REVIEW OF RELIGION. - A quarterly periodical published by Columbia University, in New York City, beginning in 1936-37. Through the collaboration of many specialists it critically surveys the most notable 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 sets out to study them in their philosophical, psychological, sociological, cultural, historical, archaeological, etc. environment. Judging from the reviews that have appeared in it, it departs from sociologism, from psychoanalysis, from the phenomenologism of G. van der Leeuw, and criticizes exaggerated evolutionism. In its judgment on biblical facts or on Christian dogma, the historical interpretation prevails; it admits neither a dogmatic position nor a system of historical-cultural method, such as that elaborated by Schmidt for ethnology. Besides scientific questions about religion, it takes a lively interest in current religious problems, and finally follows Jewish studies, the developments of systematic theology and Protestant exegesis, as well as Catholic philosophy and theology.
Pietro Nober