Review of Religion and the Mind of To-day

Abstract

Reviews the book, Religion and the Mind of To-day by Joseph A. Leighton. The author believes that, under the guidance of the special sciences, a new civilization is coming into being and that a reconstruction or intellectual recasting of our inherited religion and social ethics to guide and inspire this civilization is imperative. Professor Leighton here undertakes this recasting and places the essential teachings of Christianity in the setting of modern scientific thought and problems. The result is really in outline form a philosophy of religion worked out in the light of a scientific world-view. At the heart of Professor Leighton's philosophy is a reasoned faith in the existence of a Moral World-order or Supreme Spirit, the value and high destiny of the human personality, and in Jesus Christ as the supreme (though not the only) revealer of the true way of life. He divides his treatment into three parts. Part I, devoted to Religion and Culture To-Day, defines religion and relates it to science, theology, traditionalism, and to general culture In Part II, headed The Religion of Jesus, the author seeks to separate the religious and moral teachings of Jesus on the one side from the accumulations of theology, tradition, dogma and doctrines, on the other. In Part III on the Validity of Religion, the author first offers a criterion for the evaluation of religions in terms of value and function, then goes on to treat in the spirit of science such subjects as the existence of God, miracles, the problem of evil, prayer and faith, immortality, and social progress. This book is destructive to worn-out and antiquated views, yet it is predominately constructive in that it lays a foundation for faith upon a higher intellectual level. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)