Spirituality Peace Sunday Living a Nonviolent Life

Broadcast on August 24, 2014
With John Dear

Based on his new book The Nonviolent Life Nobel Peace Prize nominee John Dear will reflect with us on the three attributes of wholistic nonviolence: practicing nonviolence towards one's self; practicing nonviolence to all people, all creatures, and all creation; and also, joining the global grassroots movement of nonviolence, to work for a world without war, poverty, nuclear weapons and environmental destruction, a new nonviolent world.

John Dear

Rev.
“John Dear is the embodiment of a peacemaker,” Archbishop Desmond Tutu wrote a few years ago when he nominated John for the Nobel Peace Prize. “He has led by example through his actions and in his writings and in numerous sermons, speeches and demonstrations. He believes that peace is not something static, but rather to make peace is to be engaged, mind, body and spirit. His teaching is to love yourself, to love your neighbor, your enemy, and to love the world and to understand the profound responsibility in doing all of these. He is a man who has the courage of his convictions and who speaks out and acts against war, the manufacture of weapons and any situation where a human being might be at risk through violence. For evil to prevail requires only that good people sit on the sidelines and do nothing. John Dear is compelling all of us to stand up and take responsibility for the suffering of humanity so often caused through selfishness and greed.” John Dear has spent over three decades speaking to people around the world about the Gospel of Jesus, the way of nonviolence and the call to make peace. He has served as the director of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the largest interfaith peace organization in the United States, and after September 11, 2001, as one of the Red Cross coordinators of chaplains at the Family Assistance Center, and counseled thousands of relatives and rescue workers. He has worked in homeless shelters, soup kitchens, and community centers; traveled in warzones around the world, including Iraq, Palestine, Nicaragua, Afghanistan, and Colombia; lived in El Salvador, Guatemala and Northern Ireland; been arrested over 75 times in acts of civil disobedience against war; and spent eight months in prison for a Plowshares disarmament action. In the 1990s, he arranged for Mother Teresa to speak to various governors to stop the death penalty. He has two Master’s Degrees in Theology from the Graduate Theological Union in California, and has taught theology at Fordham University. John Dear has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered” and elsewhere. He is the subject of the DVD documentary, “The Narrow Path” (with music by Joan Baez and Jackson Browne). He is profiled in John Dear On Peace, by Patti Normile (St. Anthony Messenger Press, 2009). His nearly thirty books have been translated into ten languages. John Dear is on the staff of Pace e Bene. For further information, see: www.johndear.org.
r84xg5