Acknowledgments
This book has been incubating for a long time. I owe thanks to a special set of colleagues and friends, who have encouraged my work through thick and thin. I especially wish to thank Meredith McGuire, Mary Jo Neitz, Roberto Blancarte, Ole Riis, the late Ivan Varga, the late Otto Maduro, Peter Beyer, Afe Adogame, Adam Possamai, and my brother Paul Spickard. My many long conversations with them helped me work out my ideas. Paul Spickard, Titus Hjelm, Tekle Woldemikael, and Blaine Pope also read parts of the manuscript and gave me helpful ideas. Mia Lövheim, Vanja Mosbach, and Jörgen Staarup made insightful remarks on a presentation that helped me reshape the final chapters. Margit Warburg sponsored an event where I could present some of these ideas, as did Lene Kühle. Farid Alatas encouraged me at two key points. William Swatos encouraged me at two others. Other colleagues too numerous to name asked questions at conferences, joined conversations in the halls, and otherwise inspired me. I thank them all. I appreciate how they have stimulated and strengthened my thinking.
I owe special thanks to the University of Redlands for the 2014–2015 sabbatical during which I finished the manuscript and for supporting my presentations of these ideas at many conferences. I particularly want to thank former Vice Presidents for Academic Affairs Phil Glotzbach and Nancy Carrick for allowing me to structure my job so that I have more time for scholarship than is typical at our teaching-heavy university. The staff of Redlands’ Armacost Library provided me with several crucial resources. The Society for the Scientific Study of Religion gave me a couple of small grants that helped fund my interviews with religious social activists. The Redlands Faculty Review Committee also funded research that has found its way into this book. I wish to thank the members of the Los Angeles Catholic Worker for their hospitality during the years that I visited them. That experience helped to shape my argument in Chapter Eight, and also my life.
Many thanks to Jennifer Hammer and the staff at NYU Press for helping make this book a reality. I also owe thanks to various journal and book editors for seeing value in the dozen or so articles that I have published on this topic. I thank their publishers for permitting me to use passages from these works for which I no longer own the copyright, though none of that material appears here without major reshaping. I have listed these at the end of the book.
Typographic Note
Where possible, I have used diacritical marks in the display of Chinese, Arabic, and Navajo words. I speak none of these languages, so I have relied on the best authorities I can find. I distinguish between two types of quote marks. Double quotes indicate that I am quoting someone directly. Single quotes are shudder-quotes; they indicate a term from which it is helpful to maintain a bit of intellectual distance.
