A Joyfully Serious Man: The Life of Robert Bellah

by Matteo Bortolini

Overview

The brilliant but turbulent life of a public intellectual who transformed the social sciences

Robert Bellah (1927–2013) was one of the most influential social scientists of the twentieth century. Trained as a sociologist, he crossed disciplinary boundaries in pursuit of a greater comprehension of religion as both a cultural phenomenon and a way to fathom the depths of the human condition. A Joyfully Serious Man is the definitive biography of this towering figure in modern intellectual life, and a revelatory portrait of a man who led an adventurous yet turbulent life.

Drawing on Bellah's personal papers as well as in-depth interviews with those who knew him, Matteo Bortolini tells the story of an extraordinary scholarly career and an eventful and tempestuous life. He describes Bellah's exile from the United States during the hysteria of the McCarthy years, his crushing personal tragedies, and his experiments with sexuality. Bellah understood religion as a mysterious human institution that brings together the scattered pieces of individual and collective experiences. Bortolini shows how Bellah championed intellectual openness and innovation through his relentless opposition to any notion of secularization as a decline of religion and his ideas about the enduring tensions between individualism and community in American society.

Based on nearly two decades of research, A Joyfully Serious Man is a revelatory chronicle of a leading public intellectual who was both a transformative thinker and a restless, passionate seeker.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691204406
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	10/19/2021
Pages:	528
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

Matteo Bortolini is associate professor of sociology at the University of Padua in Italy. He is the coauthor of Italian Sociology, 1945–2010: An Intellectual and Institutional Profile and the editor of The Anthem Companion to Robert N. Bellah. He lives in Bologna, Italy.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations ix

Preface: Writing Bob Bellah xi

Acknowledgments xix

1 From Father to Son: Oklahoma to California, 1916-1944 1

2 A Writer and a Teacher: United States East Coast, 1945-1950 16

3 Enter Talcott Parsons: Cambridge, MA, 1950-1953 37

4 Expectations versus Reality: From Cambridge to Montreal, and Back, i954-1957 51

5 Becoming an American: From Cambridge to Tokyo, and Back, 1957-1961 67

6 Time to Leave: Cambridge, 1961-1967 87

7 "Stand Back and See It All": Berkeley, 1967-1968 104

8 "To Put It Bluntly, Religion Is True": Rome and Cambridge, 1968-1969 116

9 Beyond Borders: Berkeley, 1969-1971 130

10 Twilight of the God: From Berkeley to Princeton, and Back, 1970-1973 147

11 Breaking Covenants: Berkeley, 1973-1976 167

12 Ashes Alone: United States of America, 1969-1976 180

13 "We Create Our Own Planets on the Table": Berkeley, 1976-1978 194

14 Articulating the Real: Berkeley, 1978-1979 208

15 On the Edge of the Eighties: Berkeley, 1979-1983 224

16 The Sociologist's Revenge: United States of America, 1978-1985 241

17 Hitting the Big Time: United States of America, 1985-1991 254

18 Looking for the Good Society: United States of America, 1991-1992 270

19 Time to Leave Again: United States of America, 1993-2000 284

20 Between Religion and Evolution: North America, 1955-2004 298

21 "This Big House on the Hill": Berkeley, 2005-2010 314

22 Nothing Is Ever Lost: From Berkeley-to the World, 2011-2013 335

Epilogue: The Joy of a Serious Life 359

Notes 363

Bibliography 433

Index 465

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“This is a splendid book. Rarely have I seen a biography that so adeptly blends personal, intellectual, and social history so flawlessly. Robert Bellah’s contributions to the study of religion were, and remain, revolutionary, and I still find myself using methods and approaches I learned from him. In reading this riveting book, I felt we were back together, and was grateful.”—Harvey Cox, author of The Future of Faith

“A deeply humane, gracefully written portrayal of one of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century, Matteo Bortolini’s A Joyfully Serious Man channels Robert Bellah’s unique voice, offering readers an intimate portrait of his personal and professional journeys, a careful exegesis of his ideas, and a richly textured analysis of the contexts of all three. Bellah could not have found a better biographer. A stunning achievement.”—Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen, author of The Ideas That Made America: A Brief History

“An excellent biography. Bortolini has produced not only a rich and original account of the evolution of Bellah’s thought, but also a picture of Bellah the man, tormented by relentless inner strivings, frustrated desires, and unfathomable loss, all set against the backdrop of the social, cultural, and religious history of his day.”—Neil Gross, author of Why Are Professors Liberal and Why Do Conservatives Care?

“A Joyfully Serious Man is a singular book. In Bortolini’s hands, Robert Bellah becomes a prism that filters the light of his time, and sends it back to the reader as a history of American culture in the latter half of the twentieth century. But the book also succeeds as an intimate portrait: we feel we know this man, with all his idiosyncrasies, feelings of emptiness, longings, ambitions, sense of gratitude, enormous curiosity, and brilliant accomplishments.”—Jeffrey C. Alexander, author of What Makes a Social Crisis? The Societalization of Social Problems

Editorial Reviews

Winner of the History of Sociology and Social Thought Book Award, American Sociological Association

"Bortolini's weaving of biography with the interpretation of a lifetime's intellectual labor into a narrative culminates in a picture of Bellah that brings together large‐scale themes with telling detail both familiar and unfamiliar ... [this] terrific book is likely to be the first one to which scholars turn for a rich examination of Bellah's life for a very long time."—-Susan E. Henking, Journal of the History of Behavioral Sciences

"Bortolini has produced what one imagines will prove to be a matchless achievement."—-Bryan S. Turner, Journal of Classical Sociology

"Matteo Bortolini has written the definitive biography of the American sociologist Robert Neelly Bellah."—-Chad Alan Goldberg, Civic Sociology

"Bortolini weaves the strands together effortlessly. Personal loss, friendship, love, and grief are neither afterthoughts nor drivers of this narrative of a life. Rather we come to appreciate how the life and the mind worked together—sometimes in conflict, sometimes in sync. In a standard intellectual biography, life is often the background for thought. In this book, there is no distinction between them."—-Joan Scott, Civic Sociology

"Robert Neely Bellah makes an excellent subject for a biography, and Matteo Bortolini has written a fascinating biography of him that illuminates his life, his work, and his times all at once."—-Philip Gorski, The Hedgehog Review

"Bortolini's terrific book is likely to be the first one to which scholars turn for a rich examination of Bellah's life for a very long time."—-Susan E. Henking, Journal of the History of Behavioral Sciences

"A helpful and enjoyable biography of the American scholar Robert Bellah."—-Evan Kuehn, Reading Religion

"Bortolini's account of [Bellah's] life is a major achievement for its author, an invaluable companion to Bellah's writings, and indispensable reading for anyone who wants to understand Bellah, his thought, and his times."—-Chad Alan Goldberg, Sociological Forum

"Matteo Bortolini has made a remarkable contribution to postwar intellectual and social history, using as its prism the trajectory of one scholar to show some of the complex and conflicting tendencies of the time. I believe his book is a resource that any future intellectual or social history of the period would find relevant, and perhaps even indispensable."—-Arvind Rajagopal, Civic Sociology

"While the book presents a persuasive, if subtle, plea to revive [Bellah’s] hermeneutic insights, another of its many virtues—likely to ruffle far fewer feathers—is that it serves to make vivid what it is about the sociological imagination that makes it so dazzlingly irresistible. For this alone, A Joyfully Serious Man deserves a wide readership."—-Galen Watts, Contemporary Sociology

"As Matteo Bortolini’s beautiful biography shows over and over, the importance of intellectual curiosity is the ultimate lesson of Bellah’s life and work."—-David Yamane, International Sociology Reviews

"Bortolini, in this outstanding biography, introduces the readers to not only the oeuvre of a distinguished public intellectual, but also to his personhood, which, amidst personal calamity, could still pave a way as a fierce and passionate independent intellectual."—-Alisha Saikia, Religious Studies Review

"To my knowledge, very few, if any, sociologists born in the 20th century have so far been the subject of a more documented biography than Matteo Bortolini’s A Joyfully Serious Man, which is additional evidence of Bellah’s importance for new generations of sociologists."—-Federico Brandmayr, The American Sociologist

"One of the richest aspects of Bortolini’s book is the way in which it enables us to see Robert Bellah against the backdrop of his times, to see his intellectual projects and his character shaped by the events and institutions he lived through."—-Laura Ford, The American Sociologist

"Reading Bortolini on how Bellah first formulated, then had to defend, and then finally abandoned civil religion, encouraged me to think more systematically about issues that I find inherent in the public-ness of certain types of ideas generally."—-Rhys Williams, The American Sociologist

"On a second outsider puzzle of interest – Bellah as an emblematic case of mid-century American academic – Bortolini is conspicuously successful. Bellah’s life provides an exceedingly well-documented example of a particular generation of social scientists in America: those who were born in the interwar period and educated in the immediate postwar decades; who were wafted by the explosive growth of academia during the period 1945–1970; and who suffered in their academic primes the rapid transformations of America that took place from 1960 to 1980."—-Andrew Abbott, The American Sociologist

"A Joyfully Serious Man: The Life of Robert Bellah will be the envy of social scientists and historians who write in the genre of biography, and it will long set the gold-standard for scholarship of this kind."—-Charles Camic, The American Sociologist

"I think that you will relish the encounter that is available here with Bob Bellah. We owe a debt of gratitude to Matteo Bortolini for his wonderful portrait of this joyfully serious man."—-Peter Blum, Tradition and Discovery

"Bortolini skillfully and compassionately balances the personal, academic, and cultural elements that comprised Bellah’s life, and presents his theories in understandable and accessible terms."—-Brian Bromberger, Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide

"Bortolini’s beautifully written biography interweaves the major events of Bellah’s personal life — some in Princeton and some previously undisclosed — with the evolving contours of American individualism, political opportunism, and therapeutic self-obsession that so deeply troubled him."—-Robert Wuthnow, Princeton Alumni Weekly

From the Publisher