The COVID-19 pandemic hijacked our lives for the past two years and left many of us with serious burdens caring for littles, long illnesses, lost loved ones, and newfound voids to fill with much-reduced outlets for our anxieties and interests. Partly due to happenstance, it also left us awash in data. Ryan Burge, Andy Lewis, and Paul had dithered with a survey all winter and stumbled into a data collection two weeks into lockdowns as the first wave hit in March 2020. They wrote as much as they could but had way too much data for our bandwidth to handle. It was clear there were important stories to be told, and they needed help in telling them. Their data are the foundation for many of the contributions in this volume. Amanda and Paul have been fortunate to have recruited a group of excellent scholars from many social science disciplines to tell a rather complete story about religion, politics, and the pandemic. We thank our contributors for their contributions but also for being responsive and just good people to work with. Research was not easy for everyone to do during the pandemic, so we are extra appreciative that they used what energy they had to write for this project.
If you read the contributors list at the end of the volume, you’ll see some common threads. One thick strand connecting many of us is PRRI, where Paul is a board member and has long been an affiliated scholar. PRRI is an outstanding organization for the insights it offers the nation about American religion and public life but should also be recognized for the diverse ways that they help academics amplify their voices through training, support, and data. PRRI has contributed to the volume in a direct way as well—Robby Jones was generous to offer to write a foreword and the research team contributed a chapter as well. We remain grateful for the connection and their generous support of the academic community.
Aaron Javsicas is a great editor to work with, and his continued belief in this project and the series means a lot to us. Temple remains the hardest working press out there and punches way above its weight.
The authors thank Harriet Finlayson for her research assistance and Nkemjika Kalu for the cover art design.
Paul would like to thank his coeditor, Amanda. It will be no surprise to any who know her that when she came on board, she took charge of a number of things, had sensible and thoughtful ideas for directions the collection should go, and remained reliable and timely—traits to be treasured. Doing books can make or break academic relationships, and Paul can say without hesitation that he’d work with her again and remains grateful for their productive and long academic friendship. Paul would also thank his pandemic people—Kate, Bear, and Gust—for weathering the storm with him, sending him off on rides, finding new adventures, and for remaining COVID-free. Amanda also thanks the Djupes for making Paul somewhat less cranky.
Amanda would like to thank Paul for having coffee with her in Seattle in 2011. Then an ABD on the job market, little did she know this new mentor would become a long-time coauthor, a coeditor of her first book, and one of her favorite people in the oft-strange world of academia. Though Paul could have just written or edited this book entirely on his own, his MO of always making room for others in the tent seems particularly inspiring for a book about collective action problems and our obligations to one another. Amanda also thanks Jen Guiliano for her friendship, writing accountability, and help in navigating her first book project. And finally, Amanda thanks her partner, Sean Murphy, for his unwavering humor and support spending every minute of this pandemic working from home under one roof, tolerating her loud Zoom voice, and up and moving to another country for her career. Paul also thanks Sean for telling Amanda when to chill out.