Today is Part 2 of my conversation with scripture scholar John Dominic Crossan along with Michael Okinczyc-Cruz, about their new book, Jesus and Justice: Organizing for God’s Reign on Earth Then and Now.

Co-author Michael Okinczyc-Cruz is the Executive Director and co-founder of the Coalition for Spiritual and Public Leadership in Chicago where he is a community organizer. He is also a professor at the Institute of Pastoral Studies at Loyola University of Chicago.

“One cannot look at our current political moment and not think about Jesus,” Dom Crossan says. “

Jesus’ teaching had to do with the lived realities of the oppressed people of his time. Jesus did faith-based community organizing and his nonviolent movement has ongoing relevance for today,” he says.

Their new book, Jesus and Justice, reflects on Jesus as a grassroots movement organizer of nonviolent resistance, and combines Dom’s scholarship with Michael’s organizing work on the streets of Chicago.

“In Chicago,” he says,“you could encounter Border Patrol and ICE agents roaming the streets, arresting people based on the color of their skin. Conditions were so horrific in detention, one local judge described it as a concentration camp. We organized thousands of people to protest these conditions, and our grassroots movement has made some progress. The distinctive nature of our work is nonviolence in all our actions and our words. This is how we follow Jesus.”

“This path of nonviolence is the only path to an approximation of God's reign,” Dom concludes.

“What's happening in our country is a revelation of who we are. We have a savage culture. We need people of good faith to be engaged, organize nonviolently and take risks and action to pursue and live out God's reign in our hearts and here on earth.”

beatitudescenter.org

Welcome to my Substack https://fatherjohndear.substack.com

On today’s new episode of “The Nonviolent Jesus Podcast,” I speak with my friend author and theologian John Dominic Crossan, perhaps the most widely read scripture scholar in the world. This is the first of two episodes with Dom.

John Dominic Crossan is an Irish-born biblical scholar with post-doctoral diplomas in exegesis from Rome’s Pontifical Biblical Institute and in archeology from Jerusalem’s École Biblique. He has been a Catholic priest, a Co-Chair of the Jesus Seminar, and a President of the Society of Biblical Literature, and is professor emeritus of religious studies at DePaul university in Chicago.

His many books include:

*God and Empire: Jesus Against Rome;

*How to read the Bible and Still Be a Christian;

*Resurrecting Easter;

*Excavating Jesus; The Birth of Christianity;

*Who Killed Jesus?

* The Historical Jesus

*The Essential Jesus

Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography

A Memoir: A Long Way from Tipperary.

In our conversation, he tells his fascinating journey to “the historical Jesus,” and how this became a global movement.

“I can't not think of Jesus while living in this country and what's happening today,” he says.

“What is hopeful now for the first time is that we are asking the right question: the historical Jesus is not just for Christians. The story isn’t just Jesus against Rome; it’s about God's creation against our civilization which is based entirely on violence.”

At 92, after a lifetime of writing about the historical Jesus, he wonders about the fate of humanity. “Are we a sustainable species?” he asks. “That's the question. Or has God given us the freedom to destroy ourselves and our world?”

Part Two will discuss his next book with Michael Okinczyc-Cruz, Jesus and Justice: Organizing for God’s Reign on Earth Then and Now.

For more interactive Zoom teachings and podcast episodes: beatitudescentrum.org

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🌻, John

On today’s new episode of “The Nonviolent Jesus Podcast,” I speak with legendary Bishop Michael Curry who served as the 27th presiding bishop and primate of the Episcopal Church. Elected in 2015, he retired in 2024.

Throughout his forty years of ordained ministry, Bishop Curry has been a prophetic leader, particularly in the areas of racial reconciliation, climate change, evangelism, immigration policy, and marriage equality.

Bishop Curry is the author of five books, including the best-seller, Love Is the Way, as well as, The Power of Love; Crazy Christians and Following the Way of Jesus.

He captured the world’s attention when he preached at Harry and Megan’s wedding at Westminster Abbey and called the whole world to love.

“A Christianity that doesn't take the way of Jesus, his way of radical unconditional love, his way of nonviolent living,” he says, “always goes wrong. Sacrificial love is the way of God and the way of life!

As Duke Ellington said, ‘It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing!’”

Bishop Curry talks about Jesus as an organizer, and what he asks us to do when we join the movement of God, and what that movement means. His enthusiasm is infectious and his words run deep.

When I asked for his parting words of encouragement, he said this is “a long distance walk, so we need each other, we need community.”

Then he sang the old spiritual: “Walk together children, and don't you get weary; there's a great camp meeting in the Promised Land!”

If you need encouragement, inspiration, and want to "hold on to hope in troubled times", you want to listen to this episode with Bishop Michael Curry today (and it's worth a repeat).

For more information on the work we do, and to sign up for our newsletter and interactive Zoom conversations go to beatitudescenter.org

Come join me on Substack @fatherjohndear.substack.com

Onward in peace with the nonviolent Jesus!

🌻, John

On today’s new episode of “The Nonviolent Jesus Podcast,” I speak with Kate Common on the nonviolent origins of the Hebrew community as she describes in her new book, Undoing Conquest: Ancient Israel, the Bible, and the Future of Christianity (Orbis).

Dr. Kate Common is the Assistant Professor of Public and Practical Theology at Methodist Theological School in Ohio, and the Theologian-in-Residence at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Northampton, MA. (katecommon.com)

“In the battle of Jericho, in the book of Joshua, Israel’s army kills everyone-- men, women, children and livestock. Suddenly, human violence—genocide--is condoned by God,” she explains. But decades of archeological evidence from the “highland settlements,” she reports, now prove there was no genocide as Israel entered the promised land.

Instead of conquest and genocide, the Hebrews originated from a peaceful, nonmilitaristic movement of indigenous people who formed egalitarian communities living outside the reach of the Egyptian empire.

“These people never had a conquest story until 500 years later in 722 BCE when Israel was terrorized and conquered by the Assyrian empire. Later, they wrote their origins story as a conquest of the promised land, portraying themselves like the brutal, genocidal Assyrians!”

That false narrative has been used ever since to justify violence and has led us to two of the great heresies of our time.

White European colonists who killed millions of indigenous people and enslaved millions of Africans invoked this image, as did the white racists who created South Africa’s apartheid, and the Israeli warmakers and Christian Zionists who justify the recent genocide in Gaza.

Secretary of War Hegseth recently invoked the genocide described in Joshua to defend the US and Israeli war on Iran.

Jesus, Kate Common concludes, was calling us back to the Hebrew ideals that renounced empire and created egalitarian communities of peace and

Listen in and discover new insights in the biblical origins of Hebrew and Christian peacemaking.

beatitudescenter.org

Welcome to my Substack https://fatherjohndear.substack.com

...

This week I speak with my friend Bishop Mariann Budde of the National Cathedral. She received global attention last year during the interfaith prayer service at the National Cathedral when she called upon Trump to show “mercy” to people.

Here is that excerpt of her sermon:

"Let me make one final plea, Mr. President. Millions have put their trust in you and, as you told the nation yesterday, you have felt the providential hand of a loving God. In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now(...)."

"I ask you to have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away and that you help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands, to find compassion and welcome here. Our God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger for we were all once strangers in this land. May God grant us the strength and courage to honour the dignity of every human being, to speak the truth to one another in love and walk humbly with each other and our God for the good of all people. The good of all people in this nation and the world."

Mariann Budde is the first woman elected to lead the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, DC and the National Cathedral. Before that, she served for 18 years as rector of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Minneapolis. She is the author of three books, most recently, How We Learn to Be Brave: Decisive Moments in Life and Faith.

“I knew for months that I would be preaching at an interfaith service,” she tells me. “We didn't know if Trump would come. I felt two things. I had to speak the truth about the dangers of praying for unity as a country when we were as a people and our elected officials had no intention of working toward that unity. I knew, too, there were many people who were terrified and wondered if there was a place for them with his return, so I took the opportunity to remind the most powerful person in the country that he could afford to be generous and merciful.”

One year later, this past January, she returned to Minneapolis and spoke at rallies denouncing the ICE raids and killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. “There was a sense of resolve, horror, exhaustion, fear and defiance. I've never been part of anything like it.”

She tells me why speaking with dignity is so important, and what it does to expand our options when meeting hatred. She reminds us of what Jesus did when confronted with resistance while moving deliberately into Jerusalem, and what he never did, not even once when confronted with violence.

We are called to live out the grace and love of God revealed in Jesus. Be encouraged. Hold fast. Trust that there is more at work in the world than the evil we are witnessing. It's not all up to us, but we are needed.”

beatitudescenter.org

mariannbudde.com

Listen in to this wise and brave Christian leader and take heart!

🌻, John

In this episode I offer reflections on the life, witness and teachings of my friend and mentor, the legendary peacemaker and war resister Rev. Daniel Berrigan who died ten years ago this week on April 30, 2016, just before his 95th birthday. www.danielberrigan.org

This special episode begins and ends with my friend Dar Williams singing her great song “I Had No Right” about Dan, and features recordings of Dan reading three of his poems.

Dan was born in 1921, was a Jesuit priest, poet, author of 50 books, lecturer, and antiwar activist who was arrested over 200 times in protests.

I share about his two great actions, the Catonsville 9 and the Plowshares 8, and talk about his teachings on resistance, peacemaking, nonviolence, hope, detachment from the results of our action, and Jesus.

Here’s a quintessential Dan Berrigan statement: “The Bible teaches in many places and warns, denounces and illumines this one bitter truth: the violence of humans is, in essence, genocidal, mass suicidal. War is not itself until it is total war, claiming the total person, the human family in its entirety, universal life."

Here’s also a great statement that Dan wrote for the Catonsville 9 action::

"Our apologies, good friends, for the fracture of good order, for the burning of paper instead of children, the angering of the orderlies in the front parlor of the charnel house.

We could not, so help us God, do otherwise...."

Listen to the podcast for the entire statement!

That October 1968, they were put on trial in Baltimore, and found guilty, and while awaiting prison, Dan wrote his popular play, “The Trial of the Catonsville 9.” The war worsened, so instead of reporting to prison, in April 1970, he went “underground.”

For months, Dan traveled around the country, evading the FBI, speaking to the media, appearing on the national news, writing articles, and infuriating J. Edgar Hoover and his henchmen.

One Sunday he appeared in a Philadelphia church to give a sermon and said famously. “We have chosen like Jesus to be powerless criminals in a time of criminal power.” That August, he was arrested on Block Island, Rhode Island, and sent to Danbury prison where he barely survived the next few years.

I consider Dan one of God’s greatest prophets of peace. Please listen in to this special episode and be inspired by Dan to stand up, speak out, and take action for justice, disarmament and peace! Thank you Dar Williams:

God bless you all—Fr. John

There are more podcasts and interactive Zoom programs with today's thought leaders, educators and activists that encourage you to follow the nonviolent Jesus :

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danielberrigan.org

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On today’s episode I speak with Prof. 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, 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.

She is a former broadcast journalist who worked as a news producer for ABC, CBS, and NBC affiliates and is the author of Gifts of Virtue: Alice Walker and Womanist Ethics, and Ecowomanism: Earth Honoring Faiths.

She tells us of her own family ecojourney to Colorado, her spiritual mother Alice Walker and relates to us Ecowomanism and the connections between theologies, the earth, and environmental justice in relationship to African American women in particular.

“Womanist theology came from black seminary women looking for a term to express the theology of black women,” she explains. She then connects the theology of black women with a theology of the earth. “Justice for all is connected to environmental justice. The question is: What does the Divine intend for all of humanity and all of the earth?”

When I asked her suggestions for us, she immediately responded: “Tell the story of Jesus well and truthfully. In truth, Jesus was a nonviolent person and deeply committed to compassion.

She also recounts the story of Jesus and the Syrophoenician woman and how it is important to recognize how Jesus modeled peace-giving and peace building in that conversation.

“All of us are interwoven and interconnected,” she concludes. “We have to come back to our own peace, and the truth that we have to have buckets and buckets of forgiveness and compassion.".

"Find the spaces of hope for your spirit and nourish those spaces as much as possible. From now on, we need to seed peace from the time we wake up to the time we fall asleep.”

Thank you Melanie Harris for your inspiration, education, and dedication to peace: listen in and be inspired!

https://orbisbooks.com/products/ecowomanism

beatitudescenter.org

johndear.org

fatherjohndear.substack.com

Today I speak with my friend Prof. David Cortright, author and 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.

David is the author, co-author or co-editor of 23 books, including Protest and Policy in the Iraq, the Nuclear Freeze and Vietnam Peace Movements; Civil Society, Peace and Power; Gandhi and Beyond: Nonviolence for a New Political Age; and Peace: A History of Movements and Ideas.

He has written widely about nonviolent social change, nuclear disarmament, and sanctions, and provided research services to the foreign ministries of Canada, Denmark, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Switzerland. He has served as consultant or advisor to the United Nations, the Carnegie Commission, the International Peace Academy, the MacArthur Foundation and Catholic Relief Services.

He shares his convictions as a man of faith and reflects on the time he was an active duty soldier during Viet Nam.

He speaks of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran and our responsibilities as Americans to oppose the war and push to cut off military aid to Israel.

We discuss the elections, sustainment and the "inevitable prohibition of nuclear weapons becoming a global reality".

He also reminds us of the No War and No Nukes campaigns and how they are one with the No Kings movement.

“We were put on this planet to serve God and follow the nonviolent Jesus. Peace making and peace building are obligations of the faith. If we are believers, we are committed and obligated to peace."

Be encouraged, inspired and sustained by David Cortright today and carry on this work of peace making and peace building, it starts with us!

johndear.org

beatitudescenter.org

https://fatherjohndear.substack.com/

On today’s new episode of “The Nonviolent Jesus Podcast,” I speak with my friend Kerry Kennedy, President of the Robert and Ethel Kennedy Center for Human Rights kennedyhumanrights.org.

A lifelong human rights activist and lawyer, she authored Being Catholic Now, as well as Speak Truth to Power, Robert F. Kennedy: Ripples of Hope, and the forthcoming Ethel Kennedy: The Extraordinary Life and Bold Legacy.

The 7th of Ethel and Robert Kennedy’s 11 children, Kerry has devoted more than 40 years to the pursuit of equal justice, and the promotion and protection of basic rights around the world on a range of issues. She has led hundreds of human rights delegations and regularly provides commentary on TV. For 10 years, she served as chair of the Amnesty International USA Leadership Council. A graduate of Boston College Law School, she lives in Massachusetts.

Kerry talks about her life as a child, her parents, and her human rights work at the Kennedy Center. She lays out the three things her organization does around the world with her team of lawyers and how they have never lost a litigation case.

They also work to decrease mass incarceration and abuses committed by ICE, as well as work to stop violence against women, and indigenous and marginalized people around the world.

She tells about her recent trip to the notorious, violent prison in El Salvador where the Trump administration has been sending hundreds of people illegally to be tortured.

When asked about her brother Bobby Kennedy, Jr., and what she thinks about him and his performance as Secretary of Health and Human Services, her answer is unexpected and candid.

Her accomplishments cannot be overestimated and she continues to work selflessly all across the world for human rights. She encourages us with her faith and determination to make a difference in our world today while quoting the nonviolent Jesus: "Love one another".

Listen to her words of encouragement and be inspired:"We can all do something to make things better for others.”

Find out more about our work here: beatitudescenter.org

For more information and writing, subscribe to my Substack fatherjohndear.substack.com

My newest book "Universal Love, surrendering to the God of Peace" is available now on orbisbooks.com

This week I speak with my friend Jim Finley, the beloved teacher of contemplation and mysticism.

When he was a teenager, Jim entered the Abbey of Gethsemani and was a novice and later a friend of Thomas Merton. Eventually, he left the monastery, became a clinical psychologist, and opened his practice in Los Angeles, where he still lives.

He wrote the first serious book about Merton’s spirituality, Merton’s Palace of Nowhere. Jim has taught and lectured on Merton, spirituality and mysticism for over 50 years, and these days is a faculty member of Fr. Richard Rohr’s Living School at the Center for Action and Contemplation.

He hosts a free popular podcast, “Turning to the Mystics,” centering on Christian mysticism and contemplative living, which has hundreds of thousands of regular listeners.

He is author of several other bestsellers, such as The Awakening Call, The Contemplative Heart, and his recent memoir, The Healing Path.

This year, Orbis Books is launching a ten volume series by Jim on the mystics, such as Teresa of Lisieux, Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, and Meister Eckhart. The first volume is on Merton.

This year, Orbis Books is launching a massive, ten volume series by Jim on the mystics, such as Teresa of Lisieux, Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, and Meister Eckhart, and the first volume comes out in a few months on Thomas Merton.

Jim has done two wonderful zoom presentations for the Beatitudes Center which you can listen to, like tens of thousands of others, on our free YouTube channel.

“I saw Merton as a living mystic,” he tells me. “I was so honored to be in his presence. He was my spiritual director, so every other week for six years, I would meet with him and he would always ask the three same questions."

He says he learned from Merton that “the only way to ever be at peace is to accept myself as I am, because I'll never be anyone else.”

Listen as Jim relates to us how God's presence resides in ourselves and others, and why we have to accept that we are infinitely accepted. Be inspired by him and his words for Holy Week to deepen in the contemplative life of mystical peace!

You can also subscribe to my Substack and find more about our work on our website https://beatitudescenter.org