Robert Bellah's neo-evolutionary theory on the academic study of religion developed in response to Malinowski's functionalist criticism of Tylor and the Social Darwinists' developmental approach is fundamentally flawed. His system of religious classification attempts to account for the development and change in religion and society over time, as in Tylor's original approach, while adjusting for the flaws in Tylor pointed out by Malinowski such as its inaccuracy and inherent ethnocentrism. This is good; it is the job of thinkers to revise and correct each other and develop new ways of thinking such that we can understand the world.
I just don't like what Bellah did specifically to classify and explain the phenomenon of religion. He attempts to define religion in terms of four catagories: primal, archaic, classical, and modern. His first problem is in the terminology itself, wherein his loaded titles imply much of the same ethnocentrism he tried to eliminate, and the use of time-frame specific terms like modern and archaic is not effective when attempting to define such a timeless and universal phenomenon as religion. That can be easily revised by simply changing the terms, but his system is flawed much more deeply. His approach seems to be from the perspective of someone studying the history of religious practice rather than the concept of religion itself. In this sense his catagories are fine, and indeed useful in exploring religious history and history in general, but they are too specific to existing religious traditions that they do not allow for the explaination of the many possible ways of thinking and experiencing the world through what we define as religion. It is as if he took the several religions and types of religious schools with which he was familiar and created his little boxes to suit those, rather than defining first the idea of what a religion can be, and attempting to catagorize and use existing religions as evidence for that concept.
I much prefer Malinowski's functional approach, in which he defines religion, science, and other, more primitive worldviews like the practice of magic and superstition based on their function in a society. He explains that these can and have to coexist, rather than take the place of each other as a society advances and develops, as it was explained by Tylor and Bellah. Each has a function and a purpose in the lives of the people, and serves to answer certain questions and problems that another cannot, in the same society. Malinowski was not concerned with the origins and developmental evolution of religion over time as the others were, and focused simply on individual religious practices to determine the broader purpose and indeed meaning of religion itself.
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