Robert N. Bellah's 2011 Book Religion in Human Evolution, and Walter J. Ong's Thought

Abstract

In my 4,500-word review essay "Robert N. Bellah's 2011 Book Religion in Human Evolution, and Walter J. Ong's Thought," I weave together, on the one hand, certain highlights of the American sociologist of religion Robert N. Bellah's admirably lucid magnum opus Religion in Human Evolution: From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011) and, on the other hand, relevant points from the mature work of the American Jesuit Renaissance specialist and cultural historian Walter J. Ong (1912-2003; Ph.D. in English, Harvard University, 1955 -- the same year that Bellah received his Ph.D. from Harvard in sociology and Far Eastern languages).