The Nonviolent Jesus

Author, actor, poet, musician, producer, philosopher, theologist and iconic thought leader Dr. Cornel West joins me on this episode; among the many things we discuss, he tells me:

“We are witnessing the collapse and implosion of the American empire in real time,.

Why does Dr. West think "the country is in deep trouble"?

Like millions of others, I consider Cornel West the leading public intellectual of our time, right up there with Emerson and WEB DuBois. Brother Cornel graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard in three years and obtained his M.A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy at Princeton. He is the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Chair at Union Theological Seminary. He is the former Professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy at Harvard University and Professor Emeritus at Princeton University.

He has written 20 books and has edited 13, and is best known for his groundbreaking bestsellers Race Matters and Democracy Matters (and his cameos in The Matrix series).

“Every empire comes and goes,” Cornel said to me. “They begin to decay and decline because of military overreach and end up reaping what they sow. There is a spiritual and moral vacuum right now. "

What does Dr. West think is the cause of the collapse and implosion of the American empire as we are experiencing it in real time?

He also offers us an astonishing analogy which I never heard anyone else say before, based on the classic tale of Herman Melville's Moby Dick, and how we can never lose hope:

“Gold, status, position, spectacle, white power, all forms of idolatry lead toward self-destruction…We can never be surprised by evil or paralyzed by despair.”

Listen in and be inspired by this Christian intellectual about the crises we face and how we can respond with the power of love and nonviolence:

“To be a follower of Jesus means to take up your cross and follow him,” he said to me with his usual passion. “Love means courage, integrity, and honesty. We will always be viewed as foolish, but we lead with love, and love our way through the darkness and cruelty. Love requires tremendous risk and sacrifice. Nonviolence without love is just a strategy and a tactic.

His conviction goes deep and his words ring true: Love is the fundamental criteria. But love is never crushed, joy is never crushed, love is never eliminated. So, we will never forget, cave in, give up, or sell our souls.”

Join us in this empowering conversation as we follow the nonviolent Jesus together!

cornelwest.com

beatitudescenter.com

As we recorded this episode, Kathy is participating in and coordinating a 40 day fast for an end to the US backed Israeli genocide in Israel, which began on May 22nd. When we spoke, she was placed on a 250 calories a day intake to keep her heart rate up.

"We need to stand up against US military funding for Israel's ongoing genocide in Gaza.” That’s what Kathy Kelly told me, what she insists upon. Unicef calls the genocide in Gaza "The War Against Children".

"The US backed Israeli genocide in Gaza needs to stop."

Long time peace activist, author, and Nobel Peace Prize nominee, Kathy Kelly has traveled the war zones of the world, and stood with all those targeted for death by the United States more than anyone else I know, from Central America to Iraq, Afghanistan, and Palestine.

Find out why I consider her the greatest living peacemaker in the United States, one of the great saints of our time.

She has travelled the world to the places bombed and attacked by our country over the last three decades in an effort to “make peace” and “love our enemies.” With Voices in the Wilderness companions, from 1996 - 2003, she traveled twenty-seven times to Iraq, defying the economic sanctions.

She led my 1999 FOR delegation of Nobel Laureates to Iraq.

Kathy was in Iraq throughout the 2003 “Shock and Awe” bombing and the initial weeks of the invasion. She joined subsequent delegations to the West Bank's Jenin Camp in 2002 during and after Israeli attacks, to Lebanon during the 2006 summer war between Israel and Hezbollah and to Gaza, in 2009, during Operation Cast Lead and following the 2013 Operation Pillar of Defense.

Kathy Kelly is board president of “World Beyond War.” From 2022 to the present, she has co-coordinated the Merchants of Death War Crimes Tribunal. Since the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, she has co-coordinated an international network to assist young Afghans forced to flee their country. She made over two dozen trips to Afghanistan from 2010 – 2019, living with young Afghan Peace Volunteers in a working-class neighborhood in Kabul.

“Many of the Israeli weapons used in Gaza are of US origin,” she says. “It's crucial to go to weapons manufacturers and protest. It's important to raise the lament, and then to follow up with organizing.

We must keep trying to figure out how to organize and get a ceasefire. Love of our brothers and sisters in other countries makes so much sense right now. It's dependent on the people in the pews to speak out and follow the nonviolent Jesus.” She suggests we ask ourselves, “Is there a greater risk I might be willing to take?”

“Don’t be afraid,” Kathy tells us. “Seek ways to embrace the so-called enemy. Look for the people nearest to you who are practicing the works of mercy rather than the works of war, and align yourself with them.”

I hope you will listen in to Kathy’s plea for peace in Gaza, her living solidarity with the victims of war and hunger, and her ongoing work to promote a more nonviolent world, and be inspired. May the God of peace bless us all!

“Nonviolence is both the deepest core of our being and also the destiny of the human race,” Michael Nagler says on this week’s episode of “The Nonviolent Jesus Podcast.” “All human progress has been a progress toward nonviolence.”

Is he right?

Michael Nagler is Professor Emeritus of Classics and Comparative Literature at UC Berkeley, and co-founder of the Peace and Conflict Studies Program and UC Berkeley and the Metta Center for Nonviolence. He has dedicated his life to teaching nonviolence, spirituality, and meditation.

He is co-host of Nonviolence Radio and his books include The Search for a Nonviolent Future: A Promise of Peace for Ourselves, Our Families, and Our World; The Nonviolence Handbook: A Guide for Practical Action; Looking for Light; and The Third Harmony: Nonviolence and the New Story of Human Nature. (See www.mettacenter.org)

“Violence is a terribly destructive frame of mind and practice,” Michael teaches. He also teaches us in this episode the practice of nonviolence through meditation, and what it means to discover our nonviolent capacity and how to implement that in the world.

He tells of the outcome of the only mass public demonstration by non-Jewish Germans in 1943, now known as the Rosenstrasse protest.

"There is little nonviolence education happening," he laments. Teachers of nonviolence like Michael Nagler help us to renounce our violence, learn the wisdom of nonviolence, plumb the spiritual depths of God’s nonviolence, and energize us to stand up and do what we can for disarmament and justice.

Listen as he explains how meditation can deepen our spiritual awareness, of ourselves and other human beings, and gives us concrete instruction to slow our minds down.

Let him inspire you with his wisdom and thoughtfulness:

"Whatever is positive, true, and good in human nature is real and available to every one of us.”

beatitudescenter.org

mettacenter.org

24: My guest today is Frida Berrigan, the daughter of legendary activists Philip Berrigan and Elizabeth McAlister, and niece of Daniel Berrigan. She offers us an intimate look into her childhood as a daughter of full time protesters at Jonah House, a community in Baltimore, and her life today.

The community at Jonah House protested full-time for decades. Her housemates were regularly arrested and jailed, including her parents: "We were just driving down to the Pentagon all the time, my parents never sugar coated anything for us,” she says. “

"They let it be known to us that any change we wanted to see in the world, we had to make ourselves. And if we didn't see the change, it was still worth doing what we could. We always knew that it was our responsibility to bear witness and resist as much as possible."

I also ask her about the upcoming 80th anniversary of U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima on August 6th. She shares with me why this anniversary is so important, who the Hibakusha are, and what we need to do today to make sure they are never forgotten.

In 2015, Frida published her book, It Runs in the Family: On Being Raised by Radicals and Growing into Rebellious Motherhood, about growing up in the Berrigan family. She has worked for years at the World Policy Institute studying U.S. military policy and nuclear weapons.

She also cofounded Witness against Torture, a campaign calling for the closure of Guantanamo Bay detention center and the end of U.S. backed use of torture and continues to write, organize and speak out for justice and disarmament.

And this year she tells how she got blessed and arrested on Ash Wednesday this year and why she was protesting outside the UN building in New York:

“Nuclear weapons are not on people's hearts. We are reminding people that nuclear weapons are still here and threatening the planet. They're not going to disarm themselves. We need to do that!”

This episode is a unique look into the ordinary life of a committed full time activist and demonstrator, hear her call to resistance and be inspired to go forward working for disarmament, justice and peace!

beatitudescenter.org

“We’re living through a dark night of our species, our society, and our souls,” my friend Matthew Fox tells me. A world-renowned theologian, Episcopal priest, and long-time activist, Matthew has written over 37 books, including Original Blessing, The Coming of the Cosmic Christ, and The Hidden Spirituality of Men.

This episode is for all seekers of peace, spiritual warriors, contemplative artists, and activists of the heart. If you're longing to root your nonviolence in deeper spirituality, and your spirituality in bold action — this conversation will speak directly to your soul.

In our conversation, Matthew pulls no punches.

“We’re in the middle of a coup,” he says. “American democracy is being hijacked by billionaires in the name of authoritarianism. The movement culminating in Trump began over 40 years ago—gathering racism, revenge, and resentment. Project 2025 is deeply anti-Christ. But we don’t talk about evil—we reduce it to sin.”

Find out what "spiritual forces" really are—and what he names as the evil spirits that return every generation and how we resist and transform our society.

🔔 Subscribe, share, and leave a review to help spread the message of gospel nonviolence and sacred resistance.

📢 Invite your friends, spiritual communities, protest circles, and music collaborators to tune in. The time to gather and rise is now.

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The Nonviolent Jesus is a production of the Beatitudes Center for the Nonviolent Jesus.

beatitudescenter.org

This is a conversation for anyone seeking to link deep spirituality with bold, prophetic action. I hope you’ll join us, take Matthew’s words to heart, and let them strengthen your own path of nonviolence.

“Offer no violent resistance to one who does evil” (Mt. 5:39)--the most revolutionary—and most disobeyed—teaching in the Gospels, says John Dear

This week, I take a deep dive into Jesus’ specific commandment on nonviolent resistance in the Sermon on the Mount, Mt. 5:39-43. I tell how Leo Tolstoy learned the power of this verse from the Abolitionists, and then wrote his classic text, “The Kingdom of God Is Within You, or Christianity not as a mystical teaching but as a new concept of life.”

There, on the first page, Tolstoy declares that Christianity has totally failed Christ because it ignores and disobeys Matthew 5:39. He asks: Did Christ want us to put this teaching into practice or not? Tolstoy hoped to disarm the Russian Orthodox Church. Instead, he inspired Gandhi to launch national movements of nonviolent resistance, and bring the power of organized nonviolence to the world.

This one verse of scripture opens a new way to understand Jesus’ life and teachings. These words launch a permanent nonviolent revolution, because they forbid all violence. This new commandment holds the key to a new way of life and the disarmament of the world. As Dr. King explained and Gandhi demonstrated, this teaching was intended not just for individuals, but for nations and the whole world. We are commanded to figure out creative nonviolent alternatives to violence.

Jesus throws out the old teaching, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,” and calls for an immediate end to the downward cycle of violence, John Dear says. But he does not advocate meek submission to violence, or using the same means of violence as one’s opponent and then becoming as violent as everyone else.

Instead, Jesus commands “a Third Way”--active, courageous, fearless, nonviolent resistance to evil and he insists that this is God’s will for humanity.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus leads a nonviolence training session just Dr. King did, Jesus says, ‘I want you to be bold, daring and creative in your nonviolence, to claim your power, confront all systemic violence and injustice, and disarm your oppressor--not kill them.’

The good news is that today millions of people around the world are taking Jesus at his word and engaging in grassroots campaigns of nonviolent resistance to oppression, war, and empire.

Listen in and be inspired to experiment in Sermon on the Mount nonviolence in your own life!

For further reading, get John Dear’s latest book, The Gospel of Peace: A Commentary on Matthew, Mark, and Luke from the Perspective of Nonviolence (Orbis)

beatitudescenter.org

Episode #21. "The nonviolent Jesus hasn't been preached enough in our churches:"

This week I speak with Bishop John Stowe,Bishop John Stowe of Lexington, Kentucky and head of Pax Christi, on how we can transform a world shaken by violence, terrorism, deepening inequalities, and global insecurity.

“We have to sustain each other in hope!”.

“It's so essential to root out the violent tendencies within ourselves, or to think violently about others. Violence doesn't provide the lasting solution that Jesus does. But the nonviolent Jesus hasn't been preached enough in our churches…

It's a lack of faith to think it's impossible to live in a nonviolent way.”

Bishop John joined the Conventual Friars Minor, as a Franciscan in 1984, was ordained in 1995, served in El Paso, Texas; then served as its vicar general and chancellor, then vicar provincial of his Franciscan province. In 2015, Pope Francis named him the Bishop of Lexington, Kentucky.

“What we believe about Jesus has consequences in our personal lives and in our politics. We need to know who Jesus was. It's exciting to see how Jesus took on the establishment of his day. How do we build up a spirituality of nonviolence when it's missing in our catechism?”

Bishop Stowe shares why he thinks addiction to guns and violence is so prevalent in Kentucky, and how young people are connecting to make a change in the world.

"We can’t just paper over our differences, our division. We have to confront it all. It has to be healed. Inner work has to begin with the Word of God and prayer for the grace to be able to live in the way of nonviolence--to absorb violence instead of contributing to violence. We have to find ways to move beyond war and get along together and be at peace with nature.”

Listen as we talk about the nonviolent Jesus and peacemaking, be inspired and encouraged to go forward in hope!

CONNECT AND CHANGE THE WORLD

www.beatitudescenter.org

www.paxchristiusa.org

www.paxchristi.net

(Note: This episode was recorded days before the passing of Pope Francis on April 21).

#20 John Dear speaks with political scientist, author, teacher, advocate and organizer Maria Stephan on how ordinary people can bring about extraordinary change: “The resistance is alive and well across the United States today."

This week, I speak with Maria Stephan, a political scientist, teacher, advocate, and organizer, who has dedicated her life to the proposition that ordinary people, when organized and inspired, can bring about extraordinary change.

She is the co-author with Erica Chenoweth of Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict, one of the most important books in decades, which documents how nonviolent resistance campaigns over the last century have been twice as effective as armed struggles, and been major drivers of democratization and civil peace.

“The resistance is alive and well across the United States today, with over 1300 protests with 3.5 million participants at the recent ‘Hands Off’ Day of Action… Faith communities are a glue that give people hope, and promote unity throughout these protests.”

“On the one hand, we have more regimes taking away rights and abusing power, but on the other, there's an explosion of nonviolent campaigns and mass mobilizations of ordinary people around the world,” Maria Stephan tells me.

Maria works with www.Horizonsproject.us focusing on the role of nonviolent action and peacebuilding in advancing human rights, democracy, and sustainable peace in the US and globally. Before joining Horizons, Maria founded and directed the Program on Nonviolent Action at the U.S. Institute of Peace, overseeing global programming, applied research, and policy engagement.

She was the lead foreign affairs officer in the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations, and also worked at the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict. She has taught at Georgetown University and American University.

“Nonviolent resistance is a skill based activity; you can learn how to do better and how to build broad-based coalitions… We need to think big, both globally and locally. We need a more interconnected ‘movement of movements.’ We need to change the popular consciousness so that movements and campaigns are seen as a cool form of activity.”

KEEP THE MOVEMENT MOVING

www.horizonsproject.us

www.beatitudescenter.org

Check out her recent article, "We Are Stronger Than We Think," at https://wagingnonviolence.org/2025/02/we-are-stronger-than-we-think/

#19 Fr. John Dear Talks with Legendary Environmental Activist Bill McKibben

This week, Fr. John Dear speaks with best-selling author and environmental activist and organizer Bill McKibben about catastrophic climate change and how to respond by joining movements, taking to the streets, and building political will. It will be jam packed with inspiration for anyone who supports environmental activism.

“I started life as a writer, I still am a writer. But to win the fight, we're gonna have to take on money and power, that's why we have to organize, and build a movement to change hearts and minds and change power. We keep our humor, our love for each other and our eyes fixed on the future, and on we go!”

He played a leading role in launching the opposition to big oil pipeline projects like Keystone XL, and the fossil fuel divestment campaign, which has become the biggest anti-corporate campaign in history, with endowments worth more than $40 trillion stepping back from oil, gas and coal.

He’s one of the world’s leading environmental activists and founder of 350.org, a global grassroots climate campaign which has organized protests on every continent, including Antarctica, for climate action.

Bill’s 1989 book The End of Nature is regarded as the first book for a general audience about climate change and was published in 24 languages. He’s gone on to write 20 books, and his work appears regularly in periodicals from the New Yorker to Rolling Stone. He serves as the Schumann Distinguished Scholar in Environmental Studies at Middlebury College, as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and he has won the Gandhi Peace Prize as well as honorary degrees from 20 colleges and universities. He was awarded the Right Livelihood Award, the alternative Nobel, in the Swedish Parliament.

Hear more about his newest book Here Comes the Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization will be available in August 2025.

Recently, Bill also founded www.ThirdAct.org, a global grassroots movement of people over the age of 60, which has taken off.

During this podcast also he announces the upcoming global day of action for solar power, “Sun Day,” September 21st. "The sun is willing to provide us with all the power we could ever use, but that great gift is a threat to powerful interests." Go to sunday.earth for more about resources, events, organizations and creative partners.

BE PART OF THE MOVEMENT.

Check out:

www.sunday.earth

www.thirdact.org

www.350.org

www.BillMcKibben.com

🔥This week, John Dear speaks with Kazu Haga, a brilliant young author and teacher of Kingian nonviolence about his new book, Fierce Vulnerability: Healing from Trauma, Emerging through Collapse.

Kazu Haga shares with us the six principles of Kingian nonviolence, how to build the Beloved Community and that "we are in a polycrisis and we are not crazy for thinking the world is burning all around us."

He is the founder of the East Point Peace Academy, a core member of the Ahimsa Collective and the Fierce Vulnerability Network and author of Healing Resistance: A Radically Different Response to Harm.

He is a practitioner, trainer and teacher of nonviolence, restorative justice, organizing and mindfulness and works with incarcerated people ("incarcerated people are some of my greatest teachers"), youth, and activists from around the country.

He has over 20 years of experience in nonviolence and social change work, and has been an active trainer since 2000. He resides in Oakland, CA, with friends at Canticle Farm, an inner city community of nonviolence that has a public garden right there in the neighborhood.

In his new book, Kazu suggests that the "real issue behind humanity’s violence and insanity is trauma", and that our goal really is healing on a personal, social, and global level.

He calls to get beyond “us vs. them” and “right vs. wrong” thinking, to pursue our interdependence and interrelatedness, as Dr. King and Thich Nhat Hanh taught.

👉Learn more about Kazu Haga:

kazuhaga.com

canticlefarmoakland.org

👉🏽More information on Fr. John Dear and The Nonviolent Jesus:

beatitudescenter.org