Sociologist Robert Bellah has provided a model for examining the mutual interactions of culture and religion across a broad range of humanity's experience.Drawing on Bellah's model,in this paper we will examine five eras extending from early religious expressions through the religious consciousness emerging in late modern societies today.Each era is characterized by a dominant style of social organization (from tribal groups to interconnected global civilization) and a dominant set of interpretive tools (from gesture and symbol,through language and literacy,to the complex interactive processes of systemic thinking).Our discussion will move forward through time,with the implication that more complex patterns of religious interpretation and organization emerge later.But in fact there is considerable overlap.Earlier social patterns and interpretive skills are not simply replaced by later strategies.As cultures develop,earlier human abilities continue to function,now augmented by newly-emerging capacities.