Sr. Mary Lou Kownacki—“Mother of the Spirituality of Nonviolence”  By Fr. John Dear  (Jan. 2023) The Benedictine Sisters of Erie gave Sr. Mary Lou Kownacki...

Unveiling Jesus: The Revelation of God’s Reign of Peace Through Power of Creative Nonviolence By Rev. John Dear (This article was featured in the theology journal ONEING,...

By Rev. John Dear  August 6, 2021  Recently, a peace activist friend told me about visiting a physical therapist to help with some issues. They...

By Rev. John Dear‘ “To me, nonviolence is the all-important virtue to be nourished and studied and cultivated,” Dorothy Day wrote in 1967. She regretted...

By John Dear  May 9, 2021. www.wagingnonviolence.org  “One is called to live nonviolently,” Daniel Berrigan once wrote, “even if the change one works for seems impossible....

By John Dear and Ethan Vesely-Flad, April 7, 2021, www.wagingnonviolence.org Rev. Richard Deats, a long-time global peace movement leader and one of the most influential teachers...

The Beginning of the End of Nuclear Weapons  By John Dear  (January 22, 2021, wagingnonviolence.org)  Today is the day the United Nation’s Treaty on Nuclear...

Life Under the Bomb Means a Life of Resistance By Rev. John Dear For the last seventeen years, my friends and I have organized a...

Keep the Good Book Closed, Trump Says. We Say, Open It and Resist! By Rev. John Dear June 5, 2020, CommonDreams.org  Like everyone else, I’ve...

By John Dear On Friday, February 7th, the temperature in Antartica reached 65 degrees. That’s never happened before. Yes, the sick, corrupt president was impeached...

By Rev. John Dear (Dec. 23, 2019) Each Christmas, we celebrate the birthday of Jesus, whom Gandhi called the greatest person of nonviolence in history....

Over the last fifty years, there have been thousands of nonviolent movements for peace and justice that have made huge strides, and at the heart...

By Rev. John Dear (Published in Richard Rohr’s magazine, Oneing, Fall 2018) “I believe in the essential unity of humanity, and for that matter, of...

Two weeks ago, after CODEPINK friends disrupted the Capitol hearings, the man in the White House (I like Harry Potter–“He Who Shall Not Be Named”)...

Driving up the two-lane mountain road along the red and orange wall of rocks on one side and the shocking sheer cliff down to the...

On the Road to Peace A Monthly Newsletter from Fr. John April, 2018 Dear friends, Peace be with you! Fifty years ago, on April 3,...

“Welcome to the revolution!” That’s what one of the Parkland students said Saturday morning to the massive crowd of one million people in Washington, D.C....

On the Road to Peace A Monthly Newsletter from Fr. John March, 2018 Dear friends, Peace be with you! I’m now on the road, criss-crossing...

On the Road to Peace A Monthly Newsletter from Fr. John October, 2017 Dear friends, After hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria devastated the homes and...

It’s Friday morning and I’m standing before the Federal Judge in D.C. Superior Court in Washington, D.C., another hearing for my recent protest and arrest...

On Tuesday, Jan. 17th, 18 of us climbed the steps of the US Supreme Court in Washington, D.C. to protest the death penalty. We unfurled...

Today, Pope Francis released the annual World Day of Peace Message for January 1, 2017, called “Nonviolence-A Style of Politics for Peace.” This is the...

Like millions of other concerned people, I’ve followed the standoff at the Standing Rock Sioux Nation in North Dakota for months. The good people of...

(John Dear gave this talk at the Call to Action National Conference, in Albuquerque, NM, on November 12, 2016) Now that Donald Trump is going...

(After Fr. John Dear’s talk, a panel responded with there reflections, then questions from the audience. The Panel included a city council member; a state...

Rev. Daniel Berrigan, the renown anti-war activist, award-winning poet, author and Jesuit priest, who inspired religious opposition to the Vietnam war and later the U.S....

The Church’s Turn Toward Nonviolence By Rev. John Dear (April 2016) For its first three centuries, Christianity required the practice of active nonviolence as taught...

That Friday evening I was just beginning to lead a weekend retreat at the Kirkridge Retreat Center in East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, when we received word...

“Hope and healing, peace and justice!” That’s what Pope Francis called us to this morning as he addressed Congress. “Summon the courage and the intelligence...

Bob Dylan and America’s 70-Year Nuclear Nightmare Dear Friends,   A few years ago, Bob Dylan gave a powerful interview to Rolling Stone. The editor...

Though the world continues to explode with violence of every kind, we continue to walk the road to peace and practice Gospel nonviolence. It remains...

The death of unarmed Freddie Gray in police custody and the subsequent riots in Baltimore demonstrate the profound systemic injustice in our country, as well...

Good morning, I’m John Dear, and I’m sad that this evil facility was built, but glad to be here, standing with friends on behalf of...

Long ago, Daniel Berrigan told me a tragic story about being invited to speak in 1965 to a packed church of cloistered nuns somewhere on...

Today we are pleased to announce the launch of Campaign Nonviolence, a growing grassroots movement that begins this Sunday, September 21st, International Peace Day, with...

Millions of Americans oppose war as a solution to our problems. Millions were opposed to Bush’s war in Iraq, and they remain opposed now to...

http://summit.summerofpeace.net/program/53

Last week marked a typical turn in our world of violence—dozens killed in explosions in Iraq, U.S. drone attacks in Afghanistan, the ongoing U.S.-backed occupation...

(This is the last of six journal accounts of my pilgrimage to South Africa, in January 2014.) “John Dear and Archbishop Tutu, Cape Town, South...

(This is the fifth of six journal entries from my January pilgrimage to South Africa.) “John Dear standing below the open window of Nelson Mandela’s...

By Nathan Schneider The Chronicle of Higher Education John Dear is a Catholic priest who has chosen an especially haunted place to keep vigil. For...

(Note: This is the fourth of six articles about John’s current travels through South Africa.) From King William’s Town we drove along the beautiful countryside...

(Note: This is the third of six articles about John’s current travels through South Africa.) We drove all day from Durban to King William’s Town,...

(Note: This is the second of six articles about John’s current travels through South Africa.) On Wed. Jan 22nd, we drove 8 hours south from...

We landed in Johannesburg, South Africa last Monday January 13th, after a fifteen hour flight from Atlanta. For me, it was a dream come true....

By Tony Magliano The National Catholic Reporter Working for peace can be dangerous. In some parts of the world, promoting the nonviolent teachings of Jesus...

This week, with a heavy heart, I am officially leaving the Jesuits after 32 years. After three years of discernment, I’m leaving because the Society...

For the past six months, I’ve been living with the possibility that I have cancer. My doctor and then a specialist both told me quite...

With everyone else, I’ve been mourning, celebrating and reflecting these past few days on the extraordinary life of Nelson Mandela, who died on December 5th....

On December 7, 1993, my friends Philip Berrigan, Lynn Fredriksson, Bruce Friedrich, and I walked onto the Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in Goldsboro, North...

Thousands of us gathered this past weekend in Columbus, Georgia to pray, study, reflect, network, remember and march to the gates of the notorious “School...

This weekend, thousands of us will converge on Columbus, Georgia, for the annual protest at the “School of the Americas,” the official U.S. military training...

In the early 1990s, while in graduate theology school, one of my professors invited us to write about a theologian we had never studied. I...

So many voices these days uphold the “rights” of multinational corporations, defend the billionaire one percent and their weapons, actively obstruct free healthcare for those...

A few weeks ago, sixteen year old Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani girl who was shot by the Taliban but survived and spoke out globally for...

In her diary on October 19, 1923, 48 year old New York City educator Jessie Wallace Hughan wrote, “Took Tracy to dinner—had hair done—organized the...

Since 1996, six million people have been killed by warfare in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Countless women have been raped. Some 400,000 women are...

Last week, I returned to Los Alamos, New Mexico, seen of our greatest crime, the birthplace of the atomic bomb, where preparations continue for bigger...

Greetings from Scotland! I’m spending a few weeks traveling around beautiful Scotland, speaking everywhere on peace and nonviolence. I will write about the trip as...

One day, when Jesus was marching toward Jerusalem, some of the hated enemy Samaritans denounced him for his nonviolent campaign. The disciples were furious, appalled,...

Like many others, I’m horrified and saddened by the war and killings in Syria, and adamantly oppose U.S. bombings and entry into the war. Further...

Next week, my new book, The Nonviolent Life, will be published by Pace e Bene Press. There I propose that the life of nonviolence involves...

When writer Louis Fischer visited Gandhi’s ashram in 1942, he noticed a picture of Jesus on the wall-the only wall hanging around-with the caption, “He...

Some two thousand two hundred of us made the trek to Hot Springs, North Carolina this past weekend for the third annual Wildgoose Festival. We...

In 1981, while traveling in Europe, some friends and I visited Dachau, the Nazi concentration camp outside of Munich. Most of it was razed to...

At the height of the story of Jonah, the entire city of Nineveh, in the heart of the brutal empire, repents of its warmaking, begs...

“Set out for the great city of Nineveh, and announce to it the message that I will tell you.” In part two of our story,...

Usually it seems God has one of three directions for us: “Come follow me”; “Stay with me” (and “Keep watch!”); or “Go and tell them.”...

Not too long ago, one U.S. Catholic bishop announced that we should not sing the popular hymn, “All Are Welcome,” at Mass any more. Why?...

This year marks the 80th anniversary of the Catholic Worker, the movement of hospitality to the poor and public peacemaking which I consider the greatest...

As the long trial of Bradley Manning gets underway this week, I want to add my voice to the millions who stand with him and...

Edward Snowden’s revelation last week to The Guardian that the U.S. government keeps phone records of nearly every American is shocking, disturbing-and alas, to be...

“The earth does not belong to us,” Chief Seattle once wrote. “We belong to the earth.” That wisdom hit me again this week as I...

Thirty years ago, I attended a memorable lecture at Catholic University in Washington, D.C. by Harvard theologian Rev. J. Bryan Hehir, the priest who co-wrote...

We remember how high school and elementary school kids marched by the thousands from the 16th Street Baptist church into Kelly Ingram Park and faced...

Last week, Dr. Robert J. Lifton, the esteemed psychiatrist and author of many important books, such as The Nazi Doctors, Hiroshima in America and Destroying...

Maryland’s had the death penalty since 1638, that is, until last Thursday when Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley signed a law abolishing it. This is cause...

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus teaches that if our righteousness does not surpass that of the religious authorities, we will not enter the...

This past weekend, a group of us gathered in the Poconos near East Stroudsburg, PA for a simple weekend retreat on “Jesus the Peacemaker.” We...

Easter invites us to welcome the Risen Christ’s resurrection gift of peace with all our hearts. “My peace I give you; my peace I leave...

Note: My friend Shane Claiborne, one of the most popular progressive evangelicals in the world, asked me to write about civil disobedience for his website,...

Like many, I’m hopeful about the new Jesuit pope from Latin America who takes the name Francis, but I’m concerned about reports of his silence...

As we process through Lent toward Holy Week, it may be helpful to recall Jesus’ testimony in court before Pontius Pilate, the representative of the...

“Everybody’s told me over and over and over again, it’s a done deal, it’s going to happen, how childish it is for everyone to protest...

It’s cold and snowy here in Oslo, Norway, but it’s thrilling to be here. My friend Martin Sheen and I flew from Los Angeles to...

Going to jail for nonviolent civil disobedience against American warmaking does wonders to clarify one’s relationship with the U.S. government. I highly recommend it. When...

Seventy five of us gathered this past weekend at the beautiful Upaya Zen Monastery [www.upaya.org] for a powerful retreat on the themes of nonviolence and...

This week, I’m in Mexico, spending time each day at the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City, trying to enter her story...

In 1993, Philip Berrigan, two friends and I walked on to the Seymour Johnson Air Force Base near Goldsboro, N.C., through thousands of soldiers, to...

This week, the Sierra Club announced that for the first time in its 120 year history, they encourage their members to participate in acts of...

This week, as our war president was inaugurated on the King holiday, I thought how Martin Luther King, Jr. would be speaking out boldly against...

Of course, it’s an enormous undertaking to boil Mandela’s epic life down to a two hour film. That’s why there’s never been a movie about...

God of Peace, Thank you for your Christmas gift of peace, for the birth and life of the nonviolent Jesus, and for all the blessings...

God of Peace, Thank you for your Christmas gift of peace, for the birth and life of the nonviolent Jesus, and all the blessings of...

This afternoon, we drove across Kabul, one of the most polluted, impoverished cities on earth with its sea of speeding cars, to one of the...

We call upon the United Nations to negotiate an immediate cease-fire to the war in Afghanistan, and to start talks aimed at ending the war...

(Dear friends, the following diary notes are being sent from Kabul, where we have limited electrical power and internet connection. I offer them to share...

Dec. 3, 2012, Dubai, United Arab Emirates The flight from Atlanta to Dubai lasted nearly 14 hours, and I’m exhausted but excited to be going...

Before leaving this week for Afghanistan, I was able to interview some of the young peacemakers with whom I will be staying in Kabul. They...

Click here to read.

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For the world’s poor, the reality of life is the same everywhere. It is a daily struggle against death. That struggle is nearly always a...

On the edge of Guatemala city , Guatemala ‘s capital of two million people, one-quarter of the nation’s population, stands a monument to poverty. A...

Peacemaking, to paraphrase Dostoyevsky, is “a harsh and dreadful thing.” This week, I’m flying to Kabul, Afghanistan, on a long-planned, hopeful yet modest mission of...

It’s Christmas day and I’m in Galway on the west coast of Ireland, staying with my friend Terry Howard, SJ and the Jesuit community, after...

In Seattle on Thursday night, I spoke about Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount commendation-Blessed are the peacemakers. Jesus was a peacemaker, I declared, and anyone...

“We citizens have to take the future of our country into our own hands. There’s no one to solve the problems of our country and...

It’s been hard for me to watch the election campaign when so little attention was paid to our ongoing wars, closing Guantanamo, ending the death...

(Note: Last month, I spent nearly two glorious weeks traveling through Scotland, speaking on peace and nonviolence. Here is a little diary from my journey...

Recently, I saw a powerful, disturbing new documentary about the U.S. hydrogen bomb explosions in the South Pacific islands, the U.S. government’s campaign to keep...

A few weeks ago, I spent a lovely Saturday morning speaking on “Thomas Merton and the Wisdom of Peace and Nonviolence” at the National Shrine...

“Nonviolence is fine as long as it works,” Malcolm X once said. Recently, Columbia University Press published an extraordinary scholarly book that proves how nonviolence...

This week, the U.S. war against the people of Afghanistan entered its twelfth year. It’s the longest war in our history, but you’d hardly know...

It was exciting to be in Los Angeles over the weekend to join friends in Pax Christi L.A. for their annual assembly day under the...

If you looked carefully at the news last week, you might have heard a report from Afghanistan about how the U.S./NATO forces bombed and killed...

It’s hard to handle the profound challenges of Gospel nonviolence especially when they stand in such stark contrast to our culture, our country, our world,...

[For the last three weeks, I’ve been traveling through Scotland and England on a national speaking tour about Jesus and peacemaking. This is the second...

[This week, I’m traveling through Scotland and England on a national speaking tour about Jesus and peacemaking. Here is a little journal account of the...

This year my summer reading included Carolyn Maull McKinstry’s memoir, While the World Watched: A Birmingham Bombing Survivor Comes of Age During the Civil Rights...

Last month’s movie theater massacre in Aurora, Colorado, was another wake up call for our gun crazy, violent nation. We grieve for the dead and...

The future of war was on display last week at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas, Nevada. There the Association of Unmanned Vehicle...

A hundred and fifty of us gathered on Sunday night, August 5th, at Ashley Pond in Los Alamos, New Mexico, at the exact spot where...

[Ed.’s Note: This meditation is the last of a five part summer series on the peace writings in the psalms.] Their idols are silver and...

[Ed.’s Note: This meditation is the fourth of a five part summer series on the peace writings in the psalms.] I will listen for the...

As we grieve for the dead and injured in last week’s movie theater massacre in Aurora, Colorado, and join with others to demand handgun reform,...

[Ed.’s Note: This meditation is the third of a five part summer series on the peace writings in the psalms.] Come, children, listen to me....

“A king is not saved by a mighty army, nor a warrior delivered by great strength. Useless is the war horse for safety; its great...

It was hot and muggy this past weekend at the camp site outside of Chapel Hill, North Carolina where some 2,000 progressive Christians gathered for...

On December 11th 2009, Palestinian Christians issued a heartfelt, sober, prayerful, urgent cry for help to end the U.S.-backed Israeli occupation. Their Kairos document was...

“The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is...

There have been hundreds of thousands of acts of nonviolent civil disobedience in U.S. history which have helped the cause of justice and peace. From...

“Whoever obeys and teaches these commandments will be called the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”(Mt. 5:19) That’s what Jesus announced in the Sermon on...

“NATO doesn’t work anymore! Let’s dismantle this archane network of warmakers whose fundamental purpose is the service of U.S. military interests, and create a new...

We’ve all witnessed the worst of religion, how organized religion can hurt us, turn our leaders into cruel, power-hungry authorities, and bless war not peace....

The base is being built near Gangjeong village. These heroic villagers have maintained an impressive public stand against nuclear weapons, U.S. imperialism, environmental destruction and...

“If you want to be hopeful, you have to do hopeful things.” That’s the advice of Daniel Berrigan. He’s spent his life doing hopeful things...

Ana Carrigan and Juliet Weber have just released an astonishing DVD documentary about martyred Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador. Thirty two years after his...

On Saturday, U.S. military prison guards at Guanatanamo fired rubber bullets at prisoners to try and stop their ongoing hunger strike. The prison reaction only...

At an Easter service in Texas on Sunday, football star Tim Tebow called Easter “our Superbowl.” Well, sorry Tim, but I think the resurrection of...

On Good Friday, we stand with the nonviolent Jesus as he suffers torture and execution at the hands of the empire, yet remains centered in...

After Jesus offers the bread and cup as his body and blood in a new covenant of nonviolence in the Upper Room during the Holy...

As we approach Holy Week, it’s helpful to ponder the passion, arrest and death of the nonviolent Jesus, in light of our own tumultuous times...

I consider Jeff Dietrich one of the best spiritual writers in the nation, besides one of our most faithful Christian witnesses. Alas, too few know...

Last Friday afternoon, I joined thirty friends for a peace vigil on Douglas Street in Los Angeles, outside the Space and Missile Systems Center at...

I’m traveling in California for two weeks, giving talks on my new book, Lazarus Come Forth!, and had the chance to spend an afternoon recently...

Jim Douglass is one of the world’s great teachers, theologians and practitioners of Christian nonviolence. I regularly return for inspiration to his classic works, The...

One of the nation’s sharpest, clearest and brightest voices for justice and peace is Loyola University-New Orleans law professor Bill Quigley, who is also Associate...

On September 1, 1987, one of the most dedicated peace activists in the nation sat down with friends on the train tracks outside the Concord...

Last summer, eighty-five year old Mennonite peace activist Peter Ediger decided to take his passion for peace to the churches in Las Vegas, Nevada, where...

To mark Dr. King’s birthday, I’ve been reflecting on the principles of nonviolence which he learned during the historic yearlong bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama....

Recently, I came across a new collection of prayers by Martin Luther King, Jr., Thou, Dear God: Prayers that Open Hearts and Spirits (edited by...

Ben Breedlove’s Witness for Peace By John Dear Like millions around the world, I too was touched by the recent You Tube video of eighteen...

This week, the president nominated the head of the U.S. drones program, responsible for killing hundreds, perhaps thousands, of innocent women and children in Afghanistan...

I had just finished a weekend retreat on the Sermon on the Mount in Los Angeles when I heard the news that the U.S. had...

A few weeks ago at the Pantex nuclear weapons plant near Amarillo, Texas, the United States dismantled its last B53 bomb. There was no fanfare,...

I’ll be in Santa Cruz, California, this week to join hundreds of friends at a memorial for my friend and colleague Scott Kennedy, who died...

It’s common here in North Carolina’s Outer Banks to see pelicans glide effortlessly in single file a foot above the breaking waves along the coastline....

I never intended to become a writer-and I certainly don’t claim any special talent in that department. Thirty years ago, I looked around and saw...

Once a journalist asked Tolstoy who he thought the greatest American writer was. “Adin Ballou,” Tolstoy answered. The journalist was puzzled. Who? He had never...

“I hope my life tries to give testimony to the message of the Gospel, above all that God loves the world and loves those who...

Just back from two weeks in Ireland with my friends Fr. Bill and Fr. Patrick, where I went to get some perspective on life and...

The new movie The Way has no explosions, no shootings, no car chases, no vampires and no robots ripping apart tall buildings. Because of that,...

One of my earliest teachers of Jesus’ nonviolence was the great Mennonite theologian, John Howard Yoder. I remember discovering in the fall of 1982 his...

My new book, Lazarus Come Forth!, is out this week. It portrays Jesus as the God of life calling humanity (in the symbol of the...

Dear Archbishop Tutu, “Yu, u nobuntu!” Happy 80th Birthday! With friends around the world, I give thanks to the God of love and peace for...

On September 1st, Father Jose Reynel Restrepo, the 36 year old pastor of the Catholic Church in the town of Marmato in Colombia, was assassinated....

Shortly before he was killed, Dr. King turned to Andrew Young and said, “I no longer believe the Good Samaritan story. I’m tired of trying...

Ten years ago, I was having breakfast with my parents in a Central Park hotel when news came of the terrorist attacks at the World...

Ten years ago, I was having breakfast with my parents in a Central Park hotel when news came of the terrorist attacks at the World...

Nothing is harder than working for peace in a time of war. This month, as we remember the 66th anniversaries of the U.S. atomic bombings...

(Note: For your summer reading, I offer here for a few weeks excerpts from my autobiography, “A Persistent Peace,” just published from Loyola Press. Here,...

I’ve been traveling across the country these past five months, preaching, leading retreats, and giving lectures to all sorts of people about the life and...

In less than two months, the U.S. military and its media machine will tell us to mark the tenth anniversary of the September 11th attacks...

One of the most astonishing, creative and powerful acts of nonviolent civil disobedience in recent U.S. history took place on December 17, 2008 in Salt...

(This article first appeared on www.commondreams.org two days after the Charleston church killings under the title “Grieve, But then Teach and Organize Nonviolence.”) Like millions...

“Daily we should take account and ask: What have I done today to alleviate the anguish, to mitigate the evil, to prevent humiliation?” So advised...

Last week’s Supreme Court ruling against California’s prison system as “cruel and inhuman punishment” was not a surprise–except in the sense that it was said...

Turns out, over the past nine years while living and working in New Mexico, church authorities have received hundreds of letters of complaint about me...

I spent Holy Week serving in the little mission church of San Jose de Picacho along the U.S.- Mexico border. It was hot, nearly 90...

Happy Easter everyone! I hope and pray that each one of us can be reenergized this Easter season to welcome the nonviolent Jesus’ resurrection gift...

My friend Mairead Maguire advises those who have doubts about the nonviolence of Jesus to spend a quiet afternoon in their local church looking up...

“I never expected much of the bishops,” Dorothy Day writes to Gordon Zahn in 1968. “In all history, popes and bishops and abbots seem to...

When Sarah Palin–a possible Republican Presidential candidate–displayed on her website a national map covered with crosshairs from shotgun periscopes marking the politicians she would like...

Every year for Dr. King’s birthday, I reread his writings to glean insight, courage and strength for the year ahead. This past week, while visiting...

“And so this is Christmas, and what have you done?” That’s how John Lennon’s Christmas carol begins. No Frosty the Snowman, no Rudolph, no Jingle...

A few years ago, Bob Dylan was asked about his plans. “I’m looking forward to some dreams,” he answered. “Excuse me?” the befuddled interviewer replied....

Every December 6th, my friends and I take time to remember Philip Berrigan, the legendary anti-nuclear activist who died eight years ago. This year, on...

Last August, during a visit with friends from Ireland, I learned that a great meteor shower was going to happen one night. So late that...

As we celebrate Thanksgiving, Obama, Congress and the Pentagon continue our wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan. Thousands of U.S. soldiers march through these impoverished...

Most days, I can’t escape the media hype about our inglorious, immoral institutions which glorify the Almighty dollar or the Almighty bomb—evil entities such as...

“Welcome to this beautiful border!” Bishop Ricardo Ramirez said to the crowd. “Why is this border so beautiful? Because of the people of faith who...

You probably never met him, but if you read these weekly columns, you already know him. Ted Gordon, 52, was a close friend of mine...

I’ve been crisscrossing the country recently, destined for college auditoriums and churches. There I speak of the dire state of our spirits, tainted as they...

December 2nd marks the thirtieth anniversary of the abduction, rape and killing of four U.S. churchwomen—Maryknollers Ita Ford and Maura Clarke, Ursuline Sister Dorothy Kazel,...

My friend Fr. Bill called me a few months ago with great excitement. “I just finished reading the best book ever about Thomas Merton.” Then...

The night before our recent day in a Las Vegas courtroom for protesting the U.S. drones at Creech Air Force Base, the University of Nevada...

“Fourteen anti-war activists may have made history today in a Las Vegas courtroom when they turned a misdemeanor trespassing trial into a possible referendum on...

Today, September 14th, fourteen of us, including four priests, stand trial in the state courthouse in Las Vegas, Nevada on charges of criminal trespassing. The...

“Tonight’s theme is the momentum from a gathering storm for hope which I believe will one day bear fruit in abolishing all nuclear weapons.” That’s how...

The year has turned again, and friends and I are busy completing plans for our annual Hiroshima Day events in Santa Fe and Los Alamos....

It’s been a hot summer across the country, but withering heat comes with the territory for those of us who live in the Southwest. I’ve...

I shouldn’t be surprised; we’re often hit with bizarre news. But doings around Mother Teresa’s 100th birthday takes grotesquery to a new level. Seems there’s a...

The event last week—an uncommon apology—did not attract much notice in the U.S. media. And not hard to understand why. Our news agencies make their...

Like many of you, I long for peace but feel stuck in our warlike culture, like a Gulf pelican mired in BP’s oil spill. A...

“When you see the abomination of desolation standing where it should not (let the reader understand), then those in Judea must flee to the mountains…”...

When my mind turns on Israel and Palestine, the West Bank and Gaza, the hatred and the bullets, the dead children—and now the assault on...

Mahatma Gandhi proclaimed a half-century ago: “Nonviolence is the greatest and most active force in the world.” It’s a proposition that stirs me whenever I...

“The way of Jesus and the way of the Bomb are absolutely, metaphysically incompatible,” Daniel Berrigan wrote twenty five years ago in Sorrow Built a...

There is no reason to continue this senseless war in Afghanistan; we should end it immediately. That’s what many people across the country are now...

They say the peace movement is dead. And hard to argue when so few speak out against our two wars, and when so many peace...

I’m in New York City this week, attending some of the peace events around the opening of the U.N. NPT conference, and staying with Fr....

Tolstoy’s “Last Station” by John Dear   The best part about the recent movie “The Last Station” — a film that covers Leo Tolstoy’s turbulent...

Here’s a scene I’ll never forget—sitting in the Edenton County Jail with my comrade-in-dissent Philip Berrigan, both of us on ice until the trial for...

It was Holy Week, and we walked for miles through the desert. We hiked along ribbons of dirt paths, over parched rocky hills near the...

Holy Week offers a strange image–the image of a nonviolent leader who comes to abolish war once and for all and proclaim peace to the...

Doubting Thomas, we call him contemptuously. It’s a cheap and easy temptation to reprove him, the common-sense disciple who refused to believe that Jesus had...

A few weeks ago, after visiting oppressed Palestinians in the southern region of the West Bank, I climbed the Mount of Olives near the Old...

The spring of 1993 was one of my most memorable Good Fridays. A thousand gathered for a rally, and then marched on to Lawrence Livermore...

War is never the solution. The Obama Administraton’s new war in Libya (on top of our current wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan) will not...

When the demagogue Glenn Beck urged Christians recently to quit any church that used the words “social justice” or “economic justice,” he betrayed the depth...

“I have often been threatened with death,” Archbishop Oscar Romero told a Guatemalan reporter two weeks before his assassination, thirty years ago on March 24,...

Last month, I spent a few quiet days on retreat by the Sea of Galilee. I was hoping for renewal, grace, hope and peace in...

Last week, I was in Los Angeles visiting friends by the ocean, when we heard the terrible news of the earthquake in Japan. We turned...

I remember the moment in 1982, in front of the bulletin board at the Jesuit novitiate, reading a quote which someone had posted. It was...

Many books, pamphlets and films tell the story of nonviolent resistance. Now a new documentary has just come out, on DVD, which puts to rest...

Lent invites us to repent of our complicity in the culture of war and injustice, and to walk the way of the cross with the...

On Sunday, fifty of us stood an hour in the snow, rain and hail for a simple peace vigil at the Los Alamos National Labs in...

There we were last week in Bethlehem, hundreds of us from sixteen nations praying with a hundred local Palestinian Christians, singing hymns, listening to the...

One of the inspiring Christians of the last century was Ben Salmon, the American Catholic conscientious objector to World War I. Whenever my spirits sag...

One day in the mid-1990s, I received a letter from Patmos, Greece. It began: “Dear John, I’ve been following you for years. No one in the...

As the Holy Season of Lent begins, we put on ashes once again and repent of the mortal sins of war, greed, nuclear weapons and...

The whole world rejoiced last Friday when President Hosni Mubarak stepped down after eighteen days of massive protest throughout Egypt. It was thrilling to see nonviolent “People...

Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ, October 2, 2009 is an important day for all persons in our global village but especially for those of...

A few weeks ago, I came across the latest issue of the alumni magazine of Loyola University in Baltimore, Maryland. On the cover we see...

A year ago, I spent ten days staying at Tahrir Square in Cairo, marching with protesters after 1400 of us were denied entrance into Gaza...

This week, we lost one of the great original voices in the nation, 87-year-old historian and peace activist Howard Zinn. His was a unique voice—of...

On Thursday, thirteen of us stood in a Las Vegas courtroom to hear the verdict from Judge Jansen regarding our September trial for trespassing on...

With you, I grieve the loss of life from last week’s earthquake in Haiti. And, with you, I grieve the survivors’ suffering and the slow...

Sunday, December 27, 2009. I left New York City for Cairo on Christmas day, with a long wait in Amsterdam, and this morning at four...

My spiritual reading during these traumatic months–what with wars grinding in Iraq and Afghanistan, the failed Copenhagen Climate Change conference, our being turned away from...

“When a person claims to be nonviolent, he is expected not to be angry with one who has injured him,” Gandhi wrote. “He will not...

The Gaza Freedom March is truly an unprecedented, historic event for the global grassroots peace movement. This is one of the largest, if not the...

Into this world, this demented inn, in which there is absolutely no room for him at all, Christ has come uninvited. But because he cannot...

President Obama’s speech last week in Oslo, where he received the Nobel Peace Prize, undermined the example of all the peacemakers of the ages. Standing...

Last week, watching President Obama at West Point, memories rushed in. I was there myself some twenty-five years ago along with a group of friends....

It was the second of November. Five friends trudged four hours onto the nuclear weapons naval base at Kitsap-Bangor, Washington. Their destination: SWFPAC, the Strategic...

Last weekend in Adelaide, Australia, seventy of us gathered for a retreat entitled “The School of Prophets.” The idea was dreamed up by my friend...

Good evening and welcome everyone, and especially, a very happy birthday to our friend and special guest of honor, Dr. Paul Farmer. I went to...

“When I sit in jail thinking of war and peace and the problem of human freedom,” Dorothy Day once wrote, “of jails, drug addiction, prostitution...

Wednesday, Oct. 28th. I left Honolulu Monday evening and arrived in Auckland, New Zealand  this morning. Somewhere over the Pacific, I lost a day, a...

This week has taken me across the world. I was in Santa Fe, New Mexico on Saturday at the Pax Christi conference featuring Franciscan peacemaker...

With many others, the news last week that President Obama had received the Nobel Peace Prize left me dismayed. Out he stepped from the Oval...

Good evening and welcome everyone, and especially, a very happy birthday to our friend and special guest of honor, Dr. Paul Farmer. I went to...

There are many facets of nonviolence. We’re just beginning to plumb the mystery, the possibility, the hope of becoming a nonviolent people. But there is,...

Twenty years ago, on November 16, 1989, I was studying theology at the Jesuit community in Berkeley, California, when my friend Steve Kelly knocked on...

When President Obama presided over the United Nations Security Council recently to endorse a resolution to limit the spread of nuclear weapons, we saw a...

“When I sit in jail thinking of war and peace and the problem of human freedom,” Dorothy Day once wrote, “of jails, drug addiction, prostitution...

My friends Ched Myers and Elaine Enns have just published a two volume work, Ambassadors of Reconciliation (Orbis Books), a great new resource for peacemakers...

I’ve known and admired Edwina Gateley for years, and even had the privilege of speaking at various church events with her, most memorably, a week-long...

In the last few weeks, three laudable men died—Senator Ted Kennedy, Father Coman Brady, and Jim McGinnis—and the rash of deaths has me pondering not...

It astonishes me to read in the Gospel of Luke how Jesus instructs his disciples to love their enemies, be compassionate, welcome children, serve the...

This week Pax Christi New Mexico friends and I will mark the anniversary of the U.S.’s obscene bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And to commemorate...

Several hundred gathered in a Chicago hotel this weekend for the annual Pax Christi assembly. There we met other activists, renewed old friendships, and took...

The past few weeks, hundreds of thousands have marched nonviolently in Iran protesting an election purloined by fraud. Battalions of police attacked, but the campaign...

It’s official. As of last week, according to the United Nations, over one billion people are now starving to death. That’s one in six people...

A few weeks ago, Orbis Books published Franz Jagerstater: Letters and Writings from Prison, the first complete collection of his writings in English. Through his...

Rev. Gerard Jean-Juste, 62, of Haiti—one of the finest priests I know and one of the world’s great prophets of peace and justice–passed away on...

Last week, one dedicated Christian killed another during church services in Witchita, Kansas. Both men thought they were doing God’s will. One — the zealous...

We’ve been at the task earnestly for the last six years. Each Hiroshima Day, Pax Christi New Mexico and friends gather at Los Alamos, birthplace...

He was 74 years old, legendary in the peace movement for his anti-war actions, and for his decades of service to the poor of Latin...

With the global economy collapsing, wars still raging, the climate warming and nuclear arsenals threatening — plus church folk arraying themselves along divisions ever more...

Last week, to celebrate legendary folksinger Pete Seeger’s 90th birthday, family, friends and the folk-music world threw a party for him at Madison Square Garden....

Last week some five hundred of us gathered in Washington, D.C., to repent of the mortal sin of the U.S. war on Iraq. There we...

This week, Orbis books published Dom Helder Camara: Essential Writings, an anthology of the charismatic Brazilian archbishop’s speeches, poems and essays. It’s an essential collection...

Last week, on Easter Sunday morning, sixty of us gathered for Mass around a makeshift altar in the spectacular Nevada desert, about an hour and...

On Holy Thursday, at 3 p.m. in the afternoon, fourteen of us walked on to the Creech Air Force Base near Indian Springs, Nevada (about...

Holy Week began for me this week in Denver, where I spoke to a crowd about Jesus’ campaign of nonviolent resistance culminating millennia ago in...

Last Friday night, I delivered the annual Ethics Lecture at St. Francis University, a modern campus near Altoona nestled among Pennsylvania’s rolling hills. It’s an...

Last week, New Mexicans celebrated a great victory for justice and mercy: Governor Bill Richardson signed into law a bill abolishing the death penalty. This...

I had hoped to join a recent peace delegation headed late February for the maligned nation of Iran, but was unable to make it. In...

The saga of Jesus careens and rollicks as he faces off against sinister forces of his day. Not unlike the action thriller The Bourne Identity,...

Last week, Peter DeMott, 62, a friend to peace and justice people everywhere, fell from a tree he was trimming and, under surgery, died. A...

Last week, at the annual “Faith Alive” retreat in Chicago, we gathered to ponder the Gospel of Jesus from the hermeneutic of nonviolence. And many...

Last week, over three hundred people from all over New Mexico gathered in Santa Fe at the Roundhouse, our gorgeous adobe capitol building. There we...

President Obama’s plans to add tens of thousands of more U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan are a recipe brewing with disaster. It will bring about the...

Who might be the greatest living peacemaker? I acknowledge the question is a bit impertinent. It conjures competition, while by its nature, the word “peacemaker”...

“As high over the mountains the eagle spreads its wings, may your perspective be larger than the view from the foothills. When the way is...

The bombing and invasion of Gaza should stop now. It is immoral and impractical; the indiscriminate wounding of children and civilians makes the heart sick....

One day, the nations of the world will beat their swords into plowshares and study war no more, the holy prophet Isaiah wrote two thousand...

A Letter to President Elect Obama, Published in Tikkun magazine, January, 2009, by John Dear Thank you President Elect Obama, for writing of the audacity...

God of peace, to begin, a trove of gratitude. Thank you for the nonviolent Jesus, his arrival among us, his exemplary life of love —...

I’ve been reading the new collection, Thomas Merton: A Life in Letters, (Harper One, 2008) a gathering of his “essential” letters, to mark December 10,...

A Persistent Peace Interview with John Dear By John Malkin Part 1 September, 2008 I submit that the only thing you can say for sure...

Last week after speaking in Baltimore, I spent the night at Jonah House, the long time peace community that embodies the Gospel message of love...

Advent begins this year in Mark’s Gospel with Jesus’ command to wake up, stand on guard, be on the look out, and keep watch. It’s...

Thousands of us gathered this weekend for the annual funeral procession at Fort Benning in Columbus, Georgia, there to call for the close of the...

Last Tuesday, the U.S. Bishops’ Conference gathered at the Marriott in Baltimore. There they were invited to a dinner hosted by U.S. military chaplains. This...

This weekend, Barack Obama just freshly elected, I joined 2,500 Catholics at the annual Call to Action conference in Milwaukee. A spirit of hope hovered...

What a boost it was to spend All Saints’ Day in Boston, just before the election, with hundreds of Pax Christi friends, all of us...

A few months ago, I received a surprising and moving email from Lt. Col. Darrel Vandeveld, a military lawyer who has been prosecuting detainees at...

This week I spoke about A Persistent Peace, my just published autobiography, in Portland, Berkeley, Burlingame, Santa Cruz, Los Angeles and Phoenix. And at each...

This week, I’ve been speaking in Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin, Montana and Oregon about the life of peace and my autobiography, “A Persistent Peace.” Everywhere I...

This week I embarked on a ten-week national book tour to discuss my autobiography, A Persistent Peace, and to promote Gospel nonviolence. In the months...

“Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows,” Martin Luther King, Jr. once said. In the days after September 11, 2001, relatives of those...

In 2001, the U.N. General Assembly declared September 21 “International Day of Peace.” The declaration called for “a day of global ceasefire and nonviolence,” for...

(Note: For your summer reading, I offer here for a few weeks excerpts from my autobiography, “A Persistent Peace,” just published from Loyola Press. Here,...

(Note: For your summer reading, I offer here for a few weeks excerpts from my autobiography, “A Persistent Peace,” just published from Loyola Press. Here,...

As the election approaches, economies worsen, wars go on relentlessly, nukes are poised on alert, and hundreds of millions starve and die in poverty, it’s...

(Note: For your summer reading, I offer here for a few weeks excerpts from my autobiography, “A Persistent Peace,” published last week from Loyola Press,...

This week, to commemorate the 63rd anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, hundreds of us converged on Los Alamos,...

St. Ignatius Loyola looms large in the life of every Jesuit. For most of us, he is daunting, awesome, even a bit frightening. He was...

Imagine this–a rigged national election. The popular candidate garnered more votes and precincts but still did not win. Now imagine the population refusing to sit...

Cardinal Bernardin was right. The best way to pursue the narrow path and uphold the length, breadth, height and depth of God’s love is through...

In Fort Lauderdale last week to speak at the National Convention of Unitarian Universalists, I met my old friend Bruce Friedrich, with whom I spent...

A few weeks ago, I was in Oaxaca on retreat with Maryknoll Lay Missioners who serve and accompany the Mexican poor. One of the most...

“This is the best monastic building in the country,” Thomas Merton wrote on May 17, 1968 while visiting the Monastery of Christ in the Desert...

“The death penalty will be abolished. It’s just a matter of time now.” So said Mike Farrell, star of M*A*S*H and a leading opponent of...

I was in Washington, D.C. last week for the opening day of the trial of thirty-five friends and peacemakers who dared to protest the indefinite...

My friend Sister Hildegarde Smith died last month. It was on April 25, at the headquarters of the Sisters of Christian Charity in Wilmette, IL....

Last week, I drove up the mountain to the town of Los Alamos, birthplace of the bomb, along Trinity Drive past Oppenheimer Road near the...

Monday May 19th commemorates an historic occasion. It marks 40 years since the shattering gesture of the Catonsville Nine, those illustrious Catholic resisters, including Daniel...

In May, 1983 and May, 1985, I attended Sojourners’ “Peace Pentecost” rallies in Washington, D.C.–prayer services and inspiring speakers and nonviolent demonstrations against war and...

“The trouble with the Catholic Worker,” Dorothy Day writes in her newly published diaries, The Duty of Delight, “is that one is so busy living...

Last month in Santa Fe, Pax Christi New Mexico held its first “Assembly Day,” and just this past weekend in Albuquerque, held its annual retreat....

“We can throw our pebble in the pond and be confident that its ever-widening circle will reach around the world,” wrote Dorothy Day, founder of...

This week, Orbis Books publishes one of most significant books in years, a labor of some fifteen years work by my friend Jim Douglass. JFK...

It was six o’clock on April 5th,1968, a Friday morning. My mother came into my room, shook me awake and said, “John, Martin Luther King...

There they are, two crestfallen disciples after Jesus’ horrific torture and execution. Fearful and grief-stricken, they’re clearing out of Jerusalem and drifting toward Emmaus, none...

It was six o’clock on April 5 th,1968, a Friday morning. My mother came into my room, shook me awake and said, “John, Martin Luther...

After pondering the arrest, trial, torture and execution of Jesus this past Holy Week, and the ongoing crucifixion of Christ in the world’s poor, in...

Last week, after lectures at the Thomas Merton Conference in Vancouver, British Columbia, and in Victoria and Cowichan Bay on Vancouver Island, I caught the...

The story of Lazarus, Martha and Mary, a story of death and despair, life and hope, not only climaxes John’s Gospel (11:1-45, from last Sunday)...

John’s Gospel, the supposedly most “spiritual” one, is full of death threats and assassination attempts, such as the end of chapter 8, where the religious...

The woman at the well, from this past Sunday’s Gospel (John 4:5-42) is the last person on earth you’d expect Jesus to open up and...

“Can you be a good Catholic and support war?” That was the question put to me last week by CNN’s anchorwoman Soledad O’Brien in front...

“If you are the son of God, turn these stones into bread, jump off that building, rule the world, worship the false gods of war...

You are a renegade priest and a renegade citizen. Many people think you’re a hero of nonviolence, but you’re a phony. You’re a fraud. You...

“Peace Activist Vows to Defy Court” “Antiwar Demonstrator Among Six Found Guilty for Protest at Sen. Pete Domenici’s Office” Santa Fe New Mexican, Friday, January...

It’s a powerful experience to stand before a judge and be sentenced to jail for saying No to war, injustice and nuclear weapons, something I...

While hiking the other day in the high desert of northern New Mexico, I met my neighbor, a Native American elder who gives workshops around...

BY Archbishop Tutu Dr Leo Rebello, World Peace Envoy from Bombay, India and Dr Charles Mercieca, President of International Association of Educators for World Peace,...

Thank you, God of peace, for announcing the coming of peace on earth and for coming among us to make peace. Thank you for siding...

The journey of Advent is modeled by Mary in three movements of the spiritual life: from the Annunciation as an image of contemplative nonviolence, to...

Where did Jesus learn his visionary nonviolence, those spectacular Sermon on the Mount teachings? Luke makes it clear: from his mother. Mary’s Advent journey moves...

Sunday is the beginning of Advent, my favorite liturgical season, a time of prayer, preparation, hope and peace. I suggest we look to Mary, Jesus’...

There were many consoling, inspiring, uplifting moments last Friday, October 26th, in Linz, Austria at the beatification of the anti-war hero Franz Jagerstatter. The resounding...

I was in Los Angeles this past weekend to speak at the American Film Institute and saw the inspiring new documentary, “Pete Seeger: The Power...

This weekend, some 25,000 of us gathered again outside the gates of Fort Benning, near Columbus, Ga., to demand the closing of the Western Hemisphere...

There were many consoling, inspiring, uplifting moments last Friday, October 26th, 2007, in Linz, Austria at the beatification of the anti-war hero Franz Jagerstatter. The...

There were many consoling, inspiring, uplifting moments last Friday, October 26th, in Linz, Austria at the beatification of the anti-war hero Franz Jagerstatter. The resounding...

“Women are the peacemakers. The world will not achieve peace without the energy and the work of women.” So writes Dolores Huerta of the United...

“We’re here to collect Senator Pete Domenici’s signature on our Declaration of Peace,” we said to the security official in the lobby of the Santa...

In Matthew chapter six, the middle section of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus teaches us to pray, give alms, fast, and forgive. He offers...

Imagine this: thousands of priests, nuns, monks, deacons, bishops and cardinals dropping everything and taking to the streets. Around the White House they march, week...

“War is not inevitable. I don’t think we can believe in God and be pessimistic about the future. The world is in God’s hands. So...

On Feb. 12, 2005, Sr. Dorothy Stang walked along a dirt road deep in the heart of Brazil’s Amazon, on her way to meet a...

On Thursday, September 6th, 2007, six of us were found guilty in Federal court in Albuquerque, NM by a Federal judge for trying to visit...

On Aug. 22, 1971, a large group of anti-war activists, including four priests and a Lutheran minister, were arrested and indicted for trying to destroy...

On Sept. 6, a federal judge in Albuquerque, N.M. found six of us guilty for trying to visit the office of our senator. We will...

John Dominic Crossan, New Testament scholar and bestselling author, has just published an illuminating book about the nonviolence of Jesus, God and Empire: Jesus Against...

This week in Tucson, Arizona, Franciscan Father Louis Vitale, along with my Jesuit brother Steve Kelly, will stand trial. They’re being tried on thin and...

On Thursday, September 6th, 2007, six of us were found guilty in Federal court in Albuquerque, NM by a Federal judge for trying to visit...

As I prepare to stand trial in Albuquerque on Sept. 6th for our attempt a year ago to get a New Mexico Senator to speak...

(Note: For your summer reading, I offer here for a few weeks excerpts from my autobiography, “A Persistent Peace,” just published from Loyola Press. Here,...

Last weekend, one hundred and twenty five of us made the annual pilgrimage of repentance up into the mountains of Los Alamos, NM, birthplace of...

Last fall, when I stood trial for our Santa Fe antiwar witness, I was asked about my mission as a Jesuit priest. I testified under...

Welcome again, dear friends. I’m just back this weekend from speaking in England and Scotland, and I didn’t know it, but if you asked what...

“We stand at the brink of a second nuclear age. Not since the first atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki has the world...

“Enter through the narrow gate,” Jesus says at the end of the Sermon on the Mount. “For the gate is wide and the road broad...

Not long ago, the legendary theologian Walter Wink and his wife June invited me to lunch with friends in Santa Fe. It was a blessing...

“If you love those who love you, what recompense will you have? Do not the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet your...

The bad news is so overwhelming these days, it’s hard to find any good news. But the Gospel provides it in abundance in the life...

Last Friday marked one of my favorite days in the liturgical year, the feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. For 47, I guess I’m...

In the year 295, the twenty-one-year-old son of a Roman veteran publicly refused to be drafted into the Roman army. As a result, the young...

A few years ago my friend Rabbi Michael Lerner of Tikkun magazine launched the “Network of Spiritual Progressives,” a group I joined, to unite religious...

As I follow the regular, dire reports on global warming, I recall my visit two years ago along the foothills of the Himalayas, near the...

A few years ago when I moved into a handmade house, off the utility grid, powered by solar panels, no potable water in the taps,...

This week my troublemaking friends and I might, after several postponements, be standing trial for our attempt in Santa Fe last September 26th to pay...

Last Saturday, April 21, Kathy Kelly called to tell me that our dear friend, Mairead Corrigan Maguire, the 1976 Irish Nobel Peace Prize winner, hailed...

Last month, some eighty Catholic Workers, Pax Christi folk and other activists from across the West Coast gathered for a weekend of community-building and nonviolent...

A few years ago, Daniel Berrigan and I celebrated Easter in a New York park with a few Jesuit friends. We held a small liturgy...

We of the Santa Fe protest group, nine of us, had ourselves braced for trial last Thursday in federal court in Albuquerque. We are embroiled...

I was on retreat ten years ago, during my Jesuit tertianship year in Belfast, pondering the Holy Week readings, when I came upon this text,...

G’day from Down Under! I’ve been on the road in Australia for a month now, from Sydney on the east coast to Perth on the...

Last month brought a kind of a travel nightmare. I lectured in St. Cloud, Minnesota, and the next morning at 3:30 a.m. (New Mexico time)...

Probably little surprise, but I’m a fan of movies with a message for justice and peace, films such as Gandhi, The Mission, In the Name...

To study the theological basis for Gospel nonviolence, there’s no better place to start than the groundbreaking works of my friend Jim Douglass, The Nonviolent...

The prophet Isaiah wrote long ago that the nations of the world must one day climb the mountain of God. There, on the mountaintop, God...

Before Mother Teresa founded the Missionaries of Charity, she spent twenty years teaching well-to-do secluded high school girls as a Sister of Loreto in India....

When I first met Daniel Berrigan, I wanted his advice about the life that lay ahead for me, but I didn’t know exactly what to...

Hundreds of thousands opposing the war took to the streets last week in Washington, D.C. I was in Los Angeles at the time and joined...

In 1991, as the U.S. bombed Baghdad, the phone rang at the Jesuit community house in Oakland where I was living. It was an English...

I think we’ve well entered into Orwell’s nightmare of a post-modern, post-Christian era of permanent war. We have a war president, a Congress that writes...

Over the years, in my search for clues as to the ways of the God of peace, I’ve inquired of a great many people about...

In the months before Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated, as he planned the “Poor People’s Campaign” and spoke out against the U.S. war in...

Just before Christmas, Daniel Berrigan and I spent an evening with Franciscan priest and teacher Richard Rohr at the new Catholic Worker house in Albuquerque....

New Year’s weekend brought three and a half feet of snow to the mesa high in the New Mexico desert where I live. So I’ve...

Jesus came into the world to homeless refugees, into abject poverty, on the outskirts of a brutal empire, and the story goes that on that...

Last September, nine of us tried to deliver a letter to Senator Pete Domenici’s office, asking him to help end the immoral U.S. war and...

New Year’s weekend brought three and a half feet of snow to the mesa high in the New Mexico desert where I live. So I’ve...

The news out of Iraq is grim, and I believe it will get grimmer, despite what the Bush Administration says, as long as our troops...

December 2nd marks the 26th anniversary of the death of four North American churchwomen, killed in El Salvador in 1980 by U.S.-trained death squads. I...

Open your Bible to Matthew 5 and you will never be the same. Gandhi and King called those passages the grandest manifesto of nonviolence ever...

Advent renews my spirit every year because it invites new hope for a world in despair, light for a world in darkness, and peace for...

Last Christmas, PBS News asked President Bush about the future of Iraq. “The future of Iraq is Colombia,” he answered with a wily grin. Much...

Each year around November 16th, nearly twenty thousand people gather at Fort Benning, Georgia, outside the gates of the notorious “School of Americas.” The school...

“Come back, Woodie Guthrie, Come back, Mahatma Gandhi,” sang Joan Baez in her beatific soprano. “Come back to us Malcolm X and Martin Luther King....

“We will never win a war against terror as long as the conditions for poverty and injustice remain,” Archbishop Desmond Tutu said. “Poverty breeds terrorism....

For years now I’ve been crisscrossing the country like a new-fangled, post-modern, itinerant preacher, speaking to tens of thousands annually about the Gospel of peace....

September 21st marked the tenth anniversary of the death of Henri Nouwen, one of our most popular writers on the spiritual life. A man of...

This past spring, I received an invitation to meet the organizer of the National Prayer Breakfast, an evangelical Christian organization that brings together the president,...

For the last five days, some fifty of us walked more than fifty miles; we went from Thomas Merton’s hermitage at the Abbey of Gethsemani...

The year has turned again; September 11th approaches. This year it marks not only the fifth anniversary of the terrorist attacks, but the one hundredth...

The other day, my friend Jack Marth said to me on the phone, “I wonder what Jesus would have to say about the U.S. government,...

The U.S. war on Iraq goes on unabated. Ordinary people die every day by the gruesome violence provoked by our military presence. Our war over...

The high desert of New Mexico, where I live, is one of the most beautiful places in the country, with its red mesas, fields of...

The high desert of New Mexico, where I live, is one of the most beautiful places in the country, with its red mesas, fields of...

(John Dear’s keynote address to the National Conference on the Sacred Heart, on June 26, 2005, in Waltham, Massachusetts, to the association of religious congregations...

This essay is an excerpt from JOHN DEAR’S new book, “You Will Be My Witnesses,” available from Orbis Books. Francis came alive to me in...

Ten years ago, a Colombian woman showed up at my door asking me to join her on a trip to her country to learn about...

With the Bush Administration’s admission of widespread surveillance upon ordinary Americans in pursuit of its empire, I thought I would save them the trouble of...

February 14, 2006, Panama City, Panama. It’s 90 degrees here, hot and humid, but beautiful. We flew in low under the clouds at sunset, along...

The story goes that when the nonviolent Jesus was born into abject poverty to homeless refugees on the outskirts of a brutal empire, angels appeared...

Recently, we marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of the death of four North American churchwomen, killed by U.S.-trained and funded death squads in El Salvador on...

[This essay was published in the fall of 2005 in a special book called “Moral Leadership,” edited by Daniel Deffenbaugh for Hastings College, Nebraska. For...

[This essay is part of the forthcoming collection, “Creative Minister,” celebrating the life and work of the popular spiritual writer, Henri Nouwen. It will be...

[This essay is part of the forthcoming collection, “Creative Minister,” celebrating the life and work of the popular spiritual writer, Henri Nouwen. It will be...

Like many, I was upset about the horrific terrorist attacks on London on July 7th. I spent a few days in London just this past...

“Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you.” (Matthew 5:43) “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who...

Last September, I spoke to some 2,000 students during their annual lecture at a Christian college in Pennsylvania. After a short prayer service for peace...

“I have often been threatened with death,” Archbishop Oscar Romero told a Guatemalan reporter two weeks before his assassination on March 24, 1980. “If they...

John Dear’s Review of the new book, “Mahatma Gandhi: Nonviolent Leader,” By Richard Deats, published by New City Press (Hyde Park, NY, 2005, paperback, 136...

“America” magazine associate editor George Anderson, S.J., interviewed John Dear in New York city on December 20, 2004, and later in January 2005. This interview...

God of Nonviolence, Thank you for the gift of your love and your peace. Give me the grace to live the life of Gospel nonviolence...

(John Dear was interviewed by the editors of “U.S. Catholic” magazine in Chicago in early November, 2004. This interview will appear in the May 2005...

This year, to mark the 59th anniversary of the horrific U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Pax Christi New Mexico invites you to come to New...

Nestled in the beautiful desert hills near Santa Fe , New Mexico is the mother of all weapons of mass destruction, the birthplace of the...

“I see no poverty in the world of tomorrow–no wars, no revolutions, no bloodshed. And in that world, there will be a faith in God...

Most people think of Jesus as the one with all the answers. John Dear’s new book, “The Questions of Jesus,” suggests that Jesus is instead...

“War is never inevitable,” Pope John Paul II said two years ago before the U.S. bombed Iraq. “It is always a defeat for humanity.” When...

I consider Martin Luther King, Jr. the great, holy prophet to the nation. He was a prophet of nonviolence sent by the God of peace...

“Pilgrimage Through a Burning World: Spiritual Practice and Nonviolent Protest at the Nevada Test Site” a new book by Ken Butigan (New York: State University...

(This is the introduction to the book, “Apostle of Peace: Essays in Honor of Daniel Berrigan,” published by Orbis Books in 1996.) I first met...

I live in a tiny, remote, impoverished, three block long town in the desert of northeastern New Mexico. Everyone in town–and the whole state–knows that...

On August 6th, 2003, about 75 members of Pax Christi, the national Catholic peace movement, came from all over New Mexico to pray for nuclear...

In the early 1960s, shortly after the Cuban missile crisis, Thomas Merton wrote to the Polish poet Czselaw Milosz that in order to experience authentic...

In the early 1960s, shortly after the Cuban missile crisis, Thomas Merton wrote to the Polish poet Czselaw Milosz that in order to experience authentic...

Every human being on the planet has the right to live in peace. In pursuit of this basic human right, Mahatma Gandhi concluded that the...

My friend Fr. Bill O’Donnell, for twenty five years the pastor of St. Joseph’s Church in Berkeley, California, and one of the great peace and...

Report from New Mexico (December 2002) New Mexico has some of the most stunning, unusual, even mystical landscapes in the nation. When Georgia O’Keefe first...

Lord make me an instrument of your peace– Let me serve as a channel of your love and peace, a reconciler of peoples, an apostle...

As the U.S. bombs Afghanistan and over seven million poverty-stricken refugees flee to the freezing mountains, the U.S. Catholic bishops met in Washington, D.C. and...

One of the great voices for peace, Richard McSorley, died on October 17, 2002, in the intensive care unit at Georgetown University hospital in Washington,...

One year ago, I started volunteering like thousands of other New Yorkers, to assist the grieving and help those in need. I spent many long...

The ongoing revelations of scandals in the Catholic church are appalling. That one child was ever hurt, much less hundreds or even thousands, is unconscionable....

Two months before he died, on December 6, 2002, my friend Philip Berrigan wrote a reflection on prayer based on his reading of my book...

Then the men stepped forward, seized Jesus and arrested him. With that, one of Jesus’ companions reached for his sword, drew it out and struck...

In honor of Dr. King’s birthday, several hundred people of faith and conscience gathered in New York City for a weekend of prayer and discussion...

Heading to war with Iraq is a grave mistake. It can only lead to catastrophic consequences for the suffering people of Iraq, other suffering people...

From Violence to Nonviolence (From The God of Peace: Toward a Theology of Nonviolence) In 1988, I traveled with a delegation of North American Christians...

Then the men stepped forward, seized Jesus and arrested him. With that, one of Jesus’ companions reached for his sword, drew it out and struck...

I just want to thank you for all you are doing for the church, for peace and justice, and for God, and just want to...