24: My guest today is Frida Berrigan, the daughter of legendary activists Philip Berrigan and Elizabeth McAlister, and niece of Daniel Berrigan. She offers us an intimate look into her childhood as a daughter of full time protesters at Jonah House, a community in Baltimore, and her life today.

The community at Jonah House protested full-time for decades. Her housemates were regularly arrested and jailed, including her parents: "We were just driving down to the Pentagon all the time, my parents never sugar coated anything for us,” she says. “

"They let it be known to us that any change we wanted to see in the world, we had to make ourselves. And if we didn't see the change, it was still worth doing what we could. We always knew that it was our responsibility to bear witness and resist as much as possible."

I also ask her about the upcoming 80th anniversary of U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima on August 6th. She shares with me why this anniversary is so important, who the Hibakusha are, and what we need to do today to make sure they are never forgotten.

In 2015, Frida published her book, It Runs in the Family: On Being Raised by Radicals and Growing into Rebellious Motherhood, about growing up in the Berrigan family. She has worked for years at the World Policy Institute studying U.S. military policy and nuclear weapons.

She also cofounded Witness against Torture, a campaign calling for the closure of Guantanamo Bay detention center and the end of U.S. backed use of torture and continues to write, organize and speak out for justice and disarmament.

And this year she tells how she got blessed and arrested on Ash Wednesday this year and why she was protesting outside the UN building in New York:

“Nuclear weapons are not on people's hearts. We are reminding people that nuclear weapons are still here and threatening the planet. They're not going to disarm themselves. We need to do that!”

This episode is a unique look into the ordinary life of a committed full time activist and demonstrator, hear her call to resistance and be inspired to go forward working for disarmament, justice and peace!

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“We’re living through a dark night of our species, our society, and our souls,” my friend Matthew Fox tells me. A world-renowned theologian, Episcopal priest, and long-time activist, Matthew has written over 37 books, including Original Blessing, The Coming of the Cosmic Christ, and The Hidden Spirituality of Men.

This episode is for all seekers of peace, spiritual warriors, contemplative artists, and activists of the heart. If you're longing to root your nonviolence in deeper spirituality, and your spirituality in bold action — this conversation will speak directly to your soul.

In our conversation, Matthew pulls no punches.

“We’re in the middle of a coup,” he says. “American democracy is being hijacked by billionaires in the name of authoritarianism. The movement culminating in Trump began over 40 years ago—gathering racism, revenge, and resentment. Project 2025 is deeply anti-Christ. But we don’t talk about evil—we reduce it to sin.”

Find out what "spiritual forces" really are—and what he names as the evil spirits that return every generation and how we resist and transform our society.

🔔 Subscribe, share, and leave a review to help spread the message of gospel nonviolence and sacred resistance.

📢 Invite your friends, spiritual communities, protest circles, and music collaborators to tune in. The time to gather and rise is now.

🎧 Listen and 👉Follow Fr. John Dear and The Nonviolent Jesus on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and beyond.

The Nonviolent Jesus is a production of the Beatitudes Center for the Nonviolent Jesus.

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This is a conversation for anyone seeking to link deep spirituality with bold, prophetic action. I hope you’ll join us, take Matthew’s words to heart, and let them strengthen your own path of nonviolence.

“Offer no violent resistance to one who does evil” (Mt. 5:39)--the most revolutionary—and most disobeyed—teaching in the Gospels, says John Dear

This week, I take a deep dive into Jesus’ specific commandment on nonviolent resistance in the Sermon on the Mount, Mt. 5:39-43. I tell how Leo Tolstoy learned the power of this verse from the Abolitionists, and then wrote his classic text, “The Kingdom of God Is Within You, or Christianity not as a mystical teaching but as a new concept of life.”

There, on the first page, Tolstoy declares that Christianity has totally failed Christ because it ignores and disobeys Matthew 5:39. He asks: Did Christ want us to put this teaching into practice or not? Tolstoy hoped to disarm the Russian Orthodox Church. Instead, he inspired Gandhi to launch national movements of nonviolent resistance, and bring the power of organized nonviolence to the world.

This one verse of scripture opens a new way to understand Jesus’ life and teachings. These words launch a permanent nonviolent revolution, because they forbid all violence. This new commandment holds the key to a new way of life and the disarmament of the world. As Dr. King explained and Gandhi demonstrated, this teaching was intended not just for individuals, but for nations and the whole world. We are commanded to figure out creative nonviolent alternatives to violence.

Jesus throws out the old teaching, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,” and calls for an immediate end to the downward cycle of violence, John Dear says. But he does not advocate meek submission to violence, or using the same means of violence as one’s opponent and then becoming as violent as everyone else.

Instead, Jesus commands “a Third Way”--active, courageous, fearless, nonviolent resistance to evil and he insists that this is God’s will for humanity.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus leads a nonviolence training session just Dr. King did, Jesus says, ‘I want you to be bold, daring and creative in your nonviolence, to claim your power, confront all systemic violence and injustice, and disarm your oppressor--not kill them.’

The good news is that today millions of people around the world are taking Jesus at his word and engaging in grassroots campaigns of nonviolent resistance to oppression, war, and empire.

Listen in and be inspired to experiment in Sermon on the Mount nonviolence in your own life!

For further reading, get John Dear’s latest book, The Gospel of Peace: A Commentary on Matthew, Mark, and Luke from the Perspective of Nonviolence (Orbis)

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