WORLD RELIGIONS AND WORLD COMMUNITY

Here Professor Slater of the Harvard Divinity School discusses the unity and diversity of all the major religions. For the most part the notes are more tempting than the text, but the soft style is offset by the scope of the subject matter and the stamp of sincerity throughout. Modern man, the professor contends, has lost the dimension of depth, with the Western neurosis inclining towards authoritarianism and the East bogged down in mystic relativism. Both have much to learn from one another, meeting in that middle distance between ideas and conduct, where a theory of reconception can revitalize. The wholeness of man and of life, the true wellspring of religions everywhere. The anti-confessional aspects of Hinduism, the ""no soul"" of Buddhism, the Messianic dogmatism of Islam, Judaism and Christianity and the historical forces involved are among the differences which no syncretism can ever rule out. Instead the professor proposes a pluralistic coexistence as superstructure and a world community as substructure, leading to, it is hoped, world order and world peace. The disciplines of philosophy and psychology, as well as those of theology buttress the pleasant, if not too penetrating prospectus.