Challenging Modernity - by Robert N Bellah (Paperback)

About the Book

In three final essays, Robert N. Bellah grapples with the contradictions of modernity, and seven leading thinkers respond with profound new perspectives on our present predicament.

Book Synopsis

From the 1960s until his death in 2013, Robert N. Bellah was the preeminent figure in the study of religion and society. He broke new ground in mapping the religious dimensions of human experience, from the great breakthroughs of the first millennium BCE to the paradoxes of American civic life. In three final essays, published here for the first time, Bellah grapples with the contradictions of modernity, and seven leading thinkers respond with profound, exhilarating new perspectives on our present predicament.

Challenging Modernity critically assesses the modern project to shed light on the tensions between its transcendent aspirations and the perils we now face. Its contributors analyze the roots of the collapse of the political, economic, and cultural institutions that promised perpetual progress but now threaten global catastrophe. Reflecting the range of Bellah's scholarship, they span the disciplines of history, sociology, anthropology, and philosophy. They extend Bellah's insight that only deep historical, cultural, and religious understanding can help us meet modernity's harrowing challenges by sharing responsibility for the global interdependence of our common fate.

Review Quotes

The excellent response essays offer numerous touchstones for picking up where Bellah left off, refining the conceptual tools in his theory of social evolution and expanding its comparative reach beyond Western modernity.-- "Religious Studies Review"

The editors and contributors engage Bellah's concerns with brilliant explorations of history, social theory, religion, and philosophy, diagnosing the predicaments of modernity and providing guides to the perplexed...Recommended.-- "Choice"

Robert Bellah is one of the most important American social scientists and public intellectuals of the last sixty years. Challenging Modernity contributes to a much needed discussion of all the urgent critical issues which we are facing today.--José Casanova, author of Public Religions in the Modern World

There is no other book like this, nor is there likely to be one, and there was no better team to work together on this effort to advance Bellah's thinking into his planned next book and beyond. Challenging Modernity reveals Bellah's last writing and does an admirable job of raising Bellah's themes about the enduring tensions that bedevil modern life. It will take an honored place as the concluding volume in a remarkable shelf of studies in the distinguished career of one of sociology's greatest contemporary minds.--Mark Juergensmeyer, author of Global Rebellion: Religious Challenges to the Secular State

About the Author

Robert N. Bellah (1927-2013) was the Elliott Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. His many books include Religion in Human Evolution: From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age (2011).

Richard Madsen is distinguished research professor and director of the UC-Fudan Center for Research on Contemporary China at the University of California, San Diego.

William M. Sullivan is senior scholar at the Center for Inquiry in the Liberal Arts at Wabash College.

Ann Swidler is a professor of the Graduate School at the University of California, Berkeley.

Steven M. Tipton is Charles Howard Candler Professor Emeritus of Sociology of Religion at Emory University and its Candler School of Theology.

Bellah, Madsen, Sullivan, Swidler, and Tipton are coauthors of the landmark book Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (1985).