Nonviolence

(I first met my friend Civil Rights leader Rev. James Lawson in the L.A. Jail in January, 1990 after protesting US military aid to El Salvador. In 1998, he hired me to be the director of the Fellowship of Reconciliation. Over the years we have spoken at many events together,...

by Rev. John Dear (Celebrated Doctor and Founder of Partners In Health, which was 20,000 doctors and healthcare workers serving in the poorest countries of the world and has saved millions and millions of lives, died unexpectedly in his sleep on Feb. 21, 2022 in Rwanda, at the university and...

By John Dear Last summer, after Congressman John Lewis died, I posted a photo on social media of me and John from a memorable afternoon we spent together in his congressional office. It was 26 years ago. We had talked for a while, and then filmed a formal conversation on...

The Year of Living Nonviolently By John Dear (February, 2018) Once, late at night, shortly before he died, Cesar Chavez tired to explain nonviolence to me. “Active nonviolence requires taking to the streets,” he said adamantly. “That’s where it happens. That’s how it’s practiced.” “Tell everyone from now on, if...

The Year of “Nonviolence or Non-Existence” [www.commondreams.org, Jan. 2, 2018] By John Dear It was early 1968.  Since the previous spring Martin Luther King, Jr. had been pursuing a course that for many was unthinkable.  He had deliberately connected the dots between the movement for civil rights and the struggle...

For me, the great question as a Christian is: “How do we follow the nonviolent Jesus more faithfully in this culture of violence and war?” I think about this question morning, noon and night. And I always come back to the basic three steps—contemplative, active and prophetic nonviolence. More than...

What a summer! Like everyone else, I’m trying to make some sense of it, and figure out a thoughtful response. We’ve suffered through the mainstream media’s non-stop broadcast of the dirty politics of hatred, scape-goating, and war-mongering, particularly by Mr. Trump. We’ve undergone shootings by white police officers of unarmed...

“And so this is Christmas, and what have you done?” That’s the question which John Lennon puts to us in his famous Christmas song. In the chorus, he gets right to the point, to the heart of Christmas: “War is over, if you want it.” For some, that might seem...

Los Alamos sits above the second poorest county in the U.S. and is located in New Mexico, one of the poorest states in the country. The land was originally stolen from indigenous peoples by the U.S. government. Radioactive waste from Los Alamos National Laboratory was routinely dumped into the canyons...

For me, resurrection is everything. It’s the lynchpin of Christianity, the key to nonviolence, the hope we hold dear, and the possibility of a new world of peace. In other words, with the resurrection of the nonviolent Jesus, anything is possible, even the abolition of war, poverty, nuclear weapons and...

In the name of the God of peace, the nonviolent Jesus, and the Holy Spirit of love. Welcome to this prayer service for International Nonviolence Day. Let’s begin by taking a moment and turning to those around us and introducing ourselves….. I invite you to take a deep breath and...

In the wake of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, our relentless pursuit of global domination, nuclear brinkmanship, corporate greed and silent oppression of the world’s poor, I turn again to the great peacemakers of history, from Jesus of Nazareth and Francis of Assisi to Dorothy Day and Mohandas Gandhi for...

Before moving to New Mexico, I served as director of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the largest, interfaith peace organization in the United States. Once, I called a meeting of all the leaders of the various religious fellowships. For several days, we gathered to share our stories, exchange our vision of...

Mahatma Gandhi, Apostle of Nonviolence: An Introduction By John Dear When Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated on January 30, 1948, the world hailed him as one of the greatest spiritual leaders, not just of the century, but of all time. He was ranked not just with Thoreau, Tolstoy, and St. Francis,...

(December, 2001) The life of a Christian is a journey on the road to peace. In this culture of violence and war, we need teachers and models who can help us follow the nonviolent Jesus. One way to understand Mary of Nazareth is to see her as a great teacher,...

In 1988, I traveled with a delegation of North American Christians to a remote village in El Salvador in response to an invitation to stand in solidarity with the suffering people. We journeyed on rocky roads, over hills, through rivers and into the barren countryside. As we turned the corner...

(published in Tikkun magazine, fall, 1999) In a world of war and injustice, any real spirituality has to engage the struggle for peace and justice. In a culture of violence like ours, what we need from people of faith and conscience are active spiritualities of nonviolence. Now more than ever,...

Blessed are the poor in spirit; for theirs is the reign of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they will be satisfied. Blessed are the...

Peacemaking Religion In a War Making World The God of peace is never glorified by human violence.– Thomas Merton In Jesus Christ, God disarmed himself. God surrendered himself without protection and without arms to those who keep crying for more and more protection and arms. In Jesus Christ, God renounced...

A Vow of Nonviolence Recognizing the violence in my own heart, yet trusting in the goodness and mercy of God, I vow to practice the nonviolence of Jesus who taught us in the Sermon on the Mount: Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons and daughters of...

The Nonviolence of Jesus (From The God of Peace: Toward a Theology of Nonviolence) With the bad news of the world’s violence coming at us from all sides, the Christian turns to the New Testament and discovers God’s good news of nonviolence. The Gospels tell the story of nonviolence in...

Remembering, Reconciling, and Sending Us Forth to Make Peace by John Dear Last August 6th, on the feast of the Transfiguration, the fifty-fifth anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima, and the tenth anniversary of the U.S. economic sanctions on Iraq, I presided at Eucharist with hundreds of friends...

(for the UN Chronicle Magazine, Number 3, 2000) On November 19th, 1998, I witnessed the UN General Assembly issue one of its greatest challenges since the Declaration on Human Rights fifty years ago. For the first time in its history, UN ambassadors spent an entire day discussing the meaning and...

Gandhi needs no further introduction. John Dear may. As the first Roman Catholic priest to head the FOR, John brings a cornucopia of gifts that can only energize and extend FOR’s mission. A Jesuit, he has lived and worked in El Salvador, Guatemala and Northern Ireland, and has traveled widely...

(From “THE GOD OF PEACE: TOWARD A THEOLOGY OF NONVIOLENCE) Though Jesus commanded his followers to love their enemies and though the early Christians went to their deaths rather than fight in battle, Christians over the centuries moved away from nonviolence and to the ways of war. Ironically, when the...