Eric Pellish is a recent graduate of Case Western Reserve University with degrees in Religious Studies and Electrical Engineering. He wrote his honors undergraduate thesis on the intersection of biblical and constitutional hermeneutics, focusing on post World War II American political, cultural, and religious development and transformation. Eric is currently working for Accenture in their Systems Integration Consulting workforce.

Eugene V. Gallagher is the Rosemary Park Professor of Religious Studies at Connecticut College. He is a co-general editor of Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions and associate editor of Teaching Theology and Religion. He is the author of The New Religious Movements Experience in America (2004), co-author, with James D. Tabor, of Why Waco? Cults and the Battle for Religious Freedom in America (1995), and co-editor, with W. Michael Ashcraft, of the five volumes of Introduction to New and Alternative Religions in the United States (2006).

Fabiola Lopez Chesnut, originally from Morelia, Mexico, teaches high school Spanish in Richmond and is also a photographer specializing in religious imagery from Latin America. Her photographic work appears in Andrew Chesnut, Devoted to Death: Santa Muerte, the Skeleton Saint (Oxford University Press, 2012) and in “Santa Muerte: Mexico’s Devotion to the Saint of Death” (Huffington Post, January 7, 2012).

G. William Barnard is a professor in the department of religious studies at Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas. Barnard received his PhD from the University of Chicago. He is the author of Living Consciousness: The Metaphysical Vision of Henri Bergson (State University of New York Press, 2011) and Exploring Unseen Worlds: William James and the Philosophy of Mysticism (State University of New York Press, 1997); and is coeditor of Crossing Boundaries: Essays on the Ethical Status of Mysticism (Seven Bridges Press, 2002). He is also the author of numerous journal articles and book chapters that primarily focus on the philosophical and psychological implications of nonordinary states of consciousness. He is currently working on a monograph of the Santo Daime religious tradition.

GARY SHEPHERD AND GORDON SHEPHERD

Gary Shepherd is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Oakland University (Michigan), where he taught courses in research methods, social psychology, social theory and the sociology of religion.

Gordon Shepherd is Professor of Sociology at the University of Central Arkansas. where he teaches courses in statistics, social movements, social theory and the sociology of religion.

Together, the Shepherds have co-authored four books and numerous scholarly articles on both The Family International and Mormonism. Their books include A Kingdom Transformed: Themes in the Development of Mormonism (1984), Mormon Passage: a Missionary Chronicle (1998), Talking with the Children of God: Prophecy and Transformation in a Radical Religious Group (2010) and Binding Earth and Heaven: Patriarchal Blessings in the Prophetic Development of Early Mormonism (2012).

George D. Chryssides is Honorary Research Fellow in Contemporary Religion at the University of Birmingham, England, and was Head of Religious Studies at the University of Wolverhampton until 2008. He has published extensively, principally on new religious movements, and his edited anthology Heaven’s Gate: Postmodernity and Popular Culture in a Suicide Group was published by Ashgate in 2011.

Grace Yukich is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Quinnipiac University. Her research, writing, and teaching explore questions about how immigration is changing the relationship between religion and politics in the United States. Her first book, One Family Under God: Immigration Politics and Progressive Religion in America, was published in 2013 with Oxford University Press. Her work has also appeared in journals like Social Problems, Sociology of Religion, and Mobilization as well as in edited volumes like Sanctuary Practices in International Perspectives. In addition to her more traditional publications, her writing has appeared at The Immanent Frame, a blog on secularism, religion, and the public sphere, where she is a contributing editor. She is also editor-in-chief of Mobilizing Ideas, a blog publishing conversations between social movement scholars and activists. Her current research examines how social change efforts in Buddhist, Hindu, and Muslim communities in the U.S. are challenging conventional wisdom about how and why Americans engage in religious activism, particularly exploring how transnational connections shape religious activism.

Hugh B. Urban is a professor of religious studies in the Department of Comparative Studies at Ohio State University. He is interested in the role of secrecy in religion, particularly in relation to questions of knowledge and power. His two main areas of research are religions of South Asia and new religions in the United States. He is the author of seven books, including Tantra: Sex, Secrecy, Politics and Power in the Study of Religion (2003) and The Church of Scientology: A History of a New Religion (2011).

Ian Reader is Professor of Religious Studies at Lancaster University, England. Previously he has been Professor of Japanese Studies at the University of Manchester, and has held academic positions in Japan, Scotland, Hawaii and Denmark. He is the author of several books on issues related to religion in Japan, to pilgrimage, and to the Aum Shinrikyō Affair. Recent publications include Pilgrimage in the Marketplace (London and New York: Routledge, 2013) and a co-edited edition of the Japanese Journal of Religious Studies (2012) with Erica Baffelli on the impact and aftermath of the Aum Affair in Japan and beyond.