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Famous Robert N. Bellah Quotes

“Though normally the handshake simply confirmed the trustworthiness of an agreement, with perhaps an aura of divine protection, Attic grave reliefs suggest a further extension of the idea for they "show handshaking as a symbol of Faith at the parting between the dead and the living. Thus, handshaking was not only a sign of agreement among the living, but the gesture of trust and faith in the supreme departure." With us the handshake is hardly a conscious gesture, but nonetheless one does not expect to be attacked by someone with whom one has just shaken hands. A refusal of a proffered handshake, however, would make the ritual gesture conscious indeed: breaking the ritual raises ominous questions that would require an explanation.”

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Book:Religion in Human Evolution: From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age
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“Dominance hierarchy is probably as old as mammal societies. Among behaviorally complex mammals, certainly among chimpanzees, patterns recognizably like ethics and politics have appeared, how long ago we don't know, but probably millions of years ago. And mammalian play, the seedbed of later capacities, goes back probably at least as far.”

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Book:Religion in Human Evolution: From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age
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“If personal identity resides in the telling, then so does social identity. Families, nations, religions (but also corporations, universities, departments of sociology) know who they are by the stories they tell. The modern discipline of history is closely related to the emergence of the nation-state.”

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Book:Religion in Human Evolution: From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age
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