“War Is the Ultimate Failure!” By Rev. John Dear (Published on www.commondreams.org on March 20,2023) On Saturday, March 18, 2023—the 20th anniversary of the U.S. war on Iraq—22 demonstrations against U.S. warmaking were held across the nation, including Washington, D.C., New York City, and San Francisco. In Los Angeles, hundreds gathered to protest outside the CNN...

For me, the great question as a Christian is: “How do we follow the nonviolent Jesus more faithfully in this culture of violence and war?” I think about this question morning, noon and night. And I always come back to the basic three steps—contemplative, active and prophetic nonviolence. More than ever, in the age of...

A few years ago, three French peace activists met with Pope Francis and asked him for advice. “Start a revolution,” he said. “Shake things up! The world is deaf. You have to open its ears.” That’s what Pope Francis did — he started a nonviolent revolution and invited us all to join.  I’m grateful for him...

By — John Dear — January 22, 2021 Today is the day the United Nation’s Treaty on Nuclear Weapons goes into effect. It is the long planned but seemingly impossible day millions—billions—of people have waited for since Hiroshima day, August 6, 1945. Today, the UN treaty declares that the manufacture, possession, use or threat to...

Open your Bible to Matthew 5 and you will never be the same. Gandhi and King called those passages the grandest manifesto of nonviolence ever written—beginning with the storied Beatitudes. Grand for a number of reasons—for their poignancy and conciseness, for their sheer poetics, for their morality and practicality. But grand, too, for a subtle...