ABSTRACT
Robert N. Bellah, who is often quoted for an article he wrote on civil religion in America and for another one concerning religious evolution. It is a fact that Bellah's challenges have succeeded in stimulating the field of contemporary sociology of religion. Bellah considers the following dimensions: the symbolic religious system, religious action, religious organization, and their social implications. In archaic religion, the symbolic religious system shows a more direct interaction between mythological beings and men. Bellah's initial work on American civil religion goes back to a 1966 lecture published in Daedalus. In the book The Broken Covenant Bellah defines civil religion as an empty and broken container. The research on The Habits of the Heart is centered on the crisis of the 1960s, specifically understood as a religious crisis. The methodology of this research is qualitative. In fact, it uses qualitative interviews and life stories that help to describe a profile of the American "national character.".
