The Robert Bellah reader

the long version

"How does the world we now inhabit shape our sense of who we are? In these seminal essays, combining comparative social analysis with cultural interpretation, Robert Bellah crosses conventional divides between fact and value, knowledge and faith, to shed light on the meaning of modernity by grasping it within the whole history of the human species. He probes many of our deepest social and cultural quandaries, quandaries that put modernity itself, with all its immense achievements, at moral risk. Through the practical self-understanding such inquiry spurs, Bellah shows how we may share responsibility for the world we have made and seek to heal it." -- Back cover.