Born in Clarion, Iowa, Spence graduated from the University of Iowa in 1930. From 1930 to 1941 he was the United Press bureau manager in Des Moines, and saw service during WW II in the Army Air Forces where he was the founder and first editor of Yank, the Army weekly newspaper. After the war, he worked as a free-lance writer, particularly noted for his reporting on religion. He also published several novels, wrote a comic strip (David Crane) and scripts for the weekly radio program, One Foot in Heaven, broadcast on the ABC network, 1944-1945. This collection consists of drafts for numerous articles and stories, including those for The Story of Religion in America, published in Look, 1957-1960.