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Robert Neelly Bellah is the Elliott Professor of Sociology, Emeritus at the University of California at Berkeley. He received a B.A. degree from Harvard in 1950 and a Ph.D. from Harvard in (1955) and served in various positions at Harvard from 1955 until 1967 when he moved to the University of California at Berkeley as the Ford Professor of Sociology. He spent the remainder of his career at Berkeley. He was a follower of Max Weber theories. He is best known for his work related to "civil religion," for his 1985 book Habits of the Heart, and as a sociologist who studies religious and moral issues and their connection to society. He received the National Humanities Medal in 2000 from President Clinton, in part for "his efforts to illuminate the importance of community in American society." His political views are often classified as communitarian.
He is author, editor, co-author, or co-editor of the following books:
- Tokugawa Religion: The Values of Pre-Industrial Japan (1957)
- Religion and Progress in Modern Asia (1965)
- Beyond Belief: Essays on Religion in a Post-Traditional World (1970)
- Emile Durkheim on Morality and Society (1973)
- The Broken Covenant: American Civil Religion in Time of Trial (1975)
- The New Religious Consciousness (1976)
- Varieties of Civil Religion (1980)
- Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (1985)
- Uncivil Religion: Interreligious Hostility in America (1987)
- The Good Society (1991)
- Imagining Japan: The Japanese Tradition and its Modern Interpretation (2003)
While an undergraduate at Harvard, he was a member of the Communist Party and chairman of the John Reed Club, "a recognized student organization concerned with the study of Marxism." As a graduate student in the McCarthy era, then-Dean McGeorge Bundy threatened to withdraw his fellowship if he did not provide the names of his former associates. * Bellah was a student of Talcott Parsons, a well-known sociologist at Harvard.
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