Diana Butler Bass is senior research fellow and director of the Project on Congregations of Intentional Practice, a Lilly Endowment funded research study of vital mainline Protestant churches, at the Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria, Virginia. From 19952000, she wrote a weekly column on American religion for the New York Times Syndicate. She is the author of Strength for the Journey: A Pilgrimage of Faith in Community, a Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2002.