Religion

Theologian Harvey Cox. His new book is "Fire From Heaven: The Rise of Pentecostal Spirituality and the Reshaping of Religion in the Twenty-first Century." It is estimated that by the year 2010, there will be more Pentecostals than all other non-Catholic Christians put together. Cox traces the growth of the religion from its origins in a converted stable in Los Angeles in 1906 to its present membership of 410 million worldwide.

Activist and preacher Jim Wallis is the editor of "Sojourners" magazine, and the author of the new book, "The Soul of Politics." In it, he asserts that "the world isn't working," and neither the liberal left nor the conservative right know how to fix it. Wallis says the solution will come from a new morality that combines social justice and personal responsibility.

In 1985, Maull was sentenced to 25 years in prison for drug smuggling. Since then, he has devoted most of his time in prison to working with dying prisoners, and to teaching Buddhist practice and meditation. In 1988, Maull helped establish the National Prison Hospice Association, which establishes hospices to help dying prisoners prepare for death. Maull is also a devout Buddhist. After establishing a meditation group in his own prison in Springfield, Missouri, he founded the Prison Dharma Network, for prisoners who want to become involved in Buddhist study and meditation.

Father 'Gus' DiNoia is a Dominican Priest and a theologian to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. On May 31, the Pope issued an Apostolic letter to bishops declaring that women could not be ordained as priests. Though not a formal statement of doctrine, the letter was strongly put, and meant to cut off discussion about the issue.

History professor and author R. Laurence Moore. His new book is "Selling God: American Religion in the Marketplace of Culture." (Oxford) Moore explores the relationship between spiritualism and consumerism in this country over a two-century span. He develops his theses with examples from the lives as such American personalities as P. T. Barnum, Cecil B. DeMille and Sylvester Graham, inventor of the Graham cracker.

Professor John Dominic Crossan. A native of Ireland, ordained as a priest in the U.S. (he left the Priesthood in 1969), Crossan now teaches biblical studies at DePaul University. Crossan is a founding member of the Jesus Seminar, a group of scholars who meet to determine the authenticity of Jesus' sayings in the Gospels. Crossan's new work is "Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography" (HarperCollins) which seeks to place Jesus in the context of his Jewish, Mediterranean and peasant roots; to see him as a Socratic philosopher and radical egalitarian.

Mel White is the ghost-writer of biographies for such Religious Right leaders as Jerry Falwell, Pat Robinson and Billy Graham. That was before he came out as a gay man, after a long struggle accepting it. White tried aversion therapy and exorcism to purge himself of his homosexual feelings. Now White is the Dean of the largest gay church in the world, Dallas's Cathedral of Hope and the author of "Stranger at the Gate: To be Gay and Christian in America," (Simon & Schuster).

Parish Priest John McNamee. For twenty five years he's lived and worked the poorer neighborhoods of Philadelphia. His book, "Diary of a City Priest" (Sheed & Ward) documents his struggle to keep faith, when surrounded by poverty and despair.

British religious scholar Karen Armstrong. Her new book, a bestseller in England, is "A History of God" (Knopf). "All religions have been designed to help us touch the God in each other" Armstrong says of her research, which traces 4000 years of Monotheism in the form of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. The author, a Catholic nun for seven years in the 1960's, left the order to take a degree at Oxford, and now teaches at the Leo Baeck College for the study of Judaism.

One of the "Orphans of Jonestown,"Stephan Jones. He is one of the surviving sons of Jim Jones, leader of the Peoples Temple in Guyana. Fifteen years ago Jim Jones orchestrated the mass suicide of over 900 people after a California Representative visited the temple, charging Jones with holding people against their will. Now, after the Waco tragedy, Stephan Jones remember the loss. Their were 85 survivors from Jonestown--260 children died.