Blurb:

Let me begin with some remarks that are both personal and professional: I am acutely aware that I am the only male scholar associated with this project. I wish the pioneering women of religious studies had been treated as well as I have been during our project. None of my colleagues in this work ever gave me the impression that my questions and comments were obtuse or without merit, even when indeed they were often the flat-footed questions of an amateur. I have been honoured by this kind of treatment and wish more men could have the experience of being outnumbered, decentred, and yet fully included.
Writing the afterword for this volume might become an opportunity to indulge in academic “mansplaining,” as though I might provide a synoptic sense of intellectual closure. I am probably predisposed – by my culture, my privilege, my profession – to think this might be my appropriate role, but in my brief contribution to this volume, I have more modest ambitions. In the following reflections, I would like to identify and critically engage three of the common themes that appear in these chapters, or at least that occur to me in my reading.