In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 20 (2000) 249-255 [Access article in PDF] News and Views World Parliament of Religions, Cape Town, South Africa Jim Kenney The Council for a Parliament of the World's Religions is pleased to offer this summary report of the 1999 Parliament of the World's Religions, held in Cape Town, South Africa, December 1-8, 1999. Nestled against Table Mountain and overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, Cape Town is home (...) to many races, religious traditions, and cultural varieties. Religious, spiritual, cultural, and civic leaders, groups, and communities there worked enthusiastically in partnership with CPWR to make the 1999 Parliament an unforgettable gift to the world.At the 1999 Parliament over 7,000 people from around the world--teachers, scholars, leaders, believers, and practitioners--came together to experience astonishing spiritual and cultural variety, to exchange insights, to share wisdom, to celebrate their unique religious identities; in short, to be amazed, delighted, and inspired. At the same time, participants wrestled with the critical issues facing the global community, learning about the world situation, and seeking the moral and ethical convergence that leads to shared commitment and action.The 1999 Parliament of the World's Religions was a celebration of hope and a vision of possible futures. It also gave powerful testimony to the good hearts and goodwill of the many thousands of people--from every part of the world, and from almost every religious and spiritual tradition--who believed that this gathering could indeed be the harbinger of a new day dawning.It was not the intention of those who gathered in Cape Town to create a new religion, or to diminish in any way the precious uniqueness of any path. Instead, they came together to demonstrate that the religious and spiritual traditions and communities of Cape Town, of South Africa, and of the larger world can and should encounter one another in a spirit of respect, and with an openness to new understanding. They joined with one another in a spirit of dialogue and cooperation, seeking to discover new ways to rise to the challenges and the opportunities of life at the threshold of a new century. And they came with the realization that as each of us reaches out to the transcendent in her or his own way, somehow, we are no longer strangers to one another.In commemoration of International AIDS Day, the Parliament began with the formal unveiling of the International AIDS Quilt in the picturesque area known as the Company's Garden. Each one of hundreds of handsewn panels commemorates a victim of the disease, yet the Quilt project itself is a symbol of hope and life's triumph. [End Page 249] The founder of the quilt, Cleve Jones, joined with several religious and spiritual leaders from around the world to engage in dialogue about the role of religious and spiritual communities in fighting the disease that has claimed the lives of so many people. The quilt was an especially poignant reminder of both the epidemic of AIDS in South Africa, and the role that religious and spiritual traditions play in confronting the critical issues that face the world at the end of the millennium.Participants then proceeded down Government Avenue to Darling Street and on to District Six. Costumes, religious garb, banners, and wonderful cultural variety made for a colorful and moving experience for marchers and spectators alike. With over 10,000 marchers, the procession was a highlight for many Parliament participants. The presence of protesters demonstrating their displeasure with the Parliament and its commitment to interreligious dialogue and cooperation did not diminish the spirit or the enthusiasm of the marchers.When the procession arrived in District Six, an area symbolic of both dispossession and of the human spirit, those who had once lived in this lovely spot under Table Mountain welcomed the marchers. Past residents of District Six described to those gathered how their once vibrant community was displaced when the apartheid-era government designated the area as "white only," and removed the residents to distant, underresourced townships. In the moving ceremony that followed, religious and spiritual leaders... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The 1999 Parliament of the World’s ReligionsJim KenneyThe Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions (CPWR) is delighted to announce the convening of the 1999 Parliament of the World’s Religions, December 1–8, 1999, in Cape Town, South Africa. Nestled against Table Mountain and overlooking the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, Cape Town is home to many races, religious traditions, and cultural varieties. Religious, spiritual, cultural, and civic leaders, groups, (...) and communities there are working in partnership with CPWR to make the 1999 Parliament an unforgettable gift to the world.In the spring of 1988 the Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions was formed with the commitment to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the first Parliament of Religions, held in Chicago in 1893. The 1993 Parliament of the World’s Religions was one of the most extraordinary interreligious events of all time. Almost eight thousand participants came together to celebrate the commonalties and diversities of the world’s religious and spiritual traditions and to explore religious and spiritual responses to the critical issues that face the human community.Part of the legacy of the 1993 Parliament was a widespread conviction on the part of religious and spiritual leaders and participants from the grassroots that what had taken place in Chicago must continue. The parliament testified to a new spirit emerging around the world, characterized by new interreligious encounter, understanding, and cooperation. In the wake of the 1993 event, the council began to shape two initiatives designed to foster interreligious dialogue and shared action in metropolitan Chicago and around the globe. To highlight and punctuate these ongoing efforts, CPWR made a powerful commitment that, beginning in 1999 and every five years thereafter, a new parliament would be convened somewhere in the world.The diversity of the global community has never been more apparent. Today, metropolitan centers like Chicago exhibit an unprecedented variety of cultures. Advanced technology and communications have transformed the world into a global village. As a consequence, awareness of the richness of the human family in its racial, ethnic, cultural, social, religious, and spiritual dimensions is growing worldwide. The beauty and promise of this diversity is that we are mysteries and opportunities to one another. We are strangers who can become neighbors and friends. Simply in sharing who we are with each other, we all can broaden our horizons, deepen our [End Page 201] understandings, and get in touch with new sources of compassion and vision, courage and hope.At a Parliament of the World’s Religions, people from around the world—teachers, scholars, leaders, believers, and practitioners—come together to experience astonishing spiritual and cultural variety, to exchange insights, to share wisdom, to celebrate their unique religious identities; in short, to be amazed, delighted, and inspired. At the same time, participants wrestle with the critical issues facing the global community, learning about the world situation, and seeking the moral and ethical convergence that leads to shared commitment and action.The Parliament experience unfolds as a spectacular opening ceremony welcomes thousands of adherents of the world’s religious and spiritual traditions. In the days that follow, participants eagerly engage in interreligious encounter and education through lectures and workshops, plenary sessions, and performances. In shared observances, meditation, and prayer, persons from all walks of life find inspiration and renewal. And in chance meetings in corridors and on the street, each finds that the world is paradoxically both a smaller and a richer place than she or he ever imagined.In a period of heightened spiritual interest and renewal, the 1999 Parliament of the World’s Religions in Cape Town, South Africa, will offer countless opportunities for discovery and inquiry. Participants will be able to touch their own traditions at deeper levels. They can explore the origins, development, and perspectives of unfamiliar paths. They can compare and contrast beliefs and practices from widely separated places and times. Through lectures, workshops, and plenary sessions, through worship, prayer, or meditation, and through chance meetings with people from around the world, the parliament event will offer everything from occasions for personal spiritual growth and exposure to transformative approaches to social engagement to new friendships and an... (shrink)

In this engaging and provocative study, John Peter Kenney examines the emergence of monotheism within Greco-Roman philosophical theology by tracing the changing character of ancient realism from Plato through Plotinus. Besides acknowledging the philosophical and theological significance of such ancient thinkers as Plutarch, Numenius, Alcinous, and Atticus, he demonstrates the central importance of Plotinus in clarifying the relation of the intelligible world to divinity. Kenney focuses especially on Plotinus's novel concept of deity, arguing that it constitutes a type (...) of mystical monotheism based upon an ultimate and inclusive divine One beyond description or discursive knowledge. Presenting difficult material with grace and clarity, Kenney takes a wide-ranging view of the development of ancient Platonic theology from a philosophical perspective and synthesizes familiar elements in a new way. His is a revisionist thesis with significant implications for the study of Greco-Roman, Jewish, and Christian thought in this period and for the history of Western religious thought in general. (shrink)

The demanding frontier life of My Ántonia or Little House on the Prairie may be long gone, but the idyllic small town still exists as a cherished icon of American community life. Yet sprawl and urban density, rather than small towns and farms, are the predominant features of our modern society, agribusiness and other commercial forces have rapidly taken over family farms and ranches, and even the open spaces we think of as natural retreats only retain the barest façade of (...) their former frontier austerity. The fading communities, social upheaval, and enduring heritage of the Northern Plains are the subject of Jim Dow’s Marking the Land, a stirring photographic tribute to the complex and unyielding landscape of North Dakota. Jim Dow began making pilgrimages to this remote territory in 1981 and, with a commission from the North Dakota Museum of Art, he took photographs of the passing human presence on the land. The simple, stolid pieces of architecture carved out against the Dakota skies—whether the local schoolhouse, car wash, prison, homes, hunting lodge, or churches—evoke in their spare lines and weather-battered frames the stoic and toughened spirit of the people within their walls. Folk art is also an integral part of the landscape in Dow’s visual study, and he examines the subtle evolution of local craftsmanship from homemade sculptures, murals, and carvings to carefully crafted pieces aimed at tourists. Anchoring all of these explorations is the raw and striking landscape of the North Dakota plains. Marking the Land is a moving reflection by a leading American photographer on the state of the Northern Plains today, forcing us all to rethink our conceptions of America’s forgotten frontier. (shrink)

Kenney, Mark Review(s) of: A source critical edition of the gospels of Matthew and Luke in Greek and English, 2 vols., Christopher J. Monaghan, C.P., Rome: Gregorian and Biblical Press, 2010, pp.378, 45.00.

Kenney, Mark Review(s) of: Experiencing scripture: Intimacy with ancient text and modern faith, by Antony Campbell SJ, (Adelaide: ATF Theology, 2012), pp. xxv + 214, $34.95.

Kenney, Mark Review of: God's wisdom or the devil's envy: Death and creation deconstructing in the wisdom of Solomon, by Marie Turner,, pp. xii + 271, $36.95.

This article examines the ethical dilemmas that can occur due to university and industry cooperative arrangements. The values that Conant (1952) and Merton (1942) ascribed to university science are used as a measure of the evolving university-industry relations in the 1980s. Examples of the types of relations being forged are discussed and possible conflicts of interest are explored. The author argues that the goals of the university are and must remain different from those of industry for the good of the (...) entire society. The transformation of the university into a research institution for industry could result in the university not adequately training the scientists of tomorrow, and simultaneously, not discharging its duty to do basic research as it focuses on the more applied research that industry desires and funds. (shrink)

The third book of Lucretius' great poem on the workings of the universe is devoted entirely to expounding the implications of Epicurus' dictum that death does not matter, 'is nothing to us'. The soul is not immortal: it no more exists after the dissolution of the body than it had done before its birth. Only if this fact is accepted can men rid themselves of irrational fears and achieve the state of ataraxia, freedom from mental disturbance, on which the Epicurean (...) definition of pleasure was based. To present this case Lucretius deploys the full range of poetic and rhetorical registers, soberly prohibitive, artfully decorative or passionately emotive as best suits his argument, reinforcing it with vivid and compelling imagery. This new edition has been completely revised, with a considerably enlarged Commentary and a new supplementary introduction taking account of the great amount of new scholarship of the last forty years. (shrink)

ABSTRACTTwenty-five years ago, Christians, Ferré, and Fackler’s Good News: Social Ethics and the Press proposed the then-radical notion of communitarianism as an alternative moral philosophy for media ethics. This article evaluates communitarianism as a media ethic, but not only according to the work already done by Christians and colleagues. Instead, this article extends the communitarian ideal by connecting it, in a new way, to notions espoused a half century earlier by Tetsuro Watsuji, a Japanese philosopher whose prescriptions of ethics in (...) Rinrigaku in 1937 have been largely ignored by media scholars. (shrink)

Badiou and Hegel: Infinity, Dialectics, Subjectivity offers critical appraisals of two of the dominant figures of the Continental tradition of philosophy, Alain Badiou and G.W.F. Hegel. Jim Vernon and Antonio Calcagno bring together established and emerging authors in Continental philosophy to discuss the relationship between the thinkers, creating a multifarious collection of essays by Hegelians, Badiouans, and those sympathetic to both. The text privileges neither thinker, nor any particular topic shared between them; rather, this book lays a broad and sound (...) foundation for future scholarship on arguably two of the greatest thinkers of infinity, universality, subjectivity, and the enduring value of philosophy in the modern Western canon. Assuredly overdue, this volume will attract Hegel and Badiou scholars, as well as those interested in post-structuralism, political philosophy, cultural studies, ontology, philosophy of mathematics, and psychoanalysis. (shrink)

This study explores Augustine's developing understanding of contemplation, beginning with his earliest accounts written before his baptism and ending with the Confessions. The arc of Augustine's thought through these years of transition leads into the Confessions, giving a vantage point to survey its classical Christian theology of contemplation.

Investigations apropos of the passage in Ovid to which we shall ultimately come have revealed that one kind of Latin genitive at least is still far from satisfactorily charted by authorities more eminent even than M'Turk. This is the genitive of material. More often than not grammarians and commentators do not distinguish this usage from the genitive of definition. So for instance at Ovid, Met. 3. 315 the phrase lactis alimenta is identified by Bomer ad loc. and by H. J. (...) Roby, ii. § 1302) as genitive of definition. This is correct as far as it goes, in the sense that lactis defines the alimenta; but the definition is what they were made of, their material. So again at Met. I. III flumina iam lactis, iam ftumina nectaris ibant the rivers consisted of milk and nectar. This passage, however, was classified by J. N. Madvig, p. 249) under expressions involving number, measure or quantity. This is not unreasonable, but Madvig's examples illustrate the need for care in drawing the line. They include, for instance, aceruus frumenti and uini tres amphorae. Now a heap may be thought of as containing its constituents, but it also consists o/them, which is not true of a vessel and its contents. Thus, though there is some semantic justification for including both these expressions, as Madvig did, under the ‘measure or quantity’ rubric, they are nevertheless grammatically distinct. The fluidity of the borderlines in this area is evident also in flumina lactis, an undeniable genitive of material which is, however, clearly analogous to a not uncommon class of expressions such as riuus/fons aquae, lapidum imber, uolumina fumi, campus harenae, silicum uenae, ὔδατος ῥος, κρνη ὔδατος, ργρου πηγ, etc., in which the notion of quantity as well as composition is present. (shrink)

Journal of Mass Media Ethics, Volume 27, Issue 1, Page 68-70, January-March.

Femina in line 28 has nagged me subconsciously for years. I have now belatedly realized that it sabotages the poet's prudent disclaimer: it is not women in general who are in question, but only those not ruled out of bounds by stola and uittae. The repetition of the word in the following verse, where it means, as the opposition to uiri indicates, ‘the female sex’, only serves to underline its inappropriateness here. Cristante's defence of the anaphora, that it ‘ribadisce la (...) necessità dell'insegnamento, introducendone la giustificazione’, sets up an unwanted connection: lines 25–8 are strictly parenthetic to the main argument, as indeed is signalled by the truly functional anaphora of femina in line 29, whose effect is blurred in the text as transmitted. The form of the couplet, typical of Ovid, dictates that what is wanted is a variation on nil nisi lasciui, e.g. nec or, better, non proba. The source of the intrusive femina is not far to seek, though how precisely it ousted the original reading I do not pretend to guess. (shrink)