The Nonviolent Jesus

In this episode I offer reflections on the life, witness and teachings of my friend and mentor, the legendary peacemaker and war resister Rev. Daniel Berrigan who died ten years ago this week on April 30, 2016, just before his 95th birthday. www.danielberrigan.org

This special episode begins and ends with my friend Dar Williams singing her great song “I Had No Right” about Dan, and features recordings of Dan reading three of his poems.
Dan was born in 1921, was a Jesuit priest, poet, author of 50 books, lecturer, and antiwar activist who was arrested over 200 times in protests.
I share about his two great actions, the Catonsville 9 and the Plowshares 8, and talk about his teachings on resistance, peacemaking, nonviolence, hope, detachment from the results of our action, and Jesus.
Here’s a quintessential Dan Berrigan statement: “The Bible teaches in many places and warns, denounces and illumines this one bitter truth: the violence of humans is, in essence, genocidal, mass suicidal. War is not itself until it is total war, claiming the total person, the human family in its entirety, universal life."
Here’s also a great statement that Dan wrote for the Catonsville 9 action::
"Our apologies, good friends, for the fracture of good order, for the burning of paper instead of children, the angering of the orderlies in the front parlor of the charnel house.
We could not, so help us God, do otherwise...."
Listen to the podcast for the entire statement!
That October 1968, they were put on trial in Baltimore, and found guilty, and while awaiting prison, Dan wrote his popular play, “The Trial of the Catonsville 9.” The war worsened, so instead of reporting to prison, in April 1970, he went “underground.”
For months, Dan traveled around the country, evading the FBI, speaking to the media, appearing on the national news, writing articles, and infuriating J. Edgar Hoover and his henchmen.
One Sunday he appeared in a Philadelphia church to give a sermon and said famously. “We have chosen like Jesus to be powerless criminals in a time of criminal power.” That August, he was arrested on Block Island, Rhode Island, and sent to Danbury prison where he barely survived the next few years.
I consider Dan one of God’s greatest prophets of peace. Please listen in to this special episode and be inspired by Dan to stand up, speak out, and take action for justice, disarmament and peace! Thank you Dar Williams:
God bless you all—Fr. John
There are more podcasts and interactive Zoom programs with today's thought leaders, educators and activists that encourage you to follow the nonviolent Jesus :
beatitudescenter.org
johndear.org
danielberrigan.org
Meet me on Substack:
https://fatherjohndear.substack.com/

On today’s episode I speak with Prof. Melanie Harris, Professor of Black Feminist and Womanist Theologies jointly appointed with African American Studies at Wake Forest University in North Carolina.
A graduate of the Harvard Leadership Program, Dr. Harris earned her PhD. and M.A. degrees from New York’s Union Theological Seminary, her M. Div. from Iliff School of Theology and a B.A. from Spelman College in Atlanta.
She is a former broadcast journalist who worked as a news producer for ABC, CBS, and NBC affiliates and is the author of Gifts of Virtue: Alice Walker and Womanist Ethics, and Ecowomanism: Earth Honoring Faiths.
She tells us of her own family ecojourney to Colorado, her spiritual mother Alice Walker and relates to us Ecowomanism and the connections between theologies, the earth, and environmental justice in relationship to African American women in particular.
“Womanist theology came from black seminary women looking for a term to express the theology of black women,” she explains. She then connects the theology of black women with a theology of the earth. “Justice for all is connected to environmental justice. The question is: What does the Divine intend for all of humanity and all of the earth?”
When I asked her suggestions for us, she immediately responded: “Tell the story of Jesus well and truthfully. In truth, Jesus was a nonviolent person and deeply committed to compassion.
She also recounts the story of Jesus and the Syrophoenician woman and how it is important to recognize how Jesus modeled peace-giving and peace building in that conversation.
“All of us are interwoven and interconnected,” she concludes. “We have to come back to our own peace, and the truth that we have to have buckets and buckets of forgiveness and compassion.".
"Find the spaces of hope for your spirit and nourish those spaces as much as possible. From now on, we need to seed peace from the time we wake up to the time we fall asleep.”
Thank you Melanie Harris for your inspiration, education, and dedication to peace: listen in and be inspired!
https://orbisbooks.com/products/ecowomanism
beatitudescenter.org
johndear.org
fatherjohndear.substack.com

Today I speak with my friend Prof. David Cortright, author and a leading scholar on war, peace and nonviolent resistance.
He is the former executive director of SANE, the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy which under his leadership in the 1980s grew from 4,000 to 150,000 members and became the largest disarmament organization in the U.S. He also co-founded Win Without War in 2002. He is a visiting scholar at Cornell University’s Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies and professor emeritus at Notre Dame.
David is the author, co-author or co-editor of 23 books, including Protest and Policy in the Iraq, the Nuclear Freeze and Vietnam Peace Movements; Civil Society, Peace and Power; Gandhi and Beyond: Nonviolence for a New Political Age; and Peace: A History of Movements and Ideas.
He has written widely about nonviolent social change, nuclear disarmament, and sanctions, and provided research services to the foreign ministries of Canada, Denmark, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Switzerland. He has served as consultant or advisor to the United Nations, the Carnegie Commission, the International Peace Academy, the MacArthur Foundation and Catholic Relief Services.
He shares his convictions as a man of faith and reflects on the time he was an active duty soldier during Viet Nam.
He speaks of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran and our responsibilities as Americans to oppose the war and push to cut off military aid to Israel.
We discuss the elections, sustainment and the "inevitable prohibition of nuclear weapons becoming a global reality".
He also reminds us of the No War and No Nukes campaigns and how they are one with the No Kings movement.
“We were put on this planet to serve God and follow the nonviolent Jesus. Peace making and peace building are obligations of the faith. If we are believers, we are committed and obligated to peace."
Be encouraged, inspired and sustained by David Cortright today and carry on this work of peace making and peace building, it starts with us!
johndear.org
beatitudescenter.org
https://fatherjohndear.substack.com/

On today’s new episode of “The Nonviolent Jesus Podcast,” I speak with my friend Kerry Kennedy, President of the Robert and Ethel Kennedy Center for Human Rights kennedyhumanrights.org.
A lifelong human rights activist and lawyer, she authored Being Catholic Now, as well as Speak Truth to Power, Robert F. Kennedy: Ripples of Hope, and the forthcoming Ethel Kennedy: The Extraordinary Life and Bold Legacy.
The 7th of Ethel and Robert Kennedy’s 11 children, Kerry has devoted more than 40 years to the pursuit of equal justice, and the promotion and protection of basic rights around the world on a range of issues. She has led hundreds of human rights delegations and regularly provides commentary on TV. For 10 years, she served as chair of the Amnesty International USA Leadership Council. A graduate of Boston College Law School, she lives in Massachusetts.
Kerry talks about her life as a child, her parents, and her human rights work at the Kennedy Center. She lays out the three things her organization does around the world with her team of lawyers and how they have never lost a litigation case.
They also work to decrease mass incarceration and abuses committed by ICE, as well as work to stop violence against women, and indigenous and marginalized people around the world.
She tells about her recent trip to the notorious, violent prison in El Salvador where the Trump administration has been sending hundreds of people illegally to be tortured.
When asked about her brother Bobby Kennedy, Jr., and what she thinks about him and his performance as Secretary of Health and Human Services, her answer is unexpected and candid.
Her accomplishments cannot be overestimated and she continues to work selflessly all across the world for human rights. She encourages us with her faith and determination to make a difference in our world today while quoting the nonviolent Jesus: "Love one another".
Listen to her words of encouragement and be inspired:"We can all do something to make things better for others.”
Find out more about our work here: beatitudescenter.org
For more information and writing, subscribe to my Substack fatherjohndear.substack.com
My newest book "Universal Love, surrendering to the God of Peace" is available now on orbisbooks.com

This week I speak with my friend Jim Finley, the beloved teacher of contemplation and mysticism.
When he was a teenager, Jim entered the Abbey of Gethsemani and was a novice and later a friend of Thomas Merton. Eventually, he left the monastery, became a clinical psychologist, and opened his practice in Los Angeles, where he still lives.
He wrote the first serious book about Merton’s spirituality, Merton’s Palace of Nowhere. Jim has taught and lectured on Merton, spirituality and mysticism for over 50 years, and these days is a faculty member of Fr. Richard Rohr’s Living School at the Center for Action and Contemplation.
He hosts a free popular podcast, “Turning to the Mystics,” centering on Christian mysticism and contemplative living, which has hundreds of thousands of regular listeners.
He is author of several other bestsellers, such as The Awakening Call, The Contemplative Heart, and his recent memoir, The Healing Path.
This year, Orbis Books is launching a ten volume series by Jim on the mystics, such as Teresa of Lisieux, Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, and Meister Eckhart. The first volume is on Merton.
This year, Orbis Books is launching a massive, ten volume series by Jim on the mystics, such as Teresa of Lisieux, Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, and Meister Eckhart, and the first volume comes out in a few months on Thomas Merton.
Jim has done two wonderful zoom presentations for the Beatitudes Center which you can listen to, like tens of thousands of others, on our free YouTube channel.
“I saw Merton as a living mystic,” he tells me. “I was so honored to be in his presence. He was my spiritual director, so every other week for six years, I would meet with him and he would always ask the three same questions."
He says he learned from Merton that “the only way to ever be at peace is to accept myself as I am, because I'll never be anyone else.”
Listen as Jim relates to us how God's presence resides in ourselves and others, and why we have to accept that we are infinitely accepted. Be inspired by him and his words for Holy Week to deepen in the contemplative life of mystical peace!
You can also subscribe to my Substack and find more about our work on our website https://beatitudescenter.org