The Anthem Companion to Robert N. Bellah

Edited by Matteo Bortolini

Publication date:

28 June 2019

Publisher

Anthem Press

Dimensions:

229x153mm
6x9"

ISBN-13: 9781783089628

"The Anthem Companion to Robert N. Bellah" is the first major collection of essays on the life and work of Robert N. Bellah (1927–2013), one of the foremost sociologists of religion of the twentieth century. Bellah’s work was central to many fields: the sociology of Japanese religion; the relationship between sociology and the humanities; the relationship between American religion and politics; the cultures of modern individualism; evolution and society. Bellah’s seminal work on “civil religion” in the early 1970s created a huge debate across the disciplines that continues into the present times; his coauthored book "Habits of the Heart" (1985) was a best seller and the object of sustained discussion in the general public sphere; his last magnum opus, Religion in Human Evolution, published at 84, was a monument to an extraordinary scholarly and intellectual career. The object of this collection of essays by top American and European scholars from the social sciences and humanities is to highlight the richness of Bellah’s work. Each essay has a double character: it introduces a single topic in an accessible and complete way and then presents a reflection on the viability and import of Bellah’s ideas for interpreting contemporary phenomena.

Notes on Contributors; Introduction: On Being a Scholar and an Intellectual, Matteo Bortolini; Part 1 MAJOR THEMES; Chapter 1 Dialogues between Area Studies and Social Thought: Robert Bellah’s Engagement with Japan, Amy Borovoy; Chapter 2 Civil Religion and Public Theology, Steven M. Tipton; Chapter 3 Out of the Deep Past: The Axial Age and Robert Bellah’s Project of Social Criticism, John D. Boy and John Torpey; Part 2 YESTERDAY AND TODAY; Chapter 4 Broken Covenant Redux? Civil Religion in Crisis, Philip Gorski; Chapter 5 Robert Bellah’s Catholic Imagination, Jeffrey Guhin; Chapter 6 Habits of the Heart Revisited: American Individualism before and after the Communitarian Moment, Eric R. Lybeck; Part 3 UNEXPECTED MASTERS; Chapter 7 Friends in History: Eric Voegelin and Robert Bellah, Peter Brickey LeQuire; Chapter 8 The Protestant Imagination: Robert Bellah, Maruyama Masao and the Study of Japanese Thought, Andrew E. Barshay; Index.

The Anthem Companions to Sociology offers wide ranging and masterly overviews of the works of major sociologists. The volumes in the series provide authoritative and critical appraisals of key figures in modern social thought. These books, written and edited by leading figures, are essential additional reading on the history of sociology. — Gerard Delanty, Professor of Sociology, University of Sussex, Brighton