3rd Edition
Ascent of the Mountain, Flight of the Dove An Invitation to Religious Studies
Introduction to the Transaction Edition
Preface to the Revised Edition (1978)
Introduction: An Invitation to Religious Studies
ONE—The Voyage
1. The Religious Drive
2. What Religion is Not
3. Way of Life
4. Earthy Ecstasy
5. Conversion to the Sacred
TWO—Autobiography and Story
1. Religion as Autobiography
2. Cultural Stories and Personal Stories
3. Standpoint to Standpoint
4. "Story," Elaborated
5. What Cannot Be Said
6. The Aesthetic, The Moral, The Religious
7. Among the Many Rises and Declines of Reason
THREE—Cultures
1. Paradoxes of the Finite
2. Sense of Reality
3. From Culture to Cult
FOUR—Societies and Institutions
1. Institutions are Man's Natural Habitat
2. Freedom and Coercion
3. Are Institutions Obsolete?
4. The New Heteronomy
5. Secular Religion
6. The Communal Imagination
7. The Realities of Economics
8. Political Revolution
9. Civil Religion
FIVE—Organizations
1. Organized Anything
2. Liturgy
3. Church, Denomination, Sect
4. Holy Texts
5. Theologies
6. A Map of Christian Theologies in the United States
7. Theology as Suitor
SIX—Nature and History
SEVEN—How Then Shall We Act?
1. Elaborations on "Story"
2. A Story of My Own
Epilogue: New Horizons
Notes
Index of Names
Biography
J. Bowyer Bell






