel A. De La Torre teaches social ethics at Iliff School of Theology in Denver, where he directs the school’s Justice and Peace Institute. Issues he can discuss include religion’s effects on class/race/gender oppression, Santeria, Cuba and liberation theology. His numerous books include, as co-editor, Rethinking Latino(a) Religion and Identity and Handbook of Latina/o Theologies.

Liaquat Ali Khan is a professor of law at the Washburn University School of Law in Topeka, Kan. A native of Pakistan, he focuses his research on terrorism and conflict in Muslim societies. He has written extensively about Islamic law and in 2008 wrote an article for The American Muslim about Islamic perspectives on the economic meltdown.

Read an essay in the September/October 2011 edition of Foreign Policy magazine by Charles Kurzman titled “Why Is It So Hard to Find a Suicide Bomber These Days?” Kurzman, a professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and co-director of the Carolina Center for the Study of the Middle East and Muslim Civilizations, is […]

Read a December 2010 background paper from the Council on Foreign Relations on the “Threat of Homegrown Islamist Terrorism.”

Read an Aug. 4, 2011, essay by Ed Husain, senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, that criticizes the White House’s August policy paper on preventing violent extremism in the United States. Husain argues that the White House does not focus sufficiently on the threat of homegrown Islamic extremism, and offers […]

A Gallup Poll published in August 2011 showed the views of members of different religious communities to the question of whether terrorist violence is ever justified. Nearly nine in 10 Muslim Americans said violent attacks on civilians are never justified, the highest level of disapproval among the groups surveyed.

John Hospers is a philosopher, an emeritus professor at the University of Southern California and an editor at Liberty magazine. In 1972, he was the Libertarian Party’s first presidential candidate.

Mark D. Roberts is senior pastor of Irvine Presbyterian Church in Irvine, Calif., and author of Dare to Be True: Living in the Freedom of Complete Honesty. He says people separate their religious convictions from their everyday lives, and the challenge for the church is to teach people how to connect them.