Deborah Smith Pegues is a businesswoman who was chief financial officer for the megachurch West Angeles Church of God in Christ in Los Angeles. She wrote the 2009 book Financial Survival in Uncertain Times.

Edd Noell is a professor of economics and business at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California, where he specializes in the history of economic thought and the relationship between Christianity and economics. He is president of the Association of Christian Economists.

The Rev. Ed Bacon is rector of All Saints Church in Pasadena, Calif., a congregation known for its progressive ideals and missions.

Charles McDaniel is a former businessman and now the associate director of the J.M. Dawson Institute of Church-State Studies at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. He wrote God & Money: The Moral Challenge of Capitalism, and he writes and teaches on “the developmental parallels between Muslim economic thought and Christian economic ideas as they evolved over the course of […]

Read an August 28, 2012, article at ChristianityToday.com analyzing the results of a poll analyzing the effects the recession had on churches’ budgets.

Read a March 23, 2011, Religion News Service article describing the steady incline of donations as the economic recession diminishes.

Read a March 22, 2012, Religion News Service article about how churches were affected by the recession.

Read an October 28, 2009, story on CNN.com about President Obama signing a bill that makes it a crime to assault someone based on their sexuality or gender.

Denise Eger is the rabbi of Congregation Kol Ami in West Hollywood, Calif. She is a well-known activist, most specifically with organizations devoted to fighting AIDS as well as on LGBT issues. The synagogue’s religious school has LGBT students and children of LGBT parents, and the rabbi runs a teen support group at the synagogue twice a […]