Abstract
Ten years ago Robert Bellah offered his symbolic realism perspective as an alternative to the classic social science treatment of religion that involved explaining religion by showing its “real” purpose. Bellah argued that religious symbols express reality and are not reducible to empirical propositions. In some sense religion is sui generis; it is true. It is interesting to note that Bellah had great hopes of theologians and sociologists speaking the same language through symbolic realism (1970: 94) and further to remember that this sort of convergence has characterised only one end of the theological spectrum. Only those liberal theologians who abandoned large parts of their traditional beliefs in “demythologising” exercises accepted the value of dialogue. What Bellah failed to see was that his symbolic realism was itself reductionist in that the assertion “religion is true” (1970: 92) contradicts, for example, the assertion that “Rastafarianism is true”. For all his opposition to reductionism of the grosser kind, Bellah's treatment of religion still involves replacing the accounts given by believers with some other story about what religion “really is” and as such cannot but be offensive to all believers who claim a unique possession of the truth.
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