Edited Volume

Tazeen M. Ali is Associate Professor of Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis. Her research and teaching focus on Islam, gender, and popular culture in the US and UK. Her first book The Women’s Mosque of America: Authority & Community in US Islam (NYU Press, 2022) is the first full-length scholarly account of woman-led mosques in North America and Europe, analyzing how religious authority shapes gender-equitable worship communities. She is currently writing a book on television as a site of religious formation, analyzing narratives of masculinity and sexuality in entertainment media produced by American and British Muslims.

Christopher Bader is Professor of Sociology at Chapman University and associate director of the Institute for Religion, Economics and Culture. He has co-directed the annual Chapman University Survey of American Fears for the last twelve years. 

Sophie Bjork is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Vanderbilt University. She has over ten years of experience researching both the US based Religious Right and the white nationalist movements. She is the author of the forthcoming The Post-Dobbs Generation: Young Americans and Abortion Politics (New York University Press, expected March 2027).

Joseph Blankholm is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His research focuses on secularism and the variety among nonreligious people, including atheism and spirituality. Blankholm has authored The Secular Paradox: On the Religiosity of the Not Religious (NYU Press 2022), as well as numerous chapters and articles. His latest project, on metaphysical spirituality, is supported by a $1.5m grant from the John Templeton Foundation.

Wendy Cadge, a nationally renowned expert in contemporary American spirituality and religion, is the 10th president of Bryn Mawr College. She is leading two key initiatives focused on advancing the College’s mission and broadening its reach: developing a forward-thinking strategic vision and creating a comprehensive campus plan for the physical campus.  

A sociologist by training, President Cadge is known for her work on religion in public institutions, religious diversity, and pluralism, and as a highly respected educator, scholar, and administrator. 

As a public intellectual, she has written more than one hundred scholarly and general interest articles, many in collaboration with students and colleagues across disciplines, and four books on issues related to spiritual care across settings, religion in hospitals, port chaplaincy, and Buddhism in the United States. Cadge launched the Chaplaincy Innovation Lab in 2018 to bring chaplains, educators, and social scientists into conversation about the work of chaplaincy and spiritual care. 

Numerous foundations and trusts have supported her research and teaching, including the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, Fetzer Institute, Henry Luce Foundation, John Templeton Foundation, Lovell Foundation, Radcliffe Institute, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Scholar in Health Policy Research Program, Ruderman Family Foundation, Russell Berrie Foundation, Templeton Religion Trust, and The Charles H. Revson Foundation. 

Cadge is a member of the American Sociological Association (ASA), the American Academy of Religion (AAR), and the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion (SSSR). She is a founder and past chair of the Innovations in Chaplaincy and Spiritual Care Program Unit of the AAR. She is a previous chair of the Religion Section and the Committee on Professional Ethics of the ASA. 

Her published books include Spiritual Care: The Everyday Work of Chaplains (Oxford University Press, 2023), Paging God: Religion in the Halls of Medicine (University of Chicago Press, 2012), and Heartwood: The First Generation of Theravada Buddhism in America (University of Chicago Press, 2005). She is co-editor of Introduction to Chaplaincy and Spiritual Care (University of North Carolina Press, 2022) and Religion on the Edge: De-Centering and Re-centering the Sociology of Religion (Oxford University Press, 2013). With colleagues, she also authored Chaplaincy and Seafarers: Faith at Work (Oxford University Press, 2024).

At Brandeis University, Cadge held various leadership positions, including dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, senior associate dean for strategic initiatives, and chair of the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality program. Her achievements there included centering the graduate student experience by rebuilding and expanding student professional development, collaborating to extend degree programs into new modalities, advancing the graduate school’s anti-racism plan, and reconnecting current students and alumni to celebrate the school’s 70th anniversary. She received the Thomas A. King Faculty Award from the Gender & Sexuality Center, the Dean of Art and Sciences Mentoring Award for Outstanding Teaching of Students in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and the Michael Walzer '56 Award for Excellence in Teaching. She served on the Bowdoin College faculty from 2003-2006. 

She received her bachelor’s degree with high honors and majors in Sociology and Anthropology, and Religion, from Swarthmore College, her master’s and Ph.D. from Princeton University, and completed two years of postdoctoral work at Harvard University.

Todd Nicholas Fuist is associate professor and chair of sociology and criminology at Illinois Wesleyan University. His research focuses on the cultural dimensions of sociopolitical engagement. His recent work has appeared in Sociology of Religion, Social Problems, and The American Journal of Cultural Sociology. He is the editor, with Ruth Braunstein and Rhys H. Williams, of Progressive Religious Activism: New Stories About Faith and Politics, on NYU Press. His current research is on the experiences of Mennonite peace activists. 

Amy completed her PhD in sociology at the University of Connecticut. Her research interests focus on the potential and paradox of religious pluralism in the United States, the cultural production of the sacred, and meaning-making in both religious and (non)religious belief systems. Her dissertation examined the practice of donor memorial ceremonies, which are memorial services held by medical schools to commemorate and honor whole-body anatomical donors.

Sabina Magliocco, Ph.D. is a retired Professor of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, where she founded and directed the interdisciplinary Program in the Study of Religion from 2019-2025, as well as Professor Emeritus at California State University – Northridge, where she taught for 20 years.  A recipient of Guggenheim, National Endowment for the Humanities, SSHRC, Fulbright and Hewlett fellowships, and an honorary Fellow of the American Folklore Society, she has published on religion, folklore, foodways, festival and witchcraft in Europe and North America, and is a leading authority on the modern Pagan movement.

Eric L. McDaniel is a professor in the Department of Government at the University of Texas at Austin, where his research examines the intersection of race and religion in American politics. Politics in the Pews: The Political Mobilization of Black Churches asks why some Black churches engage politically and others don't. The Everyday Crusade: Christian Nationalism in American Politics, co-authored with Irfan Nooruddin and Allyson Shortle, examines what follows when Americans believe theirs is God's chosen nation. He is currently examining the social and prosperity gospels' influence on political attitudes, as well as what Americans mean when they invoke "religious freedom."

Lisa D. Pearce is the Delta Delta Delta Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Chair of the Department of Sociology at UNC Chapel Hill. She is also a Faculty Fellow at the Carolina Population Center. A sociologist of religion, family, and the life course, she examines how religions shape ideas and behaviors related to family, gender, and race or ethnicity in the U.S. and Nepal. Pearce writes and teaches about mixed methods research. She has co-authored five books, including her most recent, Approaches to Mixed Methods Research (Sage, 2024), with Jessica Halliday Hardie.

Brian Steensland is Professor of Sociology at Indiana University Indianapolis. His interests span religion, culture, politics, and civic life in the contemporary United States. His books, as author or editor, are Situating Spirituality, The New Evangelical Social Engagement, and The Failed Welfare Revolution. His journal articles include “Religion Unbundled” (American Sociological Review) and “The Measure of American Religion” (Social Forces). Steensland’s current research focuses on issues related to religious pluralism, socialization, and choice.

Diane Winston is an associate professor and Knight Center chair in media and religion at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. She is a national authority on religion and the media as a journalist and a scholar. She has won numerous press association awards and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for her work in Raleigh, Dallas and Baltimore. Her articles have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, and the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Robert Wuthnow is Professor of Sociology Emeritus and former director of the Princeton University Center for the Study of Religion. He is the author of more than three dozen books and numerous articles about religion, civil society, communities, and American culture. His major publications about religion include The Restructuring of American Religion: Society and Faith Since World War II; God and Mammon in America; After Heaven: Spirituality in America Since the 1950s; Boundless Faith: The Global Outreach of American Churches; The God Problem: Expressing Faith and Being Reasonable; and most recently What Happens When we Practice Religion? Textures of Devotion in Ordinary Life. A recurring interest in his work on American religion has been its intersection with changing social and cultural conditions. Another interest has been the impact of immigration, which he addressed most specifically in America and the Challenges of Religious Diversity. His work on religion has also been concerned with the relationship of spirituality and the arts, most notably in Creative Spirituality: The Way of the Artist and All in Sync: How Music and Art Are Revitalizing American Religion.