Courtney Bender is professor of religion at Columbia University. She is the author of Heaven's Kitchen: Living Religion at God's Love We Deliver (University of Chicago Press, 2003) and The New Metaphysicals: Spirituality and the American Religious Imagination (University of Chicago Press, 2010), and a co-editor of volumes focused on religious pluralism, secular-spiritual practices, and the sociology of religion. She has served as the co-chair of the SSRC's Working Group on Spirituality, Political Engagement, and Public Life and chair of the SSRC’s grant program, New Directions in the Study of Prayer.
Nancy Levene is professor of religious studies at Yale University. She works on root concepts that structure the humanities, including history, modernity, religion, reason, the West, and the global, and on problems common to the disciplines in both the humanities and the social sciences. Her most recent book is Powers of Distinction: On Religion and Modernity (Chicago, 2017).