Religion in cultural evolution: Robert N. Bellah and the comparative sociology of religion and modernity Book Reviewed: Edited with an introduction and conclusion by MadsenRSullivanWMSwidlerA, et al. Challenging Modernity: Robert N. Bellah, Columbia Unive

From the late 1950s to his untimely death in July 2013, Robert N. Bellah was one of the Western world’s most renowned sociologists of religion. His first book, Tokugawa Religion (1957), displayed what was to remain Bellah’s trademark interest in the role of religious ethics in the shaping of modern capitalism, politics, and civil religion across cultures and history. In addition to being rigorously comparative, Bellah’s sociology of religion was distinctive in that it situated the human reality of religion in a cultural-evolutionary framework. While rejecting the stage-like sequence of unilinear development prominent in late nineteenth-century varieties of social evolution, this model emphasized that there were broadly convergent patterns to social and religious change over space and time, as seen most dramatically in the rise of ‘axial age’ religions in ancient times and the transformation of religion under the influence of nation-making and industrialization in the modern era. Introduced and edited by four of Bellah’s lifelong colleagues in the sociology of religion (Richard Madsen, William M. Sullivan, Ann Swidler, and Steven M. Tipton), Challenging Modernity brings together three of Bellah’s most important final essays; the essays highlight the fate of religious values in light of the political, economic, and ecological crises humanity faces today. Each of Bellah’s three chapters is in turn the subject of critical assessment by seven scholars from the disciplines of history, sociology, anthropology, and ethical philosophy. The editors and the seven commentators assess and extend Bellah’s insights, underscoring the relevance of a historical and comparative sociology for addressing the political, ecological, and moral crises of our age. Far-ranging in its topics and theoretical insights, Challenging Modernity is one of the most important books on religion and modernity published in the years since Bellah’s passing.