Religion in Human Evolution is a work of extraordinary ambition'e"a wide-ranging, nuanced probing of our biological past to discover the kinds of lives that human beings have most often imagined were worth living. It offers what is frequently seen as a forbidden theory of the...
A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice
An ABC Australia Best Book on Religion and Ethics of the Year
Distinguished Book Award, Sociology of Religion Section of the American Sociological Association
This ambitious book probes our biological past to discover the kinds of lives that human beings have imagined were worth living. Bellah's theory goes deep into cultural and genetic evolution to identify a range of capacities (communal dancing, storytelling, theorizing) whose...