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. Bender is the author of two monographs, Heaven’s Kitchen: Living Religion at God’s Love We Deliver and The New Metaphysicals: Spirituality and the American Religious Imagination and several She is completing a book on modernist visions of the future of religion that developed in twentieth century architectural and planning projects. She currently serves as a consultant for the Shaker Museum Mt. Lebanon in Mt. Lebanon, New York, and as a member of the editorial board of the SSRC’s Immanent Frame.
Recent Publications
2019. “America Is Hard To See,” for the volume The Politics of Religion At Home And Abroad, edited by Elizabeth Shakman Hurd and Winnifred Fallers Sullivan.
2017. “How and Why to Study Up: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Broadacre City and the Study of Lived Religion” Nordic Journal of Religion and Society. 29 (2): 100-116.