Biography
Born in Altus, Oklahoma, Bellah received a B.A. degree from Harvard University in 1950, and a Ph.D. from Harvard in 1955. He was a student of Talcott Parsons, sociologist at Harvard and he and Parsons remained intellectual friends until Parsons' death in 1979. Parsons was specially interested in Bellah's concept of religious evolution and the concept of "Civil Religion." While an undergraduate at Harvard, he was a member of the Communist Party USA and chairman of the John Reed Club, "a recognized student organization concerned with the study of Marxism." Dean McGeorge Bundy threatened to withdraw his fellowship if he did not provide the names of his former associates. He served in various positions at Harvard from 1955 to 1967 when he took the position of Ford Professor of Sociology at the University of California at Berkeley. He spent the remainder of his career at Berkeley.
His political views are often classified as communitarian.
Read more about this topic: Robert Neelly Bellah
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