The Robert Bellah Reader Quotes

“Thus with respect to the Durkheimian understanding of ritual it is social enactment that is primary. A world of symbolic meanings can and does arise from such enactments, a world with many implications for the rest of social life, but the ritual enactment retains its primacy and cannot be reduced to the symbols that derive from it”
― Robert N. Bellah, The Robert Bellah Reader