Timothy K. Beal is the Florence Harkness Professor of Religion, director of the Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities, and codirector of the Interdisciplinary Initiative on Religion and Culture at Case Western Reserve University. His most recent book is "Roadside Religion: In Search of the Sacred, the Strange, and the Substance of Faith," Tod Linafelt is associate professor of biblical literature at Georgetown University. He is the author of "Surviving Lamentations: Catastrophe, Lament, and Protest in the Afterlife of a Biblical Book," also published by the University of Chicago Press.