M. Gail Hamner, Syracuse University religion professor, specializes in religion and culture, with teaching interests in religion and film, Christianity and American culture, religion and literature, and feminist theory and the study of religion.

Diane Apostolos-Cappadona, professor of religious art and cultural history at Georgetown University, wrote about “re-viewing” Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ and images of women in contemporary religious film.

Read “Marcia Freedman talks peace,” published in the Seattle Jewish Transcript online.

Phyllis Chesler of New York City is a prolific author and lecturer, an emeritus professor of psychology and a longtime human-rights activist. She is active in Jewish causes. She wrote The New Anti-Semitism: The Current Crisis and What We Must Do About It (Jossey-Bass, 2003). Contact through her website.

Mary Ann Glendon is the Learned Hand Professor at Harvard Law School and was a vocal advocate of  Pope John Paul II’s views on women, abortion, sexuality and related issues. In 2004 the pope appointed her as head of the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, at that time the highest Vatican post ever held […]

Alice Laffey is an associate professor of religious studies at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass. She has written a history of papal statements and the evolution of papal teaching, and she can address issues regarding women and gender.

Read a Nov. 15, 2004, Christian Science Monitor article on how past elections have influenced the culture wars.

Tony Perkins is president of the Family Research Council, which works to foster “a culture in which all human life is valued, families flourish, and religious liberty thrives.” He also leads the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, which tracks religious persecution around the world.

Dr. Connie Elsberg is the author of Graceful Women: Gender and Identity in an American Sikh Community (The University of Tennessee Press, 2003) and Assistant Dean for Economics, Geography, Psychology, Sociology at Northern Virginia Community College in Alexandria, Va. She specializes in non-Punjabi Sikhs living in the West.