About John P. Keenan

Keenan is Professor Emeritus of Religion at Middlebury College and now serves as priest of St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Newport, Vermont. Keenan:

• grew up Irish-Catholic in Philadelphia;
• spent ten years in a Catholic seminary and was ordained a priest;
• was radicalized by Ivan Illich, Puerto Rico, and Vatican II;
• left the Roman Catholic priesthood to seek a fuller life & fuller understanding;
• studied Chinese and Japanese to find new ways to ask Christian questions;
• studied Buddhism to find new ways to answer Christian questions; and
• became a scholar of Buddhism, Episcopal priest, and interfaith theologian.

John will hold the Roche Chair for Interreligious Research at the Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture in Nagoya, Japan, September 2007 to May 2008.