7/27/2019 Sociological Inquiry Volume 42 issue 2 1972 [doi 10.1111%2Fj.1475-682x.1972.tb00700.x] ROBERT N. BELLAH -- S

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Sociological Inquiry42 (2): 155-172Symposium on Shepherd, Religion and the CounterCulture-A New ReligiosityComment

ROBERTN. BELLAH*University of California, BerkeleyI think the article makes an important pointand makes it rather well. I do have a fewreservations about some points in your argumentwhich I pass along for the sake of discussionand not as suggestions for revisions of thepresent piece. For one thing, your picture of thecounter culture focusing almost exclusively ondrugs and rock music is I think a bit one-sided.Some of the newer currents in the youth cultureare decidedly ascetic and against the use ofdrugs. May I cite a very recent book byJacob Needleman called The New Religions andpublished by Scribners. It deals with some ofthe movements currently spreading in the SanFrancisco Bay Area. You do, at the very endof the article, suggest some of the diversityinvolved in this counter culture, but I would beinclined to feel that it is considerably moreheterogeneous than you describe it. I also sensemore tension between the religious and thepolitical aspects than you seem to find.My biggest problem, though, is with your un-compromising stand that the Jewish-Christian-Islamic traditions rest overwhelmingly on truthclaims and not on experience. I would certain-ly not deny altogether that you have a point.The point comes out most strongly in com-parative perspective, since I know of no othermajor religion which so explicitly emphasizesthe cognitive claim as this one. Nonetheless,I still doubt that in fact in the religious psy-chology of the ordinary believer the truth claimis as central or as important as you make out.There are two major lines that I would pursue

in attempting to undermine the most extremeform of your argument. One is that experiencehas always been central in the Christian tradi-tion, in practice and often in theory. Youvirtually admit as much for the Protestant side,but I think the same can be said for the Catholicside although the terms are somewhat different.In the case of the Catholics the experience ofconversion is not so central, but the sacramentallife as a context of experience is absolutely cen-tral. It seems to me that the Mass and the

*Ed.s Note: This comment is from a letter byBellah sent Shepherd in response to the lattersrequest for evaluation of the paper. It is printedwith Bellahs kind permission.

Eucharist are really the centerpieces of Catholicreligiosity, and not creeds and dogmas in spite ofthe prevalence of Catholic rationalism for nearlya thousand years.The second line of argument I would take isthat insistence on truth claims stated in purelyobjective cognitive terms may in fact not befunctioning in ways analogous to the operation

of truth claims in other realms of human exist-ence. That is to say, what is purely a cognitiveexpression may in fact be operating in the con-scious or unconscious life of the believer as anexpressive emotional statement rather than as astatement of fact. For example, the assertionthat the end of time has come and it is necessaryto repent or one will be lost does indeed havea strong cognitive component and we have seenexamples of the absurdity of groups who havefixed the date for the end to come. On theother hand, we also have sufficient social psy-chological understanding of the situations whichproduce this kind of belief to see that it isfunctioning primarily as a form of deep emo-tional expression for people who find themselvesfor one reason or another in a baffling andfrustrating situation which seems to have forthem no way out. The apparent objective cog-nitive form of the statement therefore cannot betaken at face value without distorting the veryprofound and shaking experiences which producethe cognitive belief. But once we admit thatthe religious belief is rooted in a deep religiousexperience, the dichotomy which you draw be-tween traditional Judaic-Christian religiosity andthe newer forms tends to wash out. On theother hand, it seems to me that you tend tooverlook the extent to which the new counterculture religiosity also involves more than a fewtruth claims of a non-empirical sort. For ex-ample, a Zen Buddhist is by no means avoidingnon-empirical truth claims when he speaks ofthe attainment of enlightenment or the realiza-tion of the Buddha nature. When he says thatthe truth of our existence is that we are allwithout exceptions Buddhas and that the ap-parent forms of the world are absolutely empty,we have statements which seem to conveycognitive proof but which are certainly noteither common-sensical or scientific. They aresimply the Zen equivalent of statements that

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156 SOCIOLOGICAL INQUIRYJesus is the son of God. At a more common-place level, the belief in vibrations, in astrol-ogy, and in the effects of various kinds of sym-bolic diets all seem to me to involve truth claimelements that are parallel to aspects of theJewish-Christian tradition.

What my remarks suggest is not that youranalysis is mistaken but simply that it is too

stark. I think you have pointed out validlydifferences of emphasis but when you translatedifferences of emphasis into absolute statementsof contrast, it seems to me that you distort thereal picture on both sides. But in spite of thesereservations I very much would like to see thispiece appear, since I think it does add an im-portant dimension to the present discussions.

Comment: Vive la DiffkrenceLest Music Does Defeat George Herbert MeadIn arguing for a precise analogy betweenmusic and a new religiosity, Shepherd does notclaim identity between the two. But when atten-tion goes wholly to similarities, the result tendsto collapse the distinction. And Shepherdtravels in good company. No less than a Bellahat least once explicitly collapsed artistic andreligious symbolism though he remains far fromadvocating it in general (1970: 206). If, further-more, religious symbols are those that relate manto the ultimate conditions of his existence inpart through relating him to himself (Bellah,1970: 26), then no less than a Heisenberg (1942:18 ) equated religion and science. Feyerabend(1966) argued for a breakdown of boundariesamong all three. Motives and justificationsdiffer, but groping for some new synthesisabounds. Given a fairly differentiated symbolicuniverse and specialized social organizations forits production, this is only to be expected. Butif in analogizing we fall into the trap offorgetting differences, we shall not only fail inour search for integrative symbolism, we shallalso diminish our cognitive-rational grasp ofdifferent symbolic realities attained. For suchan approach carries the cost of a non-functionalmode of thought. It prevents us from seeingthat different types of statements with differentaims condition each other. Yet it is preciselyfunctionalism with its emphasis on mutual con-tingency among the components of functionallydifferentiated symbol systems that enabled us toview man as productive of and responsive tomulti-layered realities. Let us not sacrifice light-l y what has been gained with considerable effort.My comment, therefore, will attempt the fol-lowing: ( 1 ) sketch the important distinctions thatfunctionalism suggests; and ( 2 ) argue that thesubstitution of religious with expressive sym-bolism potentially makes for a profoundlydifferent religious life posing challenging ques-tions for (a) our conception of personal identity,and (b) the place of morals in modernity.

RAINERC. BAUMUniversity of PittsburghThe perspective of action theory suggests atleast two powerful deterrents against the falseindependence which fuels this clamor for a newsynthesis. First, no production of statements ispossible without simultaneously involvement ofaIl four types of symbols: constitutive, moral,expressive, and cognitive. Secondly, the notionof Iart pour Iart is as much a myth as similarclaims for science or religion. As to the former,one merely has to keep in mind that the institu-tionalized production of scientific statementscould not do without a capacity to categorize, anunderlying moral commitment that knowledgeis better than ignorance, a commitment toelegance in explanation, and a massive doseof cognition. Similarly, no amount of apper-ceiving beauty suffices for the production ofmusic that is more than noise. One does needcognitive symbols as well. Concerning thesecond point, no functionally differentiated actionof whatever kind is carried on for its own sake.The implied notion of completely independentgoals contradicts the idea of Parsons functionaldifferentiation. But these activities are guided bydifferent codes of control. In science it is cog-nitive rationality, in art appreciative, and inreligion it is the rationality of ultimate meaning.And if one refuses to treat these phenomena asfunctionally differentiated one loses the capacityto even raise the isssue of interchange, transi-tivity, or de-differentiation to the level of aproblem. The German non-economic middle-class used art for religious ends already ahundred years before American youth tried it.But if we are to advance our understanding ofthe conditions making for such substitutability,the distinction is crucial.Next to different codes, where else lie thedistinctions? The production of an order, acosmos radically different from the socioculturalof every-day common sense experience does notdistinguish science, art, and religion. AU areorder statements of radical difference to common