Rabbi Irwin Kula is the President of CLAL-The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, a leadership training institute, think tank and resource center in New York. The “On Faith” panelist has served as rabbi of congregations in St. Louis, New York City and Jerusalem. He is author of “Yearnings: Embracing the Sacred Messiness of Life” (Hyperion, Sept. 2006)  winner of a “Books for a Better Life Award,” and selected by Spirituality & Health magazine as one the “10 Best Spiritual Book of 2006.” He is a regular guest on NBC-TV’s “The Today Show,” and co-host of the popular weekly radio show, Hirschfield and Kula, airing on KXL in Portland, Ore. In 2007 he was identified as one of the “Top 50 Rabbis in America,” by Newsweek. He is co-founder of the Aitz Hayim Center for Jewish Living in Chicago. He received his B.A. in Philosophy from Columbia Univ., his B.H.L. from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (JTSA) in NY, and his M.A. in Rabbinics and Rabbinic Ordination from JTSA. He has served as rabbi of congregations in St. Louis, MO; Queens, NY; and Jerusalem, Israel.

Richard J. Mouw has served as president of Fuller Theological Seminary since 1993, after four years as provost and senior vice president. A philosopher, scholar, and author, the “On Faith” panelist has been recognized as an important voice among reform-oriented evangelicals. Mouw, who earned a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Chicago, has a broad record of publication with 16 books, including Consulting the Faithful, and Calvinism in the Las Vegas Airport and his articles have appeared in more than 50 journals and magazines. Currently he serves on the editorial board of Books and Culture as is a regular columnist on “Beliefnet.” Mouw has served on many councils and boards, including the Commission on Accreditation for the Association of Theological Schools (as chair) and the Council on Civil Society. He currently serves on advisory boards for Religion and Ethics Newsweekly, the International Justice Mission, and the International Center for Religion and Diplomacy.

He also earned a doctorate in moral theology at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome. Monsignor Bohlin was ordained a priest for the Prelature of Opus Dei in 1997. Prior to coming to New York as the head of Opus Dei in the United States, he worked for the five years with Opus Dei’s Prelate, Bishop Javier Echevarría, at Opus Dei's international headquarters in Rome as chancellor for Opus Dei. Monsignor Bohlin has spoken about faith issues on such news programs as “Hardball with Chris Matthews” and “Meet the Press.” Opus Dei has 87,000 members worldwide and 3,000 in the United States. Pope John Paul II canonized Opus Dei’s founder, Saint Josemaría Escrivá, in 2002, calling him “the saint of ordinary life."

"On Faith" panelist Chester Gillis is the Amaturo Chair of Catholic Studies at Georgetown University where he has served on the faculty since 1988. He was chair of the Department of Theology from 2001 to 2005. He holds degrees in philosophy and religious studies from the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium and earned his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago. His research interests include comparative religion and contemporary Roman Catholicism. He is the author of "A Question of Final Belief: John Hick’s Pluralistic Theory of Salvation" (1989), "Pluralism: A New Paradigm for Theology" (1993), "Roman Catholicism in America" (1999), "Catholic Faith in America" (2003) and editor of "The Political Papacy" (2006). He is co-editor of the Columbia University series Religion and Politics. He is a Fellow in the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs at Georgetown, and is the Director of Georgetown’s Program on the Church and Interreligious Dialogue.

The Right Rev. Mark Sean Sisk has been Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of New York, one of the Episcopal Church’s largest dioceses with over 200 congregations since 2001. Before returning to New York as Bishop Coadjutor in 1998, the "On Faith" panelist served for 14 years as President and Dean of Seabury-Western Theological Seminary in Evanston, Illinois. The bishop also worked as a parish priest for 10 years before his predecessor Bishop Paul Moore asked him to join his staff as Archdeacon of Westchester, Putnam and Rockland Counties in New York. Mission, worship and nurture are the three main focus areas of Sisk’s episcopacy. At the root of each is the promise of keeping our Lord and our faith centered in our lives while we work together to help the most vulnerable in our society. He believes that his and other moderate, socially conscious Christian viewpoints need to be heard. It is his hope to function as a bridge-builder in dealing with the important social issues confronting us as a nation. Sisk earned a degree in economics from the University of Maryland and a Masters of Divinity at General Theological Seminary in New York. He was ordained in 1967.

"On Faith" panelist Anthony M. Stevens-Arroyo is Professor Emeritus of Puerto Rican and Latino Studies at Brooklyn College and Distinguished Scholar of the City University of New York. He has written more than 40 scholarly articles and authored nine books, including the four-volume PARAL series on religion among Latinos. His book Prophets Denied Honor (1980) is considered a landmark in Catholic literature. With his spouse, Ana María Díaz-Stevens, he authored Recognizing the Latino Religious Resurgence , which was named an Outstanding Academic Book for 1998 by Choice magazine. A spokesperson for civil and human rights, he has testified before the U.S. Congress and the United Nations and was named by President Jimmy Carter to the Advisory Board of the U.S. Commission of Civil Rights for two terms. Presently, he directs the Research Center for Religion In Society and Culture (RISC).

“On Faith” panelist Michael Otterson heads the worldwide public affairs functions of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. A convert to the Mormon faith, he worked as a journalist and editor for 11 years for newspapers in England, Australia and Japan before devoting his professional life to Church public affairs. Since then he has directed Church public affairs operations in various parts of the world. He has conducted hundreds of news media interviews on a wide range of Church-related issues. In a church that operates worldwide with a lay clergy, Otterson has served twice as a stake president (leader of a group of church congregations), in both England and Australia. He has lived in the United States since 1991 and is now a US citizen.

"On Faith" panelist James Anderson is a retired Episcopal priest, an almost full-time volunteer in the community, a part-time farm manager, and independent writer. Anderson is the author or co-author of three books on ministry in the local church: To Come Alive (1973) and The Management of Ministry (1978), co-authored with Ezra Earl Jones, have been widely used in the training and education of clergy. Anderson, who has wide experience as an adviser and consultant to a variety of religious organizations, also served as assistant to the Bishop for Congregational Development for the Episcopal Diocese of Washington and director of Field Studies for the Cathedral College of the Laity at the Washington National Cathedral. Anderson was one of four founders of the Alban Institute in Washington, D.C., and served as first president of its board.

As editor of the Catholic weekly magazine "America" (americamagazine.org), Rev. Thomas J. Reese promoted discussion on current issues facing the Catholic Church and the world. The "On Faith" panelist is author of Inside the Vatican: The Politics and Organization of the Catholic Church. Father Reese is frequently quoted as an expert on Catholic issues. He is a senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University, where he is working on religion and politics. Besides his theological training as a Jesuit priest, he has a doctorate in political science from the University of California Berkeley. He once worked as a lobbyist for tax reform.

Charles W. "Chuck" Colson is founder of Prison Fellowship, a Christian outreach ministry to the prison population of this country, as well as to ex-prisoners and crime victims. The "On Faith" panelist's daily radio commentary, BreakPoint, is aired daily on over a 1,000 radio outlets nationwide. Colson also is a syndicated columnist, lawyer, and author of 25 books, most recently The Faith (2008). He served as special counsel to the late President Richard M. Nixon (1969-73). After pleading guilty to a Watergate-related charge of obstruction of justice in 1974, Colson served seven months of a one to three-year federal prison sentence. His 1973 Christian conversion was documented in the internationally best-selling book and film, Born Again. He founded Prison Fellowship in 1976. In 1993, Colson was awarded the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion and donated the $1 million prize to Prison Fellowship. In the last 28 years, Colson has visited more than 600 prisons in 40 countries and, with the help of nearly 50,000 volunteers, has built Prison Fellowship into the world's largest prison outreach, serving the spiritual and practical needs of prisoners in 93 countries including the U.S.

"On Faith" panelist Dr. Bob Edgar is president of Common Cause and former general secretary of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA, the leading U.S. organization in the movement for Christian unity. An ordained elder in the United Methodist Church, he came to the Council from Claremont School of Theology, Claremont, Calif., where he was president from 1990-2000. He was a six-term member of the U.S. House of Representatives, where he was the first Democrat in more than 120 years to be elected from the heavily Republican Seventh District of Pennsylvania. He served in Congress from 1974 to 1987. His wide-ranging career has also included pastorates at United Methodist congregations and stints as a teacher, college chaplain, community organizer, and director of a “think tank” on national security issues. He received a bachelor of arts degree from Lycoming College, Williamsport, Pa., and a master of divinity degree from the Theological School of Drew University, Madison, N.J. He holds four honorary doctoral degrees. Later this year, he will become President and CEO of Common Cause.

Irish-born John Dominic Crossan is a professor emeritus in the religious studies department at DePaul University in Chicago. Between 1950 and 1969, he was a member of a 13th-century Roman Catholic religious order, the Servites, and remained an ordained priest from 1957 to 1969. He has delivered lectures to secular and lay audiences from Scandinavia to Australia to Japan to South Africa. The On Faith panelist has authored 23 books and his writings have been translated into 11 languages. His work focuses on the historical Jesus, earliest Christianity and the historical Paul. Core titles include “The Historical Jesus,” “The Birth of Christianity” and “In Search of Paul,” co-written with archaeologist Jonathan L. Reed. Dr. Crossan’s next book, “God & Empire: Jesus Against Rome Then and Now,” is scheduled for publication in February. The professor earned a doctor of divinity degree at St. Patrick’s College in Maynooth, Ireland and a humanities doctorate at Stetson University in Florida. The American Academy of Religion and DePaul and Stetson universities have recognized him with awards for scholarly excellence. His Web site is www.johndominiccrossan.com.

Susan Jacoby is the author of The Age of American Unreason. She began her writing career as a reporter for The Washington Post, and has been a contributor to a wide range of periodicals and newspapers for more than 25 years on topics including law, religion, medicine, aging, women's rights, political dissent in the Soviet Union and Russian literature. Jacoby has been the recipient of grants from the Guggenheim, Rockefeller and Ford Foundations, as well as the National Endowment for the Humanities. In 2001-2002, she was named a fellow at the Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. Jacoby’s other books include Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism (2004); Wild Justice: The Evolution of Revenge, a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 1984, and Half-Jew: A Daughter's Search for Her Family's Buried Past. She is working on a book about the relationship between American anti-intellectualism and political polarization, to be published by Pantheon in 2008. Her photo is by Chris Ramir.

Randall Balmer, an Episcopal priest, is professor of American religious history at Barnard College, Columbia University, and a visiting professor at Yale Divinity School. His most recent book is “God in the White House: A History: How Faith Shaped the Presidency from John F. Kennedy to George W. Bush” (HarperOne). The “On Faith” panelist has written ten other books, including Thy Kingdom Come: How the Religious Right Distorts the Faith and Threatens America and Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: A Journey into the Evangelical Subculture in America, which was made into a three-part documentary for PBS. Balmer was nominated for an Emmy for his script-writing on that series. His second documentary, Crusade: The Life of Billy Graham and a two-part examination of the creation-evolution debate, In the Beginning: The Creationist Controversy, also aired on PBS. Balmer has lectured at the Chautauqua Institution, the Commonwealth Club of California and the Smithsonian Associates and been a visiting professor at Rutgers, Yale, and Princeton. He has published widely in academic journals and his syndicated commentaries on religion in America have appeared in newspapers across the country. He is editor-at-large for Christianity Today. A spiritual memoir, Growing Pains: Learning to Love My Father's Faith (2001) was named spiritual "book of the year" by Christianity Today. He is currently at work on a history of religion in North America.

Nicholas Thomas Wright is Anglican Bishop of Durham, England. The "On Faith" panelist taught New Testament studies for 20 years at Cambridge, McGill and Oxford Universities before becoming Dean of Lichfeld in 1994. He was named Canon Theologian of Westminster Abbey in 2000, and consecrated bishop in 2003. He has written hundreds of articles and more than 40 books, including Judas and the Gospel of Jesus (2006) and Evil and the Justice of God (2006). He has served as Visiting Professor at numerous institutions including Harvard Divinity School, Gregorian University in Rome and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Dr Wright holds four degrees, including a divinity doctorate from Oxford University, and honorary degrees from several universities and colleges.

Martin E. Marty is Fairfax M. Cone Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago, where he taught religious history, chiefly in the Divinity School, for 35 years, and where the Martin Marty Center has been founded to promote “public religion” endeavors. For a decade prior to entering academia, the “On Faith” panelist served parishes in the west and northwest suburbs of Chicago as an ordained Lutheran pastor. Marty is the author of more than 50 books including Righteous Empire: The Protestant Experience in America (1970), for which he won the National Book Award. His additional honors include the National Humanities Medal, the Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the University of Chicago Alumni Medal, the Distinguished Service Medal of the Association of Theological Schools, and the Order of Lincoln Medallion (Illinois’ top honor). Marty has served as president of the American Academy of Religion, the American Society of Church History, and the American Catholic Historical Association. He also has served on two U.S. Presidential Commissions and was director of the Fundamentalism Project of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Public Religion Project at the University of Chicago. He is Senior Regent of St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota.

George Weigel is a Catholic theologian and Senior Fellow of Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington. He is the author or editor of eighteen books, including the New York Times bestseller Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II, which has been translated into twelve languages. The “On Faith” panelist’s most recent books include The Cube and the Cathedral: Europe, America, and Politics Without God, Letters to a Young Catholic and God's Choice: Pope Benedict XVI and the Future of the Catholic Church. Since 1999, he has been the Vatican analyst for NBC News, and he publishes frequently in newspapers and opinion journals around the world. A member of the Catholic Theological Society of America and the Council on Foreign Relations, he was awarded the papal cross Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice in 2000. In 2006, Weigel became the second non-Pole honored by the Polish government's highest award for contributions to Polish and world culture, the Gloria Artis Gold Medal.

Syndicated political columnist and “On Faith” panelist Cal Thomas has a twice-weekly column that appears in over 500 newspapers around the world. A graduate of American University, Thomas is a veteran of broadcast and print journalism. He has worked for NBC, CNBC, PBS television, and the Fox News Channel where he currently appears on the weekly media critique show, “Fox News Watch.” Thomas has authored ten books, including Blinded by Might: Can the Religious Right Save America?, A Freedom Dream, Public Persons and Private Lives, Book Burning, Liberals for Lunch, Occupied Territory, The Death of Ethics in America, Uncommon Sense and Things That Matter Most. His latest was The Wit and Wisdom of Cal Thomas. In 1995, Thomas was honored with a Cable Ace Award nomination for Best Interview Program. Other awards include a George Foster Peabody team reporting award, and awards from both the Associated Press and United Press International. Common Ground, which Thomas writes for USA Today, offers insightful discussion of contentious social issues with his friend and political counterpart, Bob Beckel. The two are working together on a book to be published in 2007.

Richard Lyman Bushman is Gouverneur Morris Professor of History Emeritus at Columbia University. Most recently he authored "Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling" (2005). He works in the field of early American social and cultural history. In 1992 he published "The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, and Cities." He and his wife Claudia are lifelong members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.