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!

Here is the schedule for the first five podcasts. The link we will provided on the day they are posted; the podcast APP will be available in early February. It will also be posted every Monday on the homepage of the National Catholic Reporter, HERE.

This week on “The Nonviolent Jesus Podcast,” we hear part 2 of John Dear’s 2 part conversation with Sr. Simone Campbell, one of the strongest voices,

organizers, and leaders for social and economic justice in the U.S. A Sister of Social Service, Sr. Simone is a religious leader, attorney, author and recipient of the 2022 Presidential Medal of Freedom. For 17 years she was executive director of NETWORK, the national Catholic Lobby for Social Justice and the leader of “Nuns on the Bus.” Her healthcare policy work was critical in the passing of the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare. Before that, she spent 18 years working at the Oakland Community Law Center which she founded.

This episode begins with her reflections on her daily contemplative, Zen practice as the foundation of her lifelong work for justice. “My practice begins every morning. I have a half hour of Zen sitting, being quiet and opening myself. I call it, ‘Deep listening to the divine.’ There, things can bubble up. I follow this with a half hour of spiritual reading. I have to feel secure in myself to be willing to open myself to other peoples’ points of view. If I’m riled up, I can’t do this work, so I need my practice. If we’re going to create change, it’s required that we understand what’s going on inside us if we want to understand others.”

“My religious community is dedicated to the Holy Spirit, and our feast is Pentecost,” she says. “Pentecost is about the flourishing of the Holy Spirit in places that are challenging, or potentially conflicted. I need to be able to listen well enough so that what I might say will touch the other. I love being on fire. It’s so exciting.”

John asks her about the section in her book, Hunger for Hope, where she writes about the importance of “prophetic imagination.” Community is the best way to nurture prophetic imagination, she says. She recites Walter Bruggemann’s five characteristics: long and available memory; touching the reality of the pain; living in hope; effective discourse across generations and cultures; and the capacity to sustain long term tension with the dominant culture, and the potential for insight and imagination.

“You can’t have hope without community,” she says. “Community is at the heart of hope. The hardships people are laboring through today are essentially because of the lack of community, because of our radical individualism and isolation. Community happens when we are in relationship with others so much that we rub each other a little bit the wrong way, and learn the capacity to see the world in different ways.”

“Hope,” she concludes, “is critically connected to touching the pain of the world as real. It demands a response.” Listen in and be inspired by this legendary voice of social and economic justice!

Upcoming Podcasts

Nov. 3rd. #44. John Dear in conversation with Joan Baez
Nov. 10th. #45. John Dear in conversation with Ivana Hughes
Nov. 17th. #46. John Dear in conversation with Wes Granberg Michaelson
Nov. 24th. #47. John Dear in conversation with Gerry Straub
Dec. 1st. #48. John Dear in conversation with Rep. Jamie Raskin
Dec. 8th. #49. John Dear in conversation with Mike Martin
Dec. 15th. #50. John Dear on Mary and the Advent Journey of nonviolence
Dec. 22nd. #51. John Dear on the Epiphany of Christmas
Dec. 29th. #52. “Best of The Nonviolent Jesus Podcast, 2025”
Jan. 5th. #53. John Dear in conversation with Robert Ellsberg

The Nonviolent Jesus Podcast

Posted Every Monday

This week on “The Nonviolent Jesus Podcast,” John Dear speaks with his friend of 35 years, the legendary folk singer, Joan Baez. A lifelong activist for peace, justice, civil and human rights, and an equally passionate believer in nonviolence, she has released over 30 albums, traveled the world singing for peace for over 60 years, published a great autobiography called “And a Voice to Sing With,” and recently published her first collection of poems, “When You See My Mother, Ask Her to Dance.”

Joan performed at Woodstock, opened Live Aid, and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. PBS did a spectacular biography of her which I recommend called “How Sweet the Sound,” and she was featured recently in the Dylan biopic “A Complete Unknown,” brilliantly played by actress Monica Barbaro. She was a close friend of Dr. King; arrested for protesting the Vietnam war; went to Hanoi, and was bombed by the US. She has been against all our wars and injustices because she has a lifelong commitment to nonviolence.

Listen as Joan reveals how her Quaker parents influenced her early childhood and the year she lived in Baghdad, and how a meeting with long time peace activist Ira Sandperl, and later hearing Dr. King speak at her high school, changed her life forever.

Joan is surprisingly candid when it comes to sharing her own failings and how meditation has become a crucial part of her daily routine. When asked about founding “The Institute for the Study of Nonviolence” in the 1960s, she talks about the one hour requirement of sitting in silence each morning. “Many people had their first acquaintance with nonviolence through that experience of silence,” she says. Her honesty is disarming and reflects how many of us feel today.

She also shares personal anecdotes about Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, Dr. King and her experience with Vaclav Havel and the Czech Republic’s Velvet Revolution. Listen in as she quotes Gandhi and T.S. Elliot when encouraging me and all of us to be activists, and then reads her new poem, “This Is Not Optimism.”

Toward the end, she and John read together her brilliant 1960s dialogue, “What Would You Do If,” about the threat of personal assault.

As she closes, she breaks into song, singing the Civil Rights anthem, “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around,” guaranteed to give you chills! At 84, Joan Baez is still carrying her “shining light out into the shit storm,” as she puts it. Check out this special episode of The Nonviolent Jesus Podcast and share it with your friends!