“Our Only Child Has Died” – A Study of Bereaved Older Chinese Parents

Long and complicated grief is a relevant factor contributing to the deterioration of the older adults’ later life quality. In China, the unintentional consequence of the one child policy has emerged. There, the group of older adults who lost their only child is called shiduers. The current study compared 42 older adults who lost their only child to 33 older adults who have a child, in term of their physical and mental health, and social support. The results confirmed the general deteriorating trend in those aspects of the bereaved Chinese parents’ life after their only child’s death. The results also revealed the impairments on the shiduers’ physical, mental, and social aspects were significant, compared to the clinical diagnosis cutoff points used in Western countries. Unique policy and cultural characteristics are the main factors contributing to the severe impairment of shiduers. Results have implications for policy advocacy and practice intervention in specific cultural environments

The Business of Our Lives

I view John Woolman\u27s A Plea for the Poor through the eyes of my own experience. In particular, two aspects of my experience shape my vision: that of being an economist and that of being a Quaker. The economist in me is sensitive to statements about prices, wages, rents, production, distribution, equality, inequality, contracts, poverty and wealth. The Quaker in me responds especially to the language of the spirit. When Woolman speaks of God, the Creator, our Redeemer, Jesus Christ, pure wisdom, Divine love, tender mercies, universal love, the Fountain of universal light and love, our Lord, our Saviour and so on, the life of the spirit is the context for my understanding and interpretation. Both streams of experience-economy and spirituality-are found in Woolman and are integrated in authentic and powerful ways. Thus, Woolman speaks to me as few others do

Measuring Success at the WTO in Hong Kong

Tom Head is Professor of Economics at George Fox University, Newberg~ Oregon, USA. He serves on the Quaker United Nations Committee-Geneva and is at the Hong Kong World Trade Organization (WTO) Ministeria{ Conference as a member of the Quaker Peace & Social Witness delegation. During December, 2005, he wrote the fallowing report on his experiences at these gatherings. If you would like a Quaker perspective on WTO, check out http:llwww.quno.orgleconomicissues/ Dispatches.htm

Normal mysticism : an interdisciplinary study of Max Kudushin\u27s rabbinic hermeneutic

Max Kadushin (1895-1980) was a rabbi, professor, and preeminent figure in the history of American Conservative Jewish rabbinic thought. His hermeneutic system, which centers on the idea of organic religious value-concepts, has had a significant influence on the emerging Textual Reasoning movement. In chapter one, I describe the intellectual climate in which Kadushin\u27s system took shape—providing a short history of the 19th-century reform and haskalah movements, discussing the general outline of Alfred North Whitehead\u27s process philosophy tradition, and placing new focus on the tension between Conservative Judaism and Mordecai Kaplan\u27s emerging philosophy of Reconstructionism as a critical factor in the origin of Kadushin\u27s system. In chapter two, I summarize and explain Kadushin\u27s philosophy itself—the anatomy and physiology of the organismic complex, the content of his six volumes of published work, the rabbinic texts that attracted his most focused attention—and place it within the context of what Peter Ochs describes as the aftermodernist movement. In chapter three, I address the relationship between Kadushin and secular Western philosophy. Of particular interest, I argue, is the relevance of his work to philosophical hermeneutics. After outlining how Continental hermeneutics emerged from the largely religious hermeneutics of 19th-century thinkers such as Dilthey and Schleiermacher, I contrast Kadushin\u27s approach with that of Hans-Georg Gadamer and detail the ways in which each of them attempted to describe what Augustine described as the verbum interius—an endeavor that, Gadamer argued, ultimately defines the hermeneutic enterprise. In chapter four, I reassess Kadushin\u27s work from the disciplinary perspective of religious studies. After interpreting the degree to which Kadushin felt his own work relevant to other faith traditions, I examine previous attempts by Christian theologians to adapt the rough outline of his hermeneutic within their system, and contrast his rabbinic hermeneutic with those religious hermeneutic traditions with which his work is most often compared. I also examine the degree to which Kadushin\u27s populist approach to mysticism and value-concepts reflects that of other contemporaneous Western religious thinkers. In chapter five, I examine the moral and social implications of Kadushin\u27s priorities. Taking into account how Kadushin evaluated contemporaneous ethical controversies, I argue that while his endeavor is itself descriptivist, the system he asserts bears a strong resemblance to contemporary virtue ethics. In doing this, I show that Kadushin\u27s system of religious morality cannot be accurately classified as a traditional form of consequentialism, rule-based ethics, prescriptivism, or divine command theory. I also examine the implications of Kadushin\u27s system as they pertain to authority, power, and tradition. In conclusion, I argue that his moral system is, in keeping with its rabbinic roots, highly flexible—a trait that can be both an asset and a liability. This interdisciplinary thesis presents Kadushin\u27s organic hermeneutic in a systematic way, assessing its relevance to the disciplines of philosophy and religious studies. In this thesis, I show that his system of thought rewards serious interdisciplinary study and raises far more general questions than those he specifically intended to address