Phyllis Tickle is the founding editor of the Religion Department of Publishers Weekly and an authority on religion in America. A former academic and college dean, Tickle is the author of some two dozen books on the subject, including the bestselling volumes The Great Emergence: How Christianity Is Changing and Why and Emergence Christianity: What It Is, Where It Is Going, and Why It Matters. She makes her home with her physician husband on a small farm in rural West Tennessee.

Jon M. Sweeney is the editor in chief of Paraclete Press in Massachusetts, as well as an independent scholar, and author. Several of Jon’s books have become History Book Club selections, and twice they have been featured on PBS’s “Religion & Ethics Newsweekly.” HBO has optioned his latest work of popular history, The Pope Who Quit: A True Medieval Tale of Mystery, Death, and Salvation (Image, 2012). He is also the recent editor and translator of Francis of Assisi in His Own Words: The Essential Writings, and co-authored a book about interfaith marriage with his wife, Rabbi Michal Woll, Mixed Up Love: Relationships, Family, and Religious Identity in the 21st Century.