Robert Bellah as Modernization Theorist: Comments on Matteo Bortolini’s A Joyfully Serious Man

Abstract

Bellah’s early Japan work was important to his thinking. Reflecting on Bellah’s Japan work offers an interesting window into some of the contributions and limitations of his broader ideas. Putting Bellah’s early work together with his later theories raises questions about the kind of social community that Bellah envisioned in his theories of civil religion and communitarianism.