REVIEW OF RELIGION. - A four-monthly periodical published by Columbia University, in New York City, beginning in 1936–37. Through the collaboration of many specialists, it critically surveys the most noteworthy research in the vast field of religion, understood in a very broad sense.
The R. of R. aims not only to describe religious facts diligently, avoiding facile generalizations, but also to study them in their philosophical, psychological, sociological, cultural, historical, archaeological, etc., setting. Judging from the reviews published in it, it departs from sociologism, psychoanalysis, and the phenomenologism of G. van der Leeuw, and criticizes exaggerated evolutionism. In its judgment of biblical facts or of Christian dogma, historical interpretation prevails; it admits neither a dogmatic position nor a system of historico-cultural method such as that elaborated by Schmidt for ethnology. In addition to scientific questions concerning religion, it takes a lively interest in current religious problems; finally, it follows Jewish studies, developments in systematic theology and Protestant exegesis, as well as Catholic philosophy and theology. Pietro Nober