HAYDON, A. EUSTACE (1880–1975), was a Canadian historian of religions and a founder of the modern humanist movement in North America. Born in Brampton, Ontario, Albert Eustace Haydon attended McMaster University, where he received his B. A., Th.B., B.D., and M.A. degrees; the University of Saskatchewan, where he received another master's degree; and the University of Chicago, where he received his Ph.D. After serving as a Baptist pastor in Canada (1903–1913), a YMCA general secretary (1913–1916), and a Unitarian minister (1918–1924), Haydon joined the faculty of the University of Chicago in 1919; he became chairman of the department of comparative religion there in 1921 and a full professor in 1929, and he stayed at Chicago until his retirement in 1945.

Haydon was critical of theories of religion that understood it to be grounded in "religious consciousness" or in a response to a trans-human religious object or power, and...