Courtney Bender
Courtney Bender is Professor of Religion at Columbia University. A sociologist and ethnographer by training, her research investigates a range of religious and entanglements in American social and public life. She has published on religious-secular dynamics in non-profit organizations, congregations, and politics, and has investigated the reach and complications of contemporary spirituality in the arts, health care, and business. Bender’s research aims to provide models and approaches that will equip scholars to better evaluate the complex roles that American religious histories and processes play in American public and social life. She is the author of two monographs, Heaven’s Kitchen: Living Religion at God’s Love We Deliver and the award-winning The New Metaphysicals: Spirituality and the American Religious Imagination, and is the co-editor of several interdisciplinary volumes on religion, secularity, and pluralism. Bender has also served as the academic director of two funded projects at the Social Science Research Council, including a multi-year, multi-million dollar grants program on new research directions in the study of prayer. She is currently completing a manuscript that explains the development of American “interfaith” through critical analysis of dozens of fantastic plans made by twentieth century modern architects and city planners that imagined a democratic and irenic “religion of the future.”
Biography current as of February 10, 2020