Phillip Charles Lucas is Professor of Religious Studies at Stetson University. He is the Founding General Editor of Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions and author of numerous articles on new and minority religions. His books include The Odyssey of a New Religion: The Holy Order of MANS from New Age to Orthodoxy; Prime-Time Religion: An Encyclopedia of Religious Broadcasting (with J. Gordon Melton and John Stone); Cassadaga: The South’s Oldest Spiritualist Community (with Gary Monroe and John Guthrie), and New Religious Movements in the Twenty-First Century: Legal, Political, and Social Challenges in Global Perspective (with Thomas Robbins).

R. Andrew Chesnut is Bishop F. Walter Sullivan Chair in Catholic Studies and Professor of Religious Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University. Professor Chesnut’s early work, Born Again in Brazil: The Pentecostal Boom and the Pathogens of Poverty (Rutgers University Press, 1997), traces the meteoric rise of Pentecostalism among the popular classes in Brazil. His second book, Competitive Spirits: Latin America’s New Religious Economy (Oxford University Press, 2003) focuses on the three groups that have prospered most in the region’s pluralist landscape, Pentecostalism, the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, and African diasporic religions. His most recent work, Devoted to Death: Santa Muerte, the Skeleton Saint (Oxford University Press, 2012) is the first academic book in English on the mushrooming cult of Saint Death. He currently serves as co-coordinator of the Religion track for LASA 2012. His current research focuses on folk saints in Latin America.

Ralph W. Hood Jr. is professor of psychology at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. He is a former editor of the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion and former coeditor of the Archive for the Psychology of Religion and The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion. He is a past president of Division 36 (psychology of religion) of the American Psychological Association and a recipient of its William James, Mentor, and Distinguished Service awards. He has published over 200 articles in the psychology of religion and has authored, co-authored, or edited numerous book chapters and eleven books, all dealing with the psychology of religion.

Rebecca Moore is Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at San Diego State University. She has a Ph.D. in religious studies from Marquette University (1996), where her specialty was Jewish and Christian dialogue. She has written and published on medieval Christian theologians and their debt to Jewish biblical commentary. She is author of Voices of Christianity: A Global Introduction (McGraw-Hill 2005), and co-author of A Portable God: The Origin of Judaism and Christianity , with Risa Levitt Kohn (Rowman & Littlefield 2007). She directs San Diego State University’s Metropolitan Area Pluralism Study (MAPS), which locates, charts and digitally publishes a visual and descriptive guide to the religious diversity that exists in the San Diego-Tijuana border region (http://geoinfo.sdsu.edu/MAPS/). Dr. Moore also specializes in American religions, focusing on new religious movements. Her most recent book is Understanding Jonestown and Peoples Temple (Praeger 2009). She co-manages the website Alternative Considerations of Jonestown and Peoples Temple (http://jonestown.sdsu.edu). Her interest in Peoples Temple is both professional as a scholar, and personal, as someone who lost family members in Jonestown.

Professor Geaves holds a Chair in the Comparative Study of Religion in the Theology, Philosophy and Religious Studies Department of Liverpool Hope University. The author of nineteen books on religion, his research interests focus upon the transmigration of Hinduism, Sikhism and Islam into the UK. He began his work on the study of contemporary Islam in Britain and its diverse religious groups in 1990 when he embarked upon postgraduate research at the University of Leeds focusing on the newly created Community Religions Project. He has written extensively on Prem Rawat who has known personally for many years. In recent works he has been arguing for the revival of Sufism globally and also focusing on Victorian and Edwardian Muslim communities in Britain.

Sarah Borealis is a PhD candidate in Latin American History at Tulane University. She is producing a documentary film about devotion to the Santa Muerte in Mexico City. (Banda Ancha Productions, forthcoming, 2012).

Simren Bhatt served as a Research Assistant for the World Religions and Spirituality Project, 2015.

Stephanie Edelman is a Research Assistant on the World Religions & Spirituality Project. She is co-author of the Family Radio, Church of All Worlds, and Growing in Grace profiles.

Stephanie Urlass worked as a Research Assistant in the World Religions and Spirituality Project in 2012-2013. She is co-author of the Salvation Mountain profile.

Stephen Hunt is Associate Professor in the Department of Health & Applied Social Sciences, the University of the West of England . His academic interest lies in contemporary Christianity with a current specific interest in religion and sexuality, rights issues, revivalistic movements, and the political mobilisation of Christian groupings. His published volumes include A History of the Charismatic Movement in Britain and the United States of America: The Pentecostal Transformation of Christianity (Edwin Mellen, 2009); Religion in Everyday Life (Routledge, 2006); The Life Course : A Sociological Introduction (Palgrave, 2005); The Alpha Enterprise : Evangelism in the Post-Christian Era (Ashgate, 2004); Alternative Religion : A Sociological Introduction (Ashgate, 2003); Religion in the West : A Sociological Perspective (Palgrave, 2001); and the edited volumes Contemporary Christianity and LGBT Sexualities (Ashgate, 2009; (with M. Marinov and M. Serafimova) Sociology and Law . The 50th Anniversary of Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) (Cambridge Scholars, 2009); Christian Millenarianism (New York University Press & Hurst Publishing, 2001) and (with M. Hamilton & T. Walter) Charismatic Christianity : Sociological Perspectives (Palgrave, 1997).