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May 19, 2025

#20, Talks with Maria Stephan on Global Movements for Change

 
This week, John Dear speaks with Maria Stephan, 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.
 
“On the one hand, we have more regimes taking away rights and abusing power;” she says, “but on the other, there’s an explosion of nonviolent campaigns and mass mobilizations of ordinary people around the world.”
 
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.” Listen in and be inspired by Maria Stephan to do your part keep the movement of Gospel nonviolence moving!

Next week…

The Nonviolent Jesus Podcast welcomes Bishop John Stowe! For more information, visit here.

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and the National Catholic Reporter

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Apple Podcasts
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May 12, 2025

#19, John Dear in conversation with Bill McKibben

This week on the latest episode of “The Nonviolent Jesus Podcast,” John Dear speaks with legendary environmental activist, organizer, and writer Bill McKibben. He’s one of the world’s leading environmental activists and founder of www.350.org, a global grassroots climate campaign which has organized protests on every continent, including Antarctica, for climate action. 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.

“I started life as a writer, I still am a writer,” Bill says. “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!” 
 
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. A professor at Middlebury College, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he has won the Gandhi Peace Prize as well as honorary degrees from 20 colleges and universities and the Right Livelihood Award from the Swedish Parliament. www.billmckibben.com

“The two great inventions of the 20th century were the solar panel and grassroots movement of nonviolence,” Bill says. Recently, Bill founded www.ThirdAct.org, a global grassroots movement of people over the age of 60, which has taken off. During the podcast, he announced the upcoming global day of action for solar power, “Sun Day,” September 21st, www.sunday.earth. 

“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.” Bill keeps organizing, writing, speaking out and leading us to work for climate justice. Listen and be inspired to carry on as well!

Next week…

The Nonviolent Jesus Podcast welcomes Maria Stephan! For more information, visit here.

Upcoming Zoom Programs:

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

 “The Bible as a Call Out of Empire into the God of Peace” with Wes Howard-Brook

Saturday August 2, 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”

For info, click here
 
To order, Call Orbis Books at 1-800-258-5838
 
Visit Fr. John’s 2025 Speaking Schedule
 
 
 

To invite John Dear to speak in your city, write to: john@beatitudescenter.org 

National Catholic Reporter Review of “The Gospel of Peace,” click here
 
To watch Fr. John’s interview with Dean Young of Grace Cathedral about the book, click here
 
To watch Fr. John’s sermon at Grace Cathedral, San Francisco, on Jan. 21, 2024, (at the 30 minute mark) click here

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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

May 19, 2025

Dear friends, Blessings of Christ’s Peace! 

     Sr. Elizabeth Johnson is one of the most widely respected theologians of our time, and I’m thrilled to welcome her back to the Beatitudes Center on Saturday June 7th. I asked her to speak about “The God of Universal Love and Compassion,” and she suggested they have a conversation on this great topic based on her book, Creation and the Cross (Orbis Books), which participants may want to get.

     I will ask her to reflect on the God presented to us by Jesus of Nazareth, the God who is not violent, vengeful, hateful, or warlike, but the God “who lets the sun shine on the good and bad and rain to fall on the just and the unjust” (Mt. 5); the God who seeks us out (in the Prodigal Son parable); who is infinitely compassionate (Mt. 5); the God who is a Mother hen, a Good Shepherd, who is “Spirit and Truth”—the God of Universal Love, Universal Compassion, Universal Peace.

     “One of the chief blocks to people’s grasping the God of universal love and compassion is the idea that it was necessary for Jesus to die in order for God to be merciful,” Elizabeth wrote me. “In other words, an act of violence was needed for God’s love and compassion to flow. Creation and the Cross unpacks that idea step by step and shows that it is not the case. Violence was not necessary. It makes the love and compassion of God more universal, encompassing even all of suffering creation.”

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