The Nonviolent Jesus Podcast

Posted Every Monday

The Nonviolent Jesus Podcast is a free, weekly thirty-minute podcast, posted on every Monday, featuring Fr. John Dear and his reflections about Jesus, Gospel nonviolence, and peacemaking, and guests who teach, speak out, organize and work for a more just, most peaceful, more nonviolent world. Through these weekly reflections, we hope to inspire everyone to follow the nonviolent Jesus more faithfully and do our part to welcome God’s reign of peace with justice on earth!

To listen, click on any link below to hear past podcast.

To hear the latest podcast, click on the most recent link at the bottom of the list.

Below that, you will see some of the platforms which also host it, including Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and Substack, as well as on the National Catholic Reporter.

April 27th. #69, John Dear’s Reflections on Daniel Berrigan for the 10th Anniversary of His Death

On today’s new episode of “The Nonviolent Jesus Podcast,” John Dear reflects on the life, witness and teachings of his 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. [see www.danielberrigan.org]

This special episode begins and ends with 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. John speaks about Dan’s 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. Such a will, in our lifetime, creates weapons to match its madness, and for once, the weapons are equal to the will. They are as merciless as we are; they at length resemble us, our alter ego. War has thus become the ultimate anti-Christ, the obscene god of death, condemning all of life to capital punishment.”

Many consider Daniel Berrigan to be one of God’s greatest prophets of peace and disarmament. 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! God bless you all!

Upcoming Podcasts

May 4th. #70. John Dear in conversation with Bishop Marian Budde

To listen, click on any link below to hear past podcast.

To hear the latest podcast, click on the most recent link at the bottom of the list.

Below that, you will see some of the platforms which also host it, including Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and Substack, as well as on the National Catholic Reporter.

April 20th. #68 John Dear speaks with Prof. Melanie Harris on “Ecowomanism”

On today’s new episode of “The Nonviolent Jesus Podcast,” John Dear speaks with his friend Dr. 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, she is the author of Gifts of Virtue: Alice Walker and Womanist Ethics, and Ecowomanism: Earth Honoring Faiths. She is a former broadcast journalist who worked as a news producer for ABC, CBS, and NBC affiliates. 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.

“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 John asks for her suggestions, she says: “Tell the story of Jesus well and truthfully. In truth, Jesus was a nonviolent person and deeply committed to compassion. Jesus was corrected by the Syrophoenician woman. For a male religious leader to be speaking with a woman was radical; this was a model of peace-giving and peace-building. It is important to recognize that the gospel of Jesus is a gospel of peace. Jesus was not one who stood for violence, hierarchy or domination.”

“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.” Listen in and be inspired to be a peacemaker! God bless you all!