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Sociological Faith:Reflections on the Life and Legacy of Robert Bellah

Sociological Faith:Reflections on the Life and Legacy of Robert Bellah In Matteo Bortolini’s elegant and thoughtfully-written biographical account of Robert Bellah, we are given the opportunity to study an arc of development in U.S. sociological theory over the course of the 20th Century, in contact with several of sociology’s most influential shapers. This means that, to grapple with Bellah’s life, as presented by Bortolini, is to grapple with the ways that a broad range of social movements in American history, perhaps most powerfully the 1960’s “counter-culture,” have shaped contemporary American sociological theory and cultural life, particularly in the area of religion, but also in the area of politics. It is difficult, perhaps impossible, to remain neutral about such developments, and therefore about the character of Bellah himself, as Bortolini presents him. And yet Bortolini manages to achieve an admirable even-handedness in his treatment of Bellah, albeit through a rhetorical strategy that carries risks, as this essay illustrates. In this essay, I accept Bortolini’s welcome and important invitation to grapple with Robert Bellah’s life and legacy. Unlike Bortolini, I am unable to be even-handed, but I do strive to be fair. While I acknowledge the ways in which Bellah enriched sociological theories of culture, my overall assessment of Bellah’s legacy is very negative. In Robert Bellah’s religiously-tinged politicization of sociology, and in his relentlessly hostile attacks on political and religious positions with which he disagreed, I see prescriptions for the terribly intensified culture wars of today. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png The American Sociologist Springer Journals

Sociological Faith:Reflections on the Life and Legacy of Robert Bellah

Ford, Laura R.
The American Sociologist , Volume OnlineFirst – May 27, 2023
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References (10)

Publisher
Springer Journals
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2023. Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
ISSN
0003-1232
eISSN
1936-4784
DOI
10.1007/s12108-023-09577-0
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

In Matteo Bortolini’s elegant and thoughtfully-written biographical account of Robert Bellah, we are given the opportunity to study an arc of development in U.S. sociological theory over the course of the 20th Century, in contact with several of sociology’s most influential shapers. This means that, to grapple with Bellah’s life, as presented by Bortolini, is to grapple with the ways that a broad range of social movements in American history, perhaps most powerfully the 1960’s “counter-culture,” have shaped contemporary American sociological theory and cultural life, particularly in the area of religion, but also in the area of politics. It is difficult, perhaps impossible, to remain neutral about such developments, and therefore about the character of Bellah himself, as Bortolini presents him. And yet Bortolini manages to achieve an admirable even-handedness in his treatment of Bellah, albeit through a rhetorical strategy that carries risks, as this essay illustrates. In this essay, I accept Bortolini’s welcome and important invitation to grapple with Robert Bellah’s life and legacy. Unlike Bortolini, I am unable to be even-handed, but I do strive to be fair. While I acknowledge the ways in which Bellah enriched sociological theories of culture, my overall assessment of Bellah’s legacy is very negative. In Robert Bellah’s religiously-tinged politicization of sociology, and in his relentlessly hostile attacks on political and religious positions with which he disagreed, I see prescriptions for the terribly intensified culture wars of today.

Journal

The American Sociologist – Springer Journals

Published: May 27, 2023

Keywords: Robert Bellah; Matteo Bortolini; Emile Durkheim; Talcott Parsons; Cultural sociology; Sociology of religion

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