Michael J. Altman is an associate professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama. He specializes in American religious history, theory, and method in the study of religion, and Asian religions in America. He is also the director of American Examples, a series of workshops in research, teaching, and public humanities for early career scholars of religion in America, and the editor of the American Examples anthology series with the University of Alabama Press. He researches and teach courses about the category “religion” in American history and culture, where he uses examples of religion in America to explore larger questions about how people and groups use “religion” to separate “us” from “them.”