George A. Mather is the pastor of Our Savior Lutheran Church in St. George, Utah, and is the coauthor of Encyclopedia Dictionary of Cults, Sects, and World Religions.Alvin J. Schmidt (PhD, University of Nebraska) retired in 1999 as professor of sociology at Illinois College in Jacksonville, Illinois, where he still lives. He is the author of several books, including The Great Divide: The Failure of Islam and the Triumph of the West, and served as a consulting editor for Dictionary of Cults, Sects, Religions and the Occult.