Wilfred M. McClay is SunTrust Bank Chair of Excellence in Humanities at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. His book The Masterless: Self and Society in Modern America (North Carolina, 1994) won the 1995 Merle Curti Award of the Organization of American Historians for the best book in American intellectual history published in the years 1993 and 1994. Among his other books are The Student’s Guide to U.S. History (ISI Books, 2001), and Religion Returns to the Public Square: Faith and Policy in America(Woodrow Wilson Center/Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003). He is currently at work on a biographical study of the American sociologist David Riesman under contract to Farrar, Straus & Giroux, and is editing two collection of essays, one called Figures in the Carpet: Finding the Human Person in the American Past, which features sixteen essays by American historians on changing American understandings of self and person, and a collection of his own essays entitled Pieces of a Dream: Historical and Critical Essays.

He held the Royden B. Davis Chair in Interdisciplinary Studies at Georgetown University for the academic year 1998-99. Among his other awards, McClay was selected for inclusion on the 1997-98 Templeton Honor Rolls, awarded by the John Templeton Foundation for distinguished teaching and scholarship in American higher education. In addition, he has been the recipient of fellowship awards from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Academy of Education, the Howard Foundation, the Earhart Foundation, and the Danforth Foundation. He is coeditor of Rowman and Littlefield’s book series entitled American Intellectual Culture, serves on the editorial boards of First Things, The Wilson Quarterly, The Public Interest,Society, Touchstone, Historically Speaking, and University Bookman, and is a member of the Board of Governors of The Historical Society. He was educated at St. John’s College (Annapolis) and the Johns Hopkins University, where he received a Ph.D. in history in 1987.

Dr. Stephen Prothero is a Professor of Religion at Boston University specializing in American religions. He received his BA from Yale College in American Studies and his MA and PhD from Harvard University in the Study of Religion.

A historian of American religions, Professor Prothero has written six books, including The White Buddhist: The Asian Odyssey of Henry Steel Olcott (Indiana University Press, 1996), which won the Best First Book award of the American Academy of Religion in 1997, and American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2003), which was named one of the top religion books for 2003 by Publishers Weekly.

In addition to his scholarly work, which includes peer-reviewed articles in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Prothero has written for a variety of popular magazines and newspapers, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Newsweek, Slate, Salon, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and Boston Globe. He has commented on religion on NPR and on such television programs as The Colbert Report, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, The Oprah Winfrey Show, The O’Reilly Factor, and The Today Show. He is also a regular contributor to CNN’s Belief Blog.

Michael Barone is senior political analyst for the Washington Examiner. A resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, he is also a Fox News contributor and co-author of The Almanac of American Politics, a reference work concerning U.S. governors and federal politicians published biennially by National Journal since 1971. He was a senior writer for U.S. News & World Report for 18 years and a member of the Editorial Board of The Washington Post for 7 years. He has traveled to all 50 states, all 435 congressional districts, and to 37 foreign countries. Barone is a graduate of Harvard University, Yale Law School, and the author of four books, including Our Country: The Shaping of America from Roosevelt to Reagan (1990).

E.J. Dionne is a twice-weekly columnist for The Washington Post, writing on national policy and politics. Before joining the Post in 1990 as a political reporter, he spent fourteen years at The New York Times, covering local, state, and national politics, also serving as a foreign correspondent in Paris, Rome, and Beirut. He is currently a University Professor at Georgetown University and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. He is the author of Why Americans Hate Politics (1991), They Only Look Dead: Why Progressives Will Dominate the Next Political Era (1996), and most recently Souled Out: Reclaiming Faith and Politics After the Religious Right (2008).

Dr. John C. Green is the director of the Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics and a Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the University of Akron. He is also a senior research adviser at the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life, specializing in religion and American politics, American evangelicals and politics, the Christian right, religion and elections, and religion and presidential politics.Dr. Green has done extensive research on American religious communities and politics. He is co-author of The Diminishing Divide: Religion’s Changing Role in American Politics (Brookings Institution Press, 2000).

In addition to publishing his most recent book The Faith Factor: How Religion Influences American Elections (2007), Dr. Green is also the co-author of The Values Campaign: The Christian Right in American Politics (Georgetown University Press, 2006), The Bully Pulpit: The Politics of Protestant Clergy (University Press of Kansas, 1997), and Religion and the Culture Wars (Rowman & Littlefield, 1996). The Los Angeles Times described Dr. Green as the nation’s “pre-eminent student of the relationship between religion and American politics.”

He received his Ph.D. in political science from Cornell University.