Sociologist John Bartkowski at Mississippi State University has studied faith-based poverty relief in Mississippi. He co-authored Charitable Choices: Religion, Race, and Poverty in the Post-Welfare Era (New York University Press, 2003).

Darby Kathleen Ray is an associate professor of religious studies and director of the Millsaps Faith and Work Initiative at Millsaps College in Jackson, Miss. She is the editor of Theology That Matters: Ecology, Economy and God (2006).

Rodney Hunt is president of the Mississippi Federation for Immigration Reform and Enforcement, a Jackson-based group that seeks immigration reform.

Susan Maneck is an associate professor of history at Jackson State University in Jackson, Miss. She’s written extensively about various aspects of the Bahá’í Faith, including women in the faith.

Marco Cavaglià is assistant professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Mississippi in Oxford. His research interests include cosmology, string and M-theory cosmology, and quantum cosmology.

The Mississippi Food Network in Jackson serves more than 320 churches and other agencies that provide food.

Paul Overstreet is the founder of MS Rainbow Alliance, which meets in Biloxi.

Daniel Capper is an associate professor in the religion and philosophy department at the University of Southern Mississippi. His research interests include Tibetan Buddhism, and he is the author of Guru Devotion and the American Buddhist Experience.

Read “Mississippi’s Ambiguous ‘Personhood’ Amendment,” an Oct. 31, 2011, op-ed in The New York Times that set out some of the problems of biology and the law that Mississippi’s proposed amendment faced.