ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the origins and fate of symbolic realism using the conceptual tools of the new sociology of ideas, according to which in studying the emergence, development, and diffusion of cultural objects it is necessary to take into account both the milieus within which they were devised and the various audiences to which they addressed. Berger's approach allowed sociologists of religion to maintain their position and status vis-a-vis the wider sociological field, whereas Bellah's symbolic realism was too radical to be accepted. Bellah focused on the relationship between meaning systems and their referents, his main methodological problem being how to correctly interpret religious symbols in order to understand their own "reality". Bellah's work on American civil religion proved to be especially dangerous for the dissemination of symbolic realism. Robert Bellah has been recognized as one of public sociology's most eminent forerunners and his short appendix to Habits, "Social Science as Public Philosophy" became one of his influential works.
