Books and Projects
What Matters? Ethnographies of Value
“What Matters is sponsored by the SSRC and the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The project attends to the shifting relations between religious, spiritual and secular formations in historical context. A conference held in New York in October 2008 involved anthropologists, sociologists, historians and religious studies scholars. I am co-editing the resulting with Professor Ann Taves, Professor of Religion, UC Santa Barbara.
The New Metaphysicals
Spirituality and the American Religious Imagination
Forthcoming (2010) University of Chicago Press
After Pluralism
Reimagining Models of Religious Engagement
Forthcoming (2010) Columbia University Press.
Co-edited with Pamela Klassen
Contributors:Benjamin Berger, Amira Mittermaier, Anver Emon, Andrea Most, Rosemary Hicks, Winnifred Fallers Sullivan, Michael McNally, Janet Jakobsen, Tracy Leavelle, Irene Becci, Genevieve Zubrzycki, and J. Terry Todd.
Heaven’s Kitchen: Living Religion at God’s Love We Deliver
University of Chicago Press 2003
“... theoretically important and elegantly written. Bender shows us how people craft moral arguments in everyday life and how they experience religious meanings indirectly, in settings not explicitly devoted to religion as such. This is a book filled with evocative stories that makes it a pleasure to read and ponder.” -- Nina Eliasoph
Opportunities at the Edge: Decentering and Recentering the Sociology of Religion
Co-organizer
This project seeks to develop a more vigorous future for sociology of religion in the American academy. This project commenced with a two-day collaborative workshop hosted by the Princeton Center for the Study of Religion in October 2008. Ongoing projects include an edited volume, the development of working papers, an online syllabus collective and future conferences and collaborations.
Spirituality, Political Engagement and Public Life
Co-chair, Social Science Research Council Working Group
Several recent polls show that the percentage of Americans with no religious affiliation is rising. After decades of increases in religious affiliation and participation that were followed by decades of shifting allegiances across various denominational boundaries, it now appears that more Americans are opting out of active participation in organized and recognized religious groups. Yet Americans have shown only a slight decline in claims to belief in a divine order, God, or other religious concepts. Similarly, belief in various non-orthodox religious ideas – from reincarnation to a mind-body connection – appears to be rising. Many have noted that Americans are remaining at least nominally spiritual while becoming less religious.
To assess the meaning and import of these trends for American political life, the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) will bring together an interdisciplinary working group whose work will be to anchor a variety of activities oriented toward assessing the current state of our knowledge regarding the social and political engagements of the “spiritual-not-religious,” and acting as a catalyst for new research and stimulating public dialogue regarding the relationship between spirituality and political participation in American life.
