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,” John Dear speaks with Paul Chappell, an international peace educator and founder of Peace Literacy. A former military captain, he realized that we all need to be as well-trained in waging peace as soldiers are in waging war, so he created Peace Literacy to help students and adults from all backgrounds work toward their full potential and a more peaceful world.

Paul is the author of a six books: Will War Ever End?; The End of War; Peaceful Revolution; The Art of Waging Peace; The Cosmic Ocean; and Soldiers of Peace. He focuses on three questions: What if people were as well trained in waging peace as soldiers are in waging war? What if people were trained to address the root causes of problems rather than symptoms? What if we taught peace as a skill set, as a life-saving literacy, with as much rigor as we teach reading and writing?

“Peace Literacy teaches that peace is not merely a goal, but a practical skill-set – a literacy like reading and writing – that needs to be taught and practiced from pre-K through higher education.

“Humans have a natural aversion to hurting and killing others,” he says. “Military history shows us that dehumanization is used to keep the mind from feeling guilty or remorseful. Nonviolence refutes all the stereotypes of dehumanization. We try to help rehumanize people with social interaction, storytelling and art, and nonviolence skills. We offer new curriculums about peace for every grade; skills to teach peace by our example; and how to use one’s culture to create a new culture of peace and nonviolence

“People don’t know the basic skills of nonviolence that will help them in their daily lives–at work, home, school, with addiction, and every other situation. If we don’t teach people peace literacy and nonviolence, then we’re actively teaching people the opposite.

“The idea that peace is inevitable is dangerous,” he adds. “We have to do something to help push humanity in that direction. Teaching peace is necessary for human survival. The education and practice of nonviolence have to involve a deeper knowing, a deep knowing down to our bones, and that process takes a lot of effort.

“I think there are explainable causes for why we’re doing what we’re doing and that there is a path that can lead us out of that. If we can teach the building blocks of peace to young children, we can help people internalize peace and nonviolence and live the ideals of peace” he concludes. Check it out and be inspired to teach peace! Please visit: www.peaceliteracy.org

Upcoming Podcasts

Oct. 20th. #42. John Dear in conversation with Simone Campbell, part 1
Oct. 27th. #43. John Dear in conversation with Simone Campbell, part 2
Nov. 3rd. #44. John Dear in conversation with Joan Baez
Nov. 10th. #45. John Dear in conversation with Ivana Hughes
Nov. 17th. #46. John in conversation with Gerry Straub
Nov. 24th. #47. John in conversation with Wes Granberg Michaelson
Dec. 1st. #48. John Dear in conversation with Rep. Jamie Raskin
Dec. 8th. #49. John in conversation with Mike Martin
Dec. 15th. #50. John on Mary and the Advent Journey of nonviolence
Dec. 22nd. #51. John on the Epiphany of Christmas
Dec. 29th. #52. “Best of The Nonviolent Jesus Podcast 2025”
Jan. 5th. #53. John in conversation with Robert Ellsberg

The Nonviolent Jesus Podcast

Posted Every Monday

This week on “The Nonviolent Jesus Podcast,” John Dear reflects on Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem (Luke 19) where he breaks down sobbing saying, “If this day you had only learned the things that make for peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes.” Written shortly after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 C.E., Luke describes how everyone had been blinded by violence and hatred, and how it led to their complete destruction by the empire. Had they taken Jesus’ teachings to heart, loved their enemies, turned the other cheek, and joined his grassroots nonviolent revolution, Jerusalem and its inhabitants would have survived.

The question facing us today, John asks, is: “Have we learned the things that make for peace?” Unlike in Jesus’ day, Jerusalem has now become the whole world. We cut funding for schools, jobs, housing, healthcare, poverty relief, and environmental cleanup, but spend billions—trillions!—for permanent warfare and nuclear weapons. We support warfare in Gaza, Ukraine and Africa, but with our 13,000 nuclear weapons and catastrophic climate change upon us, we are closer to total destruction than ever.

These days, we need to share the lament and tears of the nonviolent Jesus and decide if we want to learn from him the things that make for peace, and then try to put them into action. What are the things that make for peace? The Sermon on the Mount catalogues a long to-do list for peace, love, nonviolence, and justice: Daily prayer, surrender and trust in the God of peace. Love for neighbor and enemy. Nonviolent resistance to evil. Non-cooperation with empire. Compassion for everyone. Forgiveness toward those who have hurt us. Reconciliation with everyone. Truth-telling. Seeking justice for the poor. And radical discipleship to the nonviolent Jesus. As we walk this way of nonviolence and join Jesus’ grassroots movement of nonviolence, the Gospel declares that we can welcome God’s reign of peace on earth.

These days, John suggests in this episode, we must unlearn the things that make for war. We have to work for the abolition of war and the causes of war and invest in nonviolent conflict resolution, just as we stop digging up fossil fuels and invest in alternative sources of energy. We get rid of our guns, abolish nuclear weapons, and stop preparing for and spending for war. We will refuse to join the military, send our young people into the military, or support the military. Instead, we push for every nation to create nonviolent civilian defense systems and peace teams so that global nonviolent conflict resolution will become the norm. If the world is to survive, the days of war have to come to an end.

You and I want to do what others were not able to do—he concludes–to learn from the nonviolent Jesus the things that make for peace. If Christians learn the things that make for peace and unlearn the things that make for war, then the churches can be a leading force in the global grassroots movement for the abolition of nuclear weapons, war, and the causes of war. May we all choose to learn from Jesus the things that make for peace and join his never-ending peace movement! For further reading, check out John’s recent books The Gospel of Peace and Walking the Way.