Courtney Bender is a sociologist and ethnographer by training, her work focuses principally on the production and practice of American religion, in order to better understand the contours and implications of religious concepts, ideas and actions in modern social life. Professor Bender is the author of Heaven's Kitchen: Living Religion at God's Love We Deliver (University of Chicago Press 2003), The New Metaphysicals: Spirituality and the American Religious Imagination (University of Chicago Press 2010), and the co-editor with Pamela Klassen of After Pluralism: Reimagining Models of Interreligious Engagement (Columbia University Press 2010).