Robert Bellah, influential religion scholar, dies at 86

Robert N. Bellah, an eminent sociologist of religion most remembered for defining the interplay of U.S. religion and politics as a civil religion and for describing Sheilaism, a forerunner of today’s “spiritual but not religious” individualism, died July 30 of complications related to heart surgery at an Oakland, California, hospital.

Bellah, raised in Los Angeles, was educated at Harvard and taught there before becoming a professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley in 1967. He retired as a professor emeritus in 1997 and was working on a sequel to his ambitious 2011 book, Religion in Human Evolution, before his recent heart problems.

In 2000, President Bill Clinton awarded Bellah the National Humanities Medal for raising “our awareness of the values that are at the core of democratic institutions and of the dangers of individualism unchecked by social responsibility.”