It is a pleasure and an honor to engage a book that is truly large in ways beyond its sheer…
Five questions for Robert Bellah
Book blog
Scholars from varying disciplines engage in critical discussions of recent books. Additionally, scholars introduce their books with an original essay or, occasionally, an original essay reviews an important new book, connecting it to other threads of conversation in the academy and beyond.
You can read our very first book forum, on Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age and the continued discussion around Varieties of Secularism in a Secular Age here.
Beyond reductive naturalism
Future histories may report that the public discourse on religion was dominated by reductive naturalism until Robert Bellah’s Religion in…
The return of the grand narrative
The subtitle of Bellah’s book, From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age, indicates that it is about religions between the…
Public sociology: rigor and relevance
Any authors would be pleased by an array of laudatory and thoughtful comments on their work, especially by a group…
A damned good read
When I first received my copy of Religion in Human Evolution by post, the initial impression was of its sheer…
Axial axioms
The word “magisterial” in publishers’ blurbs usually means little more than “too long,” and indeed Religion in Human Evolution is…
A response to three readers
I am grateful to Mark Juergensmeyer for organizing a panel on my book at the November 2011 meetings of the…
A travelogue of ideas
In a special session at the meetings of the American Academy of Religion on November 20, 2011, Robert Bellah discussed…
Back to his roots
When writing about other people, we all should follow Pierre Bourdieu’s advice to not be too fascinated by our human…
Good news from the grand narrative
To be asked to contribute a commentary on Professor Robert Bellah’s magnum opus is a great honor and a privilege…