Background
Bellah, Robert Neelly was born on February 23, 1927 in Altus, Oklahoma, United States. Son of Luther Hutton and Lillian Lucille (Neelly).
( One of the most influential sociologists living today, ...)
One of the most influential sociologists living today, Robert N. Bellah began his career as a Japan specialist, and has continued to contribute to the field over the past thirty years. Imagining Japan is a collection of some of his most important writings, including essays that consider the entire sweep of Japanese history and the character of Japanese society and religion. Combining intellectual rigor, broad scholarship, and ethical commitment, this book also features a new and extensive introduction that brings together intellectual and institutional dimensions of Japanese history.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0520235983/?tag=2022091-20
( Perhaps best known for his coauthored bestselling books...)
Perhaps best known for his coauthored bestselling books Habits of the Heart and The Good Society, Robert N. Bellah is a truly visionary leader in the social study of religion. For more than four decades, he has examined the role of religion in modern and premodern societies, attempting to discern how religious meaning is formed and how it shapes ethical and political practices. The Robert Bellah Reader brings together twenty-eight of Bellah’s seminal essays. While the essays span a period of more than forty years, nearly half of them were written in the past decade, many in the past few years. The Reader is organized around four central concerns. It seeks to place modernity in theoretical and historical perspective, drawing from major figures in social science, historical and contemporary, from Aristotle and Rousseau through Durkheim and Weber to Habermas and Mary Douglas. It takes the United States to be in some respects the type-case of modernity and in others the most atypical of modern societies, analyzing its common faith in individual freedom and democratic self-government, and its persistent paradoxes of inequality, exclusion, and empire. The Reader is also concerned to test the axiomatic modern assumption that rational cognition and moral evaluation, fact and value, are absolutely divided, arguing instead that they overlap and interact much more than conventional wisdom in the university today usually admits. Finally, it criticizes modernity’s affirmation that faith and knowledge stand even more utterly at odds, arguing instead that their overlap and interaction, obvious in every premodern society, animate the modern world as well. Through such critical and constructive inquiry this Reader probes many of our deepest social and cultural quandaries, quandaries that put modernity itself, with all its immense achievements, at mortal risk. Through the practical self-understanding such inquiry spurs, Bellah shows how we may share responsibility for the world we have made and seek to heal it.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0822338718/?tag=2022091-20
( First published in 1985, Habits of the Heart continues ...)
First published in 1985, Habits of the Heart continues to be one of the most discussed interpretations of modern American society, a quest for a democratic community that draws on our diverse civic and religious traditions. In a new preface the authors relate the arguments of the book both to the current realities of American society and to the growing debate about the country's future. With this new edition one of the most influential books of recent times takes on a new immediacy.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0520254198/?tag=2022091-20
( Beyond Belief collects fifteen celebrated, broadly rang...)
Beyond Belief collects fifteen celebrated, broadly ranging essays in which Robert Bellah interprets the interplay of religion and society in concrete contexts from Japan to the Middle East to the United States. First published in 1970, Beyond Belief is a classic in the field of sociology of religion.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0520073940/?tag=2022091-20
( This Second Edition represents Bellah's summation of hi...)
This Second Edition represents Bellah's summation of his views on civil religion in America. In his 1967 classic essay "Civil Rights in America," Bellah argued that the religious dimensions of American society—as distinct from its churches—has its own integrity and required "the same care in understanding that any religion." This edition includes his 1978 article "Religion and the Legitimation of the American Republic," and a new Preface.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226041999/?tag=2022091-20
( Religion in Human Evolution is a work of extraordinary ...)
Religion in Human Evolution is a work of extraordinary ambition—a wide-ranging, nuanced probing of our biological past to discover the kinds of lives that human beings have most often imagined were worth living. It offers what is frequently seen as a forbidden theory of the origin of religion that goes deep into evolution, especially but not exclusively cultural evolution. How did our early ancestors transcend the quotidian demands of everyday existence to embrace an alternative reality that called into question the very meaning of their daily struggle? Robert Bellah, one of the leading sociologists of our time, identifies a range of cultural capacities, such as communal dancing, storytelling, and theorizing, whose emergence made this religious development possible. Deploying the latest findings in biology, cognitive science, and evolutionary psychology, he traces the expansion of these cultural capacities from the Paleolithic to the Axial Age (roughly, the first millennium BCE), when individuals and groups in the Old World challenged the norms and beliefs of class societies ruled by kings and aristocracies. These religious prophets and renouncers never succeeded in founding their alternative utopias, but they left a heritage of criticism that would not be quenched. Bellah’s treatment of the four great civilizations of the Axial Age—in ancient Israel, Greece, China, and India—shows all existing religions, both prophetic and mystic, to be rooted in the evolutionary story he tells. Religion in Human Evolution answers the call for a critical history of religion grounded in the full range of human constraints and possibilities.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0674061438/?tag=2022091-20
(In 1980, Varieties of Civil Religion was the latest state...)
In 1980, Varieties of Civil Religion was the latest statement in the field of civil religion pioneered by Robert Bellah. Over thirty years later, scholarly interest in the field continues to grow. By examining the force of religion in politics and society, this book offers a comparative treatment that deepens the understanding of American civil religion and provides a lens for exploring civil religion in other societies, particularly those of Italy, Mexico, and Japan. Bellah and Hammond trace the historical development of the peculiarly American brand of civil religion as they unravel its sometimes baffling intricacies. Themes include the conviction that America is a chosen country and American power in the world is identical with divine will. The book also examines the vigorous counterbalance that has opposed unjust wars or demanded racial and social justice. Altogether, the health of a civil religion may be a prime indication of the overall health of any society. The authors state that when civil religious symbols are co-opted by ultraconservatives, and the philosophy of liberalism seems less adequate as a guide for public or private lives, a revival of public philosophy is urgently needed. Varieties of Civil Religion supports such a revival by making the religious aspect of our central tradition understandable in a nonreactionary way. It also reaffirms that American civil religion, with its deeper tradition of openness, tolerance, and ethical commitment, can make an essential contribution to a "global order of civility and justice"
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0060607696/?tag=2022091-20
(Argues that Buddhism, Confucianism, and Shintoism are mor...)
Argues that Buddhism, Confucianism, and Shintoism are more responsible for Japan's current economic success than contact with the West, and discusses Japanese religion and culture.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0029024609/?tag=2022091-20
(This ambitious book probes our biological past to discove...)
This ambitious book probes our biological past to discover the kinds of lives that human beings have imagined were worth living. Bellah's theory goes deep into cultural and genetic evolution to identify a range of capacities (communal dancing, storytelling, theorizing) whose emergence made religious development possible in the first millennium BCE.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00FAV1170/?tag=2022091-20
Bellah, Robert Neelly was born on February 23, 1927 in Altus, Oklahoma, United States. Son of Luther Hutton and Lillian Lucille (Neelly).
Bachelor, Harvard University, 1950. Doctor of Philosophy, Harvard University, 1955.
Research associate, Institute Islamic Studies, McGill University, Montreal, Canada, 1955-1957; with, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1957-1967; professor, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1966-1967; member of faculty department sociology, University of California, Berkeley, 1967-1997; Elliott professor emeritus, University of California, Berkeley, since 1997.
( First published in 1985, Habits of the Heart continues ...)
( Religion in Human Evolution is a work of extraordinary ...)
( Beyond Belief collects fifteen celebrated, broadly rang...)
(Argues that Buddhism, Confucianism, and Shintoism are mor...)
(THE GOOD SOCIETY examines how many of our institutions- f...)
(This ambitious book probes our biological past to discove...)
(In 1980, Varieties of Civil Religion was the latest state...)
(First English publication to examine the entirety of the ...)
( Perhaps best known for his coauthored bestselling books...)
( This Second Edition represents Bellah's summation of hi...)
(The Broken Covenant discusses the origins of American Chr...)
( One of the most influential sociologists living today, ...)
(A discussion of the crisis of faith in America.)
(Tokugawa Religion BY Bellah, Robert N. ( Author ) { Paper...)
(national bestseller)
(New copy. Fast shipping. Will be shipped from US.)
With United States Army, 1945-1946. Member American Academy Arts and Sciences, American Sociological Association, American Academy Religion, American Philosophical Society.
Married Melanie Hyman, Aug.17, 1949. Children: Jennifer, Harriet.