罗伯特·贝拉的宗教社会学思想述评

A Comment on Robert Bellah's Religious Sociology

作为当代著名的社会学家,贝拉的思想主要围绕着现代性议题中宗教的意义和功能而展开。从其宗教社会学大致可分为求学阶段的学术积累、哈佛大学时期的"悲观的乐观主义"、20世纪60年代中后期的"乐观的悲观主义"和70年代后的"后新教徒"问题四个时期,他分别对宗教的本质、宗教研究的路径、宗教与现代化、宗教进化、美国公民宗教和美国道德生态重建等具体议题进行了分析。但我国学界对贝拉的介绍和研究多具碎片化。贝拉宗教社会学的基石是其宗教观,而这种宗教观又主要扎根于西方特别是美国社会之中。为此,我们对贝拉理论的接受和批判都必须以此为逻辑起点;同时,我们更不应仅拘囿于他的某个论说,而应对其学说有着整体的把握。

As a contemporary famous sociologist,Robert Bellah uses his sociology of religion to mainly discuss meanings and functions of religion in the perspective of modernity.On the basis of development of his thinking,it can be divided into four phases:the academic accumulation when he studied in the university;'pessimistic optimism' when he worked in Harvard University;'optimistic pessimism' during the late 1960s;the topic of 'post-Protestant man' after the 1970s.In detail,he researches the essence of religion,the epistemology of religious study,the relation between religion and modernization,religious evolution,civil religion and reconstruction of American moral ecology.Though there are some studies of Bellah's theory in Chinese academia,they are still segmented.This article tries to grasp his theory on the whole.