Meaning and Modernity

Richard Madsen is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, San Diego. He is the author of five books, including China's Catholics (California, 1999). William M. Sullivan is Professor of Philosophy at La Salle University and Senior Scholar at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. He is the author of Work and Integrity: The Crisis and Promise of Professionalism in America (1995). Ann Swidler is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. Her most recent book is Talk of Love: How Culture Matters (2001). Steven M. Tipton is Director of the Graduate Division of Religion and Professor of Sociology at Emory University and its Candler School of Theology. He is at work on Public Pulpits, a study of religious advocacy in Washington. All four editors are the coauthors, with Robert N. Bellah, of Habits of the Heart and The Good Society.

"[This book] not only serves as a testimony to the intellectual influence of Robert Bellah, it establishes a new school of comparative religious and social thought." - Mark Juergensmeyer, author of Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence; "[A] highly readable collection of original, thought-provoking essays.... Readers will learn much about such issues as how Calvinism contributed to political revolution, why democracies require an enlarged sense of political community, how the religious foundations of Japan and the United States differ, and what it means to be a Christian and an American." - Benton Johnson, author of Functionalism in Modern Sociology: Understanding Talcott Parsons

• Acknowledgments Introduction by Richard Madsen, William M. Sullivan, Ann Swidler, and Steven M. Tipton 1. "Mythic Gestures": Robert N. Bellah and Cultural Sociology by Jeffrey C. Alexander and Steven J. Sherwood 2. Social Differentiation and Moral Pluralism by Steven M. Tipton 3. Saving the Self: Endowment vs. Depletion in American Institutions by Ann Swidler 4. Mirror-Image Modernities: Contrasting Religious Premises of Japanese and U.S. Modernity by S. N. Eisenstadt 5. Calvinism and Revolution: The Walzer Thesis Reconsidered by Philip S. Gorski 6. Comparative Cosmopolis: Discovering Different Paths to Moral Integration in the Modern Ecumene by Richard Madsen 7. Mammon and the Culture of the Market: A Socio-Theological Critique by Harvey Cox 8. Selling God in America: American Commercial Culture as a Climate of Hospitality to Religion by John A. Coleman, S.J. 9. In Search of Common Ground: Howard Thurman and Religious Community by Albert J. Raboteau 10. Reassembling the Civic Church: The Changing Role of Congregations in American Civil Society by Robert Wuthnow 11. Democracy, Inclusive and Exclusive by Charles Taylor 12. Raising Good Citizens in a Bad Society: Moral Education and Political Avoidance in Civic America by Nina Eliasoph 13. On Being a Christian and an American by Stanley Hauerwas 14. Politics as the "Public Use of Reason": Religious Roots of Political Possibilities by William M. Sullivan Epilogue. Meaning and Modernity: America and the World by Robert N. Bellah Notes Bibliography Index Contributors