Welcome to the Beatitudes Center for the Nonviolent Jesus!
March 24, 2025
#12, Fr. John Dear in conversation with Shane Claiborne on resistance, organizing & Gospel living
“Our love doesn’t stop at our own borders.” That’s what popular speaker and author Shane Claiborne tells John Dear in this episode of “The Nonviolent Jesus Podcast.” He talks about public organizing, bold resistance, and living out the Gospel where it matters most—on the streets, in communities, and on the frontlines of change; and how we need to respond to the worsening violence, authoritarianism, white supremacy, racism, warmaking, greed, lies, and warmaking overtaking our nation and the world. Next week…
The Nonviolent Jesus Podcast welcomes Fr. John Dear! For more information, visit here.
March 31, 2025
#13, John Dear on Jesus’ Grassroots Campaign of Nonviolence, a Model for our Time
🔥 How do we mobilize like Jesus, Gandhi, and MLK to create real disarmament and social change today?
🔥How do we proclaim the coming of God’s reign of peace, justice and love today?
Next week…
The Nonviolent Jesus Podcast welcomes Bryan Stevenson! For more information, visit here.
Upcoming Zoom Programs:
“The Gospel According to John,” A Lenten Series with Fr. John Dear
Monday, March 10th. Session #1—4:00 PT/7 pm ET
Monday, March 17th. Session #2—4:00 PT/7 pm ET
Monday, March 24th. Session #3—4:00 PT/7 pm ET
Monday, March 31st. Session #4—4:00 PT/7 pm ET
Monday, April 7th. Session #5—4:00 PT/7 pm ET
“Seeding Hope in Precarious Times with Thomas Merton” with Gordon Oyer
Saturday April 26, 2025
11 am Pacific, 12 PM Mountain, 1 PM Central, 2 PM Eastern
“The Nonviolent Jesus and the Violent Authoritarians” with Brian McLaren
Saturday May 17, 2025
11 am Pacific, 12 PM Mountain, 1 PM Central, 2 PM Eastern
A Conversation on “The God of Universal Love and Compassion”
with Elizabeth Johnson
Saturday June 7, 2025
11 am Pacific, 12 PM Mountain, 1 PM Central, 2 PM Eastern
“Bonhoeffer and Resistance to Tyranny and Organized Stupidity” with Larry Rasmussen
Saturday July 5, 2025
11 am Pacific, 12 PM Mountain, 1 PM Central, 2 PM Eastern
John Dear’s new book now available
“The Gospel of Peace:
Reading Matthew, Mark & Luke
from the Perspective of Nonviolence”
To invite John Dear to speak in your city, write to: john@beatitudescenter.org
Sign up to receive the Beatitudes Center Newsletter
We promise we will NOT share or sell your information to any 3rd party advertisers.
LATEST NEWS FROM THE BEATITUDES CENTER
Quote for the Day:
“The wolf shall live with the lamb; the leopard shall lie down with the kid. The calf and the lion will feed together, and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze; their young shall lie down together;
and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the
adder’s den. They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain,
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the God of peace as the waters cover the sea.”
(Isaiah 11:6–9)
Quote for the Day:
“I am called in the Word of God — as is everyone else — to the vocation of being human, nothing more and nothing less … To be a Christian
means to be called to be an exemplary human being. And to be a Christian categorically does not mean being religious. Indeed, all religious versions of the gospel are profanities. In the face of death, live humanly. In the middle of chaos, celebrate the Word. Amidst Babel, speak the truth. Confront the noise and verbiage and falsehood of death with the truth and potency and efficacy of the Word of God. Know the Word, teach the Word, nurture the Word, preach the Word, define the Word, incarnate the Word, do the Word, live the Word. And more than that, in the Word of God, expose death and all death’s works and wiles, rebuke lies,
cast out demons, exorcise, cleanse the possessed,
raise those who are dead in mind and conscience.”
–William Stringfellow
March 31, 2025
Dear friends, Blessings of Christ’s peace!
I’m writing this at the Abbey of Gethsemani near Louisville, Kentucky where I’m staying for a few days of rest and prayer between two weeks of talks. I’ve been coming here regularly for nearly forty years, and have known many of the monks over the years. It is good to stop what we are doing, visit a monastery, and re-center ourselves in their ongoing prayer and the presence of the God of peace.
Gethsemani was Thomas Merton’s monastery, so I find myself reading Merton while I’m here, and I’m astonished once again by his fresh, breath-taking insights, spirit, and wisdom. Since Pope Francis has called this year to be a “Holy Year of Hope,” I’ve invited my friend Gordon Oyer, author of Signs of Hope: Thomas Merton’s Letters on Peace, Race, and Ecology to reflect on Merton’s seeds and signs of hope to help us out of our despair into the light of the risen Christ. I hope it will encourage us all to stand up, speak out, and resist the rising authoritarianism and white supremacy.
Gordon will speak on Merton’s hope-making insights and how they apply to our own dark times of permanent war, the nuclear threat, racism, fascism, and climate change. Merton, he suggests, dug deep to understand and locate the underlying forces that feed the systemic violence erupting on its surface. In doing so he identified trends in his time that have evolved and expanded in our own.