Robert N. Bellah (1927–2013) was the Elliott Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. His many books include Religion in Human Evolution: From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age (2011). Richard Madsen is distinguished research professor and director of the UC-Fudan Center for Research on Contemporary China at the University of California, San Diego. William M. Sullivan is senior scholar at the Center for Inquiry in the Liberal Arts at Wabash College. Ann Swidler is a professor of the Graduate School at the University of California, Berkeley. Steven M. Tipton is Charles Howard Candler Professor Emeritus of Sociology of Religion at Emory University and its Candler School of Theology. Bellah, Madsen, Sullivan, Swidler, and Tipton are coauthors of the landmark book Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (1985).
Robert Bellah is one of the most important American social scientists and public intellectuals of the last sixty years. Challenging Modernity contributes to a much needed discussion of all the urgent critical issues which we are facing today. -- José Casanova, author of <i>Public Religions in the Modern World</i> There is no other book like this, nor is there likely to be one, and there was no better team to work together on this effort to advance Bellah's thinking into his planned next book and beyond. Challenging Modernity reveals Bellah’s last writing and does an admirable job of raising Bellah’s themes about the enduring tensions that bedevil modern life. It will take an honored place as the concluding volume in a remarkable shelf of studies in the distinguished career of one of sociology’s greatest contemporary minds. -- Mark Juergensmeyer, author of <i>Global Rebellion: Religious Challenges to the Secular State</i>