Professor John D'Arcy May

Born Melbourne, Australia, 1942. Visiting professor in Fribourg, Switzerland (1982); Frankfurt, Germany (1988); Wollongong, Australia (1994); Tilburg, Netherlands (1996); Australian Catholic University, Sydney (2001); Visiting Fellow, Centre for the Study of Religions, Istituto Trentino di Cultura, Trento, Italy (April-May 2006); Visiting Professor, Zentrum fuer interkulturelle Theologie und Studium der Religionen, Universitaet Salzburg (2008); Distinguished Research Fellow, Asia-Pacific Centre for Interreligious Dialogue, Australian Catholic University, Melbourne (October-December 2009). STUDY TRIPS: . July 1999 Annual Lotus Sûtra conference of Rissho Kosei-kai in Bandai-san, Japan; paper on "The Lotus Sûtra as Sacred Space: The Social Functions of a Religious Text". . April 1998 Visit to Japan with a group organised by International Interfaith Centre, Oxford, as guests of the Buddhist lay organisation Rissho Kosei-kai, including Buddhist and Shinto religious centres in Tokyo, Kyoto, Nara, Osaka and Nagoya and formal interreligious dialogue meetings. . Dec. 1997 - April 1998 Study leave in Thailand (Spirit in Education Movement), Australia (Australian Catholic University, Sydney; Australian National University, Canberra), Hawai'i (University of Hawai'i at Mânoa, Honolulu). . July 1992 Visits to Pacific Conference of Churches, Pacific Theological College, Pacific Regional Seminary and ecumenical organisations, Suva, Fiji. . Mar. 1991 Visits to centres of Buddhist-Christian development cooperation, Bangkok and northeast Thailand. . Mar. 1986 Visits to local churches and development centres, Jayapura, Irian Jaya, and Communion of Churches in Indonesia (PGI), Jakarta; visits to centres of Buddhist-Christian dialogue, Hong Kong. . Aug.-Sept. 1985 Visits to centres of Aboriginal ministry and theology, Darwin, Alice Springs and Townsville, Australia. . Oct.-Dec. 1983 Visits to member schools of Melanesian Association of Theological Schools, Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands. . July 1982 Visits to ecumenical centres in Port Moresby, Goroka and Lae, PNG. . Aug. 1979 Visits to centres of Buddhist-Christian dialogue in Sri Lanka as guest of Fr Aloysius Pieris SJ and Rev. Lynn de Silva. . Mar. 1977 Visits to Departments of Religious Studies in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide.

  Asia   Australia   Developing/Underdeveloped Nations   East (Far East) Asia   Fiji   Indonesia   Intercultural Communications   International Rights   International/Global Development   Japan   Melanesia   New Zealand   Non-Aligned/Third World Nations   Oceania (Including Australia)   Pacific Ocean   Pacific Rim   Papua New Guinea   Southeast Asia   Southern Hemisphere   Sri Lanka (Ceylon)   Thailand

After completing a study of how Buddhist and Christian traditions have interacted with indigenous or 'primal' religions in the Asia-Pacific (Aboriginal Australia, Melanesia, Thailand, Japan), in particular how these 'universalist' religions were not immune to complicity in violence, I have been developing two lines of enquiry: 1. A re-thinking of the ecumenical perspective in a broader sense, showing how the 'globalisation of ethics' through the religious traditions, whether transcendent-universal or ethnic-local, can lead to an ethical globalisation, involving among other things an expansion of the concept of human rights to embrace community and ecological responsibility; 2. Exploring the possibility of 'collaborative theology' in which Buddhist and Christian thinkers would engage with one another, such that religious symbolisations of transcendence, in particular Buddhist conceptions of Absolute Nothingness and Dynamic Emptiness, would correlate with Christian theistic attempts to ground ethics in a transcendental commitment which takes account of history and creation.