April 20th, 2026
Episode #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.Next week…
The Nonviolent Jesus Podcast welcomes John Dear! For more information, visit here.
April 13th, 2026
Episode #67, John Dear speaks with Prof. David Cortright on war and peace
On today’s new episode of “The Nonviolent Jesus Podcast,” I speak with my friend Prof. David Cortright, 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.Next week…
The Nonviolent Jesus Podcast welcomes Prof. Melanie Harris! For more information, visit here.
Upcoming Zoom Programs:
John Dear on his new book, “Universal Love: Surrendering to the God of Peace”
Saturday April 18, 2026
11 am Pacific, 12 PM Mountain, 1 PM Central, 2 PM Eastern
Wes Granberg-Michaelson, “The Soulwork of Justice: Four Movements for Contemplative Action”
Saturday May 16, 2026
11 am Pacific, 12 PM Mountain, 1 PM Central, 2 PM Eastern
Kate Common. “Undoing Conquest: Ancient Israel, the Bible. And the Future of Christianity”
Saturday June 13, 2026
11 am Pacific, 12 PM Mountain, 1 PM Central, 2 PM Eastern
John Dominic Crossan and Michael Okinczyc-Cruz on “Jesus and Justice”
Saturday July 11, 2026
11 am Pacific, 12 PM Mountain, 1 PM Central, 2 PM Eastern
Joyce Rupp in conversation with John Dear on “Compassion and Prayer”
Saturday July 25, 2026
11 am Pacific, 12 PM Mountain, 1 PM Central, 2 PM Eastern
John Dear’s new book available February 17th, 2026
Universal Love:
Surrendering to the God of Peace
By John Dear
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LATEST NEWS FROM THE BEATITUDES CENTER
Quote for the Day:
“The wolf shall live with the lamb; the leopard shall lie down with the kid. The calf and the lion will feed together, and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze; their young shall lie down together;
and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the
adder’s den. They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain,
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the God of peace as the waters cover the sea.”
(Isaiah 11:6–9)
Quote for the Day:
“I am called in the Word of God — as is everyone else — to the vocation of being human, nothing more and nothing less … To be a Christian
means to be called to be an exemplary human being. And to be a Christian categorically does not mean being religious. Indeed, all religious versions of the gospel are profanities. In the face of death, live humanly. In the middle of chaos, celebrate the Word. Amidst Babel, speak the truth. Confront the noise and verbiage and falsehood of death with the truth and potency and efficacy of the Word of God. Know the Word, teach the Word, nurture the Word, preach the Word, define the Word, incarnate the Word, do the Word, live the Word. And more than that, in the Word of God, expose death and all death’s works and wiles, rebuke lies,
cast out demons, exorcise, cleanse the possessed,
raise those who are dead in mind and conscience.”
–William Stringfellow
April 14th, 2026
Dear Friends, Easter blessings of peace and hope to everyone!
Since the pandemic, I’ve been taking time to explore the mysterious question and call to do God’s will—and to live out the social, economic, and political implications of doing God’s will. We pray in the Lord’s prayer: “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” We hear Jesus pray in agony in Gethsemane: “Not my will, your will be done.” We see him describe it as the bottom line of discipleship and the spiritual life: “Anyone who does the will of God is my mother, my sister, my brother.”
So how do we do God’s will? Do we really want to do God’s will? What would it look like if we all tried to do only God’s will? In 2016, when I visited Archbishop Tutu in Cape Town, South Africa, that’s what he wanted to talk about with me: the connection between God’s gift of free will and nonviolence. It has taken me ten years to begin to understand what he was saying. Much to my chagrin, as I began to explore these questions, I discovered how I presume I’m doing God’s will, but in reality, continuing to do my will, to be in control, to run my life—instead of doing God’s will, to let go of fear and let God be in control, and run my life.
This Saturday, April 18th, I will offer some reflections on this central question of spirituality and its connection to nonviolence as we suffer through the daily horrors of the world and try to resist. They are the subject of my new book, Universal Love: Surrendering to the God of Peace. Join me, and together, let’s reflect how we can put aside selfishness and ego, surrender completely to God and follow the nonviolent Jesus as peacemakers into our insane world of violence, injustice, and war.