Robert N. Bellah’s comparative and cultural sociology appears compatible with an evolutionary science and seeks to investigate the cultural developments of biological beginnings. The behavioral and symbolic aspects of evolution according to Bellah build on genetic capacities, they are however not genetically controlled and it is there that Bellah tries to find the origins of religion. The essay discusses some of the major themes explored by Bellah in his cultural sociology: Japanese civilization; the American civil religion in the social and political model represented by the United States; the evolution of religions and the Axial Age.