Although his ideology has changed since his days as an undergraduate member of the Communist Party, Robert N. Bellah '48, a sociologist and professor emeritus at the University of California at Berkeley, has spent his entire life at the cutting edge of the academy.

"He's been tremendously influential.... He's sparked new ideas wherever he's gone," says Ann Swidler '66, a sociologist who co-wrote Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life and The Good Society with Bellah.

"He cares not only about the intellectual achievement of a given work of scholarship but about its moral implications," she says.

Swidler credits Bellah with developing ideas "which have become part of the woodwork" of academia, such as the concept of civil religion, a term he coined in an influential 1966 paper, "Civil Religion in America."

Bellah is best known for Habits of the Heart and The Good Society, which were both attempts to understand the limitations of individualism in American political culture.

He has also authored several other influential works, including Broken Covenant, a critique of America and its culture, in particular the country's involvement in Vietnam, and Beyond Belief: Essays on Religion in a Post-Traditionalist World.

But Bellah's writings were published long before his works became mandatory reading in debates over civic engagement.

His senior thesis on Apache kinship systems, which helped him earn a summa cum laude degree, won the Phi Beta Kappa prize and was published.

His first book, Tokugawa Religion, was based on his Harvard graduate dissertation for a joint degree in sociology and Far Eastern languages, and it is still in print more than 40 years later.

During his college days, Bellah "spent a lot of time studying and reading," says Eli J. Sagan '48, a college friend of Bellah's who remains close to him today. "He was probably the most prepared student I ever met."

"He was very well liked by his professors," Sagan adds.

Outside of the classroom, Sagan says Bellah was "very much involved with politics" as an avowed Communist and a member of the Harvard Liberal Union (HLU).

Sagan recalls how when HLU introduced a resolution stating that the organization should exclude Communists, Bellah was the only student willing to speak out and identify himself as a member of the Party despite fierce anti-communist sentiment.

"There were people at Harvard who were Communists, but they were all secret," Sagan recalls. "No one was in the open."

"At the meeting at which the resolution was about to be voted upon, Bellah got up and said, `My name is Robert Bellah, and I am a member of the Communist Party."