Monks and Punks

Father John Dear has spent decades on the front lines of nonviolent resistance — arrested more than 75 times, expelled from the Jesuits, mentored by Archbishop Tutu and Thich Nhat Hanh, and now living in California. His latest book, Universal Love, distills a lifetime of activism into something simpler and more demanding than any political program: the daily, total surrender of personal will to the God of peace.

This conversation came at the right moment for me. After the February 22 Historical Jesus event at Fifteenth Street Friends Meeting — which produced some real theological friction alongside its genuine inspiration — I found myself carrying unresolved questions about ego, expectation, and what it actually means to do this work without needing it to go your way. John Dear answered those questions, not with argument, but with testimony. What he described is not passivity. It is the opposite. Gandhi's campaigns, King's marches, Romero's pastoral letters, Dorothy Day's hospitality houses — none of it, John argues, was primarily strategic. It was the fruit of people who had gone deep enough into surrender that their actions flowed from something other than their own ambition or grievance. Andrew Young told him the civil rights movement was not planned the way history remembers it. It was prayer, and training in nonviolence, and showing up every day to ask what God required. We talked about his book's structure — three movements through meditation, nonviolence practice, and the personal and political consequences of actually living in union with the God of universal love. We talked about Will, the young man whose encounter with John during the pandemic changed his career, his vocation, and his understanding of what he was for. We talked about the kingdom of God — whether it is something we build or something we recognize and welcome, already present, already moving. On Ched Myers: his core argument is that Jesus was deliberately building a movement — organizing, sending people out, campaigning for social transformation. John Dear loves Luke 10 for the same reason: the sending of the seventy-two is not a metaphor, it is a mobilization. Both men read the Gospels as a blueprint for mass nonviolent action in the world. Where they differ — and where our conversation lived — is in the question of whose will is driving that action. Myers emphasizes the political and organizational intelligence of Jesus. Dear keeps pulling it back to surrender: the campaign only works if the campaigners have emptied themselves first. We also talked about Christian nationalism, the war in Iran, and the evangelical community's silence on "love your enemies." John did not flinch from any of it. But his consistent answer was the same: the work begins inside. You cannot nonviolently resist what you have not yet faced in yourself. The reign of God is already here. The question is whether you are willing to stop blocking it with your own agenda. For me, this episode is a marker. What John Dear gave me is a cleaner way to hold the work — less gripping, more open. Surrender to the God of peace who is already present, already moving, already inside you. That is the beginning. Everything else follows from there, or it doesn't follow at all.

Father John Dear is the author of more than 35 books on peace and nonviolence. His latest, Universal Love, is available now. He hosts the Nonviolent Jesus Podcast — his most recent episode, a conversation with Daniel Hunter, is here: https://beatitudescenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Podcast-S2E64-with-Daniel-Hunter.mp3 

Reach him at https://johndear.org