1/1, October 1927-March 1935. 70 pp., $3.50 a year. Randall was a professor at Columbia who optimistically observed and predicted a “trend toward world unity”: “A new, universal culture is in process of formation—new values arc creating a true world outlook. The education received even a few years ago is inadequate for those who desire to live abreast of the times.” He (and with his son John Herman Randall, Jr., who was a contributing editor) gathered around him and published in the journal a who’s who of the like-minded who believed that the emerging liberal, enlightened worldview could transform religion, science, philosophy and culture generally and lead to a secular millennium of world peace: Nicholas Roerich, Frank Lloyd Wright, Abba Hillel Silver, Alain Locke, Kahlil Gibran, Alice A. Bailey, Rufus M. Jones, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Havelock Ellis, Charles Richet, Georges Duhamel, and, notably, Norman Thomas and George Lukács. The journal from its beginnings found affinity with the ideas of Bahai, though it was alleged at the time that it carefully concealed the connection and its financing by prominent Bahai members. The managing editor, Horace Holley, was a prominent Bahai leader and the journal over time became increasingly devoted to Bahai, especially after Holley became editor in the 1930s, merging in 1935 with The Bahá’i Messenger to form World Order. The cover of the journal was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and used apparently without his permission.

Category: New Thought, Bahai.