The Nonviolent Jesus Podcast

Posted Every Monday

The Nonviolent Jesus Podcast is a free, weekly thirty-minute podcast, posted on every Monday, featuring Fr. John Dear and his reflections about Jesus, Gospel nonviolence, and peacemaking, and guests who teach, speak out, organize and work for a more just, most peaceful, more nonviolent world. Through these weekly reflections, we hope to inspire everyone to follow the nonviolent Jesus more faithfully and do our part to welcome God’s reign of peace with justice on earth!

To listen, click on any link below to hear past podcast.

To hear the latest podcast, click on the most recent link at the bottom of the list.

Below that, you will see some of the platforms which also host it, including Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and Substack, as well as on the National Catholic Reporter.

May 18th. #72, John Dear in conversation with Bishop Michael Curry

On today’s new episode of “The Nonviolent Jesus Podcast,” John Dear speaks 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!’”

“Jesus organized a movement,” he continues. “Jesus organizes us to join the movement of God, which is bigger than all religions put together. That’s where love and life are found, where the good and the loving and the compassionate rule.” He invites us to become part of God’s movement in the world.

“If we do what is necessary to establish peace and enable justice, we are aligning ourselves with the goodness of God,” he concludes. 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!” Listen in and be inspired! God bless you.

Upcoming Podcasts

May 18th. #72. John Dear in conversation with Michael Curry

To listen, click on any link below to hear past podcast.

To hear the latest podcast, click on the most recent link at the bottom of the list.

Below that, you will see some of the platforms which also host it, including Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and Substack, as well as on the National Catholic Reporter.

May 11th. #71, John Dear in conversation with Prof. Kate Common

On today’s new episode of “The Nonviolent Jesus Podcast,” John Dear speaks with Prof. 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 definitively 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. Wow!

“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 to justify violence, war and genocide ever since.

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. Listen in and learn something new about the biblical origins of Hebrew and Christian peacemaking.