James Lawrence is an assistant professor of Christian spirituality and historical studies at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, Calif. He studies Protestant spiritual disciplines and practice, especially Swedenborgians, New Religious Movements, and sports and spirituality.

Cynthia Eller is a professor of religion at Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, Calif., where she specializes in women and religion and New Religious Movements. She has written several books on women and religion in prehistory and contemporary feminism.

William Bainbridge is a sociologist of religion, science and popular culture. He is co-director of Human-Centered Computing at the National Science Foundation and a senior fellow at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies. He teaches sociology at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va. In 2013, he published eGods: Faith Versus Fantasy in Computer Gaming, […]

Eileen Barker is a professor emeritus in the sociology department at the University of London. She studies minority religions, including cults, sects and New Religious Movements, and relevant social conditions.

J. Gordon Melton is a distinguished professor of American religious history at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. Formerly, he directed the Institute for the Study of American Religion at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has written about New Religious Movements and about Christian Science and is an expert on American-born religions. He co-wrote Perspectives on […]

John A. Saliba teaches world religions and other liberal arts topics at the University of Detroit-Mercy and is an authority on the relationship between Christianity and New Age religions. He participated in a lengthy Vatican study of New Religious Movements, and he wrote the scholarly book Understanding New Religious Movements and Christian Responses to the New Age Movement: A […]

Craig Keener is a professor of New Testament at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky. He co-authored an article on the Nation of Islam for A Guide to New Religious Movements. He is an ordained minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church.

Hugh B. Urban is a professor of comparative studies at Ohio State University in Columbus. He contributed a chapter about Osho to Gurus in America.