"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.

'The Anthem Companion to Robert Bellah' is the first major collection of writings on the life and work of one of the foremost twentieth-century sociologists of religion. Bellah's work was central in many fields: the sociology of Japanese religion, the relationships between sociology and the humanities, the relationship between American religion and politics, the cultures of modern individualism, and evolution and society. During an intellectual career which spanned six decades, Bellah occupied a central position within at least three major intellectual movements: structural-functionalism and modernization theory in the 1950s and the 1960s; interpretive social science, which he helped create in the early 1970s along with Clifford Geertz and Peter Berger; and the so-called Axial age revival of the late 1990s and early 2000s. More often than not, Bellah's work was on the edge of social scientific research; his seminal work on civil religion in the early 1970s created a huge debate across disciplines which continues to this day; his co-authored book 'Habits of the Heart' (1985) was a bestseller and the object of sustained debate in the general public sphere; his last magnum opus 'Religion in Human Evolution', published at 84, was a monument to an extraordinary scholarly...