Courtney Bender received her Ph.D. in Sociology from Princeton University and her B.A. from Swarthmore College. She specializes in contemporary American religion and the social scientific study of religion.

She is author of The New Metaphysicals: Spirituality and the American Religious Imagination (Chicago 2010) and Heaven’s Kitchen: Practicing Religion at God’s Love We Deliver (Chicago 2003). She is co-editor with Pamela Klassen of After Pluralism: Reimagining Religious Engagement (Columbia 2010); and co-editor with Ann Taves of What Matters? Ethnographies of Value in a Secular Age (Columbia 2012).