The Gandhian Roots of the Sermon on the Mount

During this episode of Nonviolence Radio, Michael and Stephanie welcome Reverend John Dear: activist, author, Nobel Peace Prize nominee and passionate advocate for nonviolence for over 45 years. This rich conversation covers a lot of ground, with a focus on one of the most significant roots of active nonviolence: The Sermon on the Mount. Noting the way this profound text influenced both Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., this interview dives below the surface of its inspiring words and reveals it to be profoundly practical, a “how to be a human being manual."

"Jesus, for the first time in history, I think you could argue, presents Gandhian-Kingian methodology of nonviolent resistance, saying, “You stand your ground, but you don't use the means of your opponent, but you deal with your opponent head on with love and truth and say, ‘I'm a human being. Why are you hurting me?’ Even to the point that you accept violence without retaliating until you wear them down, and you reconcile, and he repents.”

Thus we see how Jesus – and through him later leaders in nonviolence – empowers all of us who “are merciful and pure in heart and peacemakers and persecuted for justice” to “get up and get moving” With its base in universal love, nonviolence can be harnessed into effective action in the world.

Transcript

Stephanie: Greetings everybody, and welcome to another episode of Nonviolence Radio. I'm your host, Stephanie Van Hook, and I'm here with my co-host and news anchor of the Nonviolence Report, Michael Nagler. And we're from the Metta Center for Nonviolence here in Petaluma, California.

We have a wonderful interview to share with you today. It's with Reverend John Dear. You can find his work at JohnDear.org. If you don't know of him, he is quite a phenomenon. John Dear is an internationally recognized voice and leader for peace and nonviolence. That's an understatement. He's a priest, an activist, author, and a Nobel Peace Prize nominee.

He served for many years as the director of the Fellowship of Reconciliation. After 9/11, he was a Red Cross coordinator of chaplains at the Family Assistance Center in New York, and has counseled thousands of relatives and rescue workers. He's traveled to war zones all over the world and has been arrested some 85 times for peace. He's led Nobel Prize winners to Iraq, given thousands of lectures on peace across the US, and served as a pastor of several churches in New Mexico.

He even arranged on many occasions for Mother Teresa to speak to various governors to stop an impending execution. And he helped draft Pope Francis's January 1, 2017 World Day of Peace message on nonviolence.

He is a co-founder of Campaign Nonviolence and the Nonviolent Cities. His 40 books include, The Beatitudes of Peace, They Will Inherit the Earth, The Nonviolent Life, Radical Prayers, Walking the Way, A Persistent Peace, Transfiguration.

It goes on. His most recent book is Gospel of Peace: A Commentary on Matthew, Mark, and Luke from the Perspective of Nonviolence. And our interview with him was about the Sermon on the Mount. So, let's tune in to John Dear.

Michael: Gandhi said, “The only people who don't realize that Jesus was nonviolent are the Christians.” Comment, please?

Fr. John Dear: I've sort of, in a strange way, ended up giving my whole life to that quote. Gandhi said, “Jesus was the greatest person of nonviolence in history.” And when I read that as a 21-year-old kid, it kind of changed my life. I always joke, “Jesus thinks he's Gandhi. Jesus thinks he's Martin Luther King. Who does he think he is?”

So, he's totally nonviolent. And we have spent, you know, at least 17-1800 years totally talking about everything but that, and denying all his nonviolence. And Gandhi comes along, in the words of Martin Luther King, and totally reclaims the nonviolence of Jesus and follows it. He's the greatest Christian who ever lived, hands down. And he's not a baptized Christian because he didn't want to be involved in imperial Christianity, which I understand.

And then Martin Luther King took it to another level, explaining that every Christian has to follow the teachings of Jesus, which are all about nonviolence. And so, Gandhi saying these spectacular things, that nonviolence is the only way forward.

And for me, as I've worked on this every day for 45 years, I kid you not, talking about it, that means a couple of basics. We're not allowed to kill, Christians. You're not allowed to kill anybody. And we don't kill people who kill people to show that killing is wrong. The days of killing there are over.

And only from within the boundaries of nonviolence. Refusing to take up the gun, the sword, or build bombs or drop nuclear weapons or cultivate violence in any form, then can we practice the universal love and universal compassion and universal peace that Jesus taught.

So, that's why I wrote a whole new book on this my life's work, The Gospel of Peace, which is reading Matthew, Mark and Luke, the Synoptic Gospels. I call it, from a Gandhian-Kingian hermeneutic. Which is a highfalutin word to say “from their perspective.” As if Doctor King and Gandhi are sitting over your shoulder, and we go through every sentence and show how Jesus is more nonviolent than them. Ain’t that great? It's never been done before.

So, I'm happy to be here to talk with you about that, and the core of Jesus's teachings of nonviolence and the Sermon on the Mount.

Stephanie: And you told me, Gandhi read the Sermon on the Mount every day.

Fr. John: What do you think of that, Stephanie?

Stephanie: That sounds just like Gandhi, to be honest.

Fr. John: Yeah, exactly. Again with the showing off.

So, I was asked by Orbis Books 25 years ago to do an anthology of Gandhi's writings. And so, I read the 100 volumes, The Collected Works of Gandhi. And then I read about 50 other volumes – biographies. And Daniel Berrigan said I had overdosed on Gandhi and needed a 12-step group.

You know, he's talking about the gospel and Jesus and nonviolence, I mean, his entire life. And I read that. And then after the book came out, I went to India with Arun Gandhi for a month, and we went to all the places where Gandhi lived. And Arun and his cousin Rajmahon, my friends, were raised by Gandhi. So, they knew him really well.

And we're there in Ahmedabad. And this is the place that Gandhi prayed. And Arun is telling me, what I kind of got from the letters that from 4 to 5 in the morning, they sat outside in silence. They did a Christian hymn, a Hindu hymn, a Muslim hymn, read a little bit of Bhagavad Gita Chapter 2, but also a little bit of Matthew 5. And then they were silent, and then they sang again. And then they did that in the evening. And this went on for 45 years. And when he was shot, and walking to the stage there at Birla House, they would have been hearing from the Sermon on the Mount.

Anyway, it's such a challenge to – on bad days, I think is Gandhi the only human being who took Jesus that seriously, who read the core fundamental teachings of Jesus every day? And Christians don't do that.

And I've been going around the country and the world for 25 years saying, “Look what Gandhi did. We better get our act together and start taking this guy seriously.” But see what Gandhi did, nobody else did. Gandhi did not approach the Sermon on the Mount, which is Matthew 5, 6, and 7, like Sacred Scripture. Like nice pious writings. Or even interesting poetry, because all holy scriptures are beautiful.

He said, “No, this is a handbook. It's a ‘how to be a human being’ manual. It's the textbook.” And he said, “Therefore, it's a textbook on how to practice nonviolence.” He's discovering this in South Africa, and he goes, “I want to be a person of nonviolence, ahimsa. This guy figured it out more than anybody, ever. So, I have to read the manual.” It was almost like directions. You know, how to set up your television.

Well, I don't read directions, and nobody reads directions. And certainly not going to read directions about the spiritual life or God. Gandhi said, “No, these are directions in how to live and therefore how to be nonviolent and how to love.”

And he was not Gandhi. He was a mess, like all the rest of us. What he did that no one else does is he just said, “I'm going to do what the guy says. By the way, it doesn't make sense, and I may not agree with it, and I definitely don't understand it. Doesn't matter. He's smarter than me. I'm going to do what he did because he embodied nonviolence. I don't.” And he became Gandhi in the process. That's what Jim Douglass says, which is a very powerful teaching. And that was what the nonviolent Jesus wanted. Isn't that great?

Stephanie: That’s beautiful. And it's quite thought-provoking as well. Where did Jesus learn his nonviolence?

Fr. John: In the Gospel of Luke, it's clearly framed that Jesus learned all nonviolence from a woman, his mother. Luke 1, the story of the Annunciation. Mary's there, the angel comes. That's the first movement of nonviolence, contemplative nonviolence. And once you encounter God and you go, “Hey, I don't know, but I'll do whatever God wants, because that's who I am.” That leads to the second movement of nonviolence, the Visitation, as active nonviolence. She goes out to serve her elderly cousin who's in need. Love your neighbor, which is a dangerous thing to do.

And once you love your neighbor and serve, that leads to the third movement of gospel nonviolence, prophetic nonviolence, the Magnificat. God is going to throw down the rulers of the world, and lift up the poor and oppressed, and remember the promise of mercy, for all ages. The promise of nonviolence. Isn’t that fantastic?

And then the next thing is, Jesus is born, and he lives that stuff out. You can see it. So, Luke frames it that way. That's good enough for me to go on.

Michael: Thank you. Gosh, that's inspiring, John. That's nothing short of inspiring. I was reminded that there was a missionary, Stanley Jones. And he said, there's only one real Christian in the world today, and he's a Hindu.

Fr. John: Yeah. Doctor King said that, too. Imagine Martin Luther King as a Baptist minister in the South.

Michael: Yeah.

Fr. John: Saying that at a Baptist convention. I mean, they wanted to kill him. First of all, Gandhi's going to hell, they thought, because he's not been baptized, with no understanding of – well, the spectacular teaching of the Sermon on the Mount is that God is nonviolent. That's the whole point. And so, we're nonviolent.

But I could talk about the Sermon on the Mount and the nonviolence of Jesus all day. And I know you wanted me to, so I wanted to go over four key teachings that people may or may not have heard. But if you want to ask me anything before, about that, Stephanie.

Stephanie: Well, it really – it's interesting because without the perspective of nonviolence, without understanding nonviolence, I imagine that the Sermon on the Mount and The Beatitudes would be hard to interpret, really.

Fr. John: Exactly. And it's the same with the Bhagavad Gita, which is a story of the training of, what Arjuna? The warrior – and Gandhi says, “No, that's about inner violence.”

Well, Jesus is explicitly about nonviolence and love. And so, what did we do? Well, we just ignored it. But it's right there in black and white for every human being to read. And, well, we killed the poor guy too, so.

Gandhi and King, and I would include Dorothy Day, offer a new, fresh perspective on how to see life, how to see what's going on inside us, our own violence, how to look at our families, how to look at the newspaper, the world, our lives, our work, churches, mosques, synagogues, the world. And it's all from the perspective of nonviolence. Everything now is seen through the lens of nonviolence, including the scriptures.

Gandhi reads Bhagavad Gita from a perspective of nonviolence. I think if you read the Jewish scriptures from the perspective of nonviolence, as my friends in the Jewish Peace Fellowship have told me, it's radical nonviolence. And same with Islam. And what I'm proposing, even Christianity [laughs] – God, I have – it’s stupid that I have to say “the Sermon on the Mount is about nonviolence.” Oh, boy.

And that's what I said in the Vatican. And that's what I've been trying to teach. But somebody's got to do it, since we're back to square one.

Michael: John, are you familiar with a book by Geoffrey Nuttall called, Christian Pacifism in History?

Fr. John: Possibly.

Michael: The reason I mention it is that he identifies five rediscoveries through history of gospel nonviolence. Though he doesn’t always use the word, of course. And, you know, they sputter into life, they tried to change the system, and they get overwhelmed.

So, it just seems like throughout history there's this struggle, repetitive struggle, to discover that truth that you are talking about. And because the truth is so hard to live out, people then make up rationalizations and go somewhere else.

But against that background, and I've been thinking about that book more and more, because where are we now? Is this a sixth rediscovery?

Fr. John: I do know that book and I never referred to it. Because if you may have noticed, I never – and, you know, I was the director of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, I got us to stop using the word pacifism because in the mainstream culture it just means passivity. But nonviolence is such a clumsy word, but nobody uses that. And it says, “No violence.”

But something's going on, Michael. Of course, you could make a case, it's one of the worst moments in history. We're closer to nuclear destruction, now in the throes of catastrophic climate change, something we couldn't imagine 20 years ago, really. We're living in it now. Well, okay, we're moving closer to the brink.

But somebody said we're actually – more is happening about nonviolence than ever before in history. Now, I don't know about that. We had Gandhi, who did spectacular work, and he appeared in the same time as Hitler, which has always amazed me. And then Martin Luther King was Gandhi's hope that there would be an African-American leader who would really take it to the mainstream to the West. Well, no one could do more than Martin King.

I mean, Elvis could reappear, and Doctor King did more than Elvis. I mean, I don't – I’m trying to make you laugh. That was Dan Berrigan's joke. You know, even if Elvis appeared, no one would believe in nonviolence. Martin did everything, and the churches did not much.

But it's all organizing. And Ken Butigan, and Marie Dennis and other friends, we sort of turned after the war in the 2000s on Iraq, and started organizing against the Vatican, almost for a laugh with Pope Benedict. “Hey, let's do some teachings on nonviolence.” And then he stepped down. And then Pope Francis appeared, and he's like, “Yeah, come on over.”

And next thing you know, he issues a statement, There is no just war theory. Well, no one has ever said that before. In fact, not only does it not apply, no one knows what it actually is. And he said, “Nonviolence is the norm for Christians.”

And we worked on that statement for him. It's really exciting. So, we're trying to get him to write an encyclical, which is the official document, and that would then go into Canon Law and the Catechism globally.

So, the Pope has made historic strides, outlawing any little hint that you could build a nuclear weapon, that deterrence is okay. That's gone. He's made historic strides. There's no justification, not a word for executions. And other stuff, okay, of course.

And now there is no such thing as a just war. But we want him to say Jesus was totally nonviolent, and Christians have to become nonviolent again, which means they can't be involved in war. We’re people of universal love, universal compassion, universal peace. I don't think it's going to happen. But we've done – more has happened than ever before.

Forgive me for being negative. I'm not that much of an optimist, but it's been amazing. And, you know, there's a lot of people promoting and teaching nonviolence, certainly more than since the 60s. So that's hopeful.

If people aren't familiar with the Sermon on the Mount, but are interested in nonviolence, I thought of four little points, which are the key points that people might like. So, the four different gospels – Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the first three, are written around the destruction of Jerusalem in the year 70.

Matthew's gospel is particularly written for the Jewish community that's converting to Christianity. So, it's very focused on Judaism in every aspect. It's lovely. So, the emphasis is what? We found the Messiah. The problem is, he's not quite the guy we hoped for. There's not going to be any war. He thinks he's Gandhi. He's totally into nonviolence.

So, Matthew frames the nonviolent Jesus as the new Moses going up the little mountain and sitting down and offering us the new commandments of nonviolence. Isn’t that great? And that's the whole design. So, the Sermon on the Mount is actually, the people, the community that wrote the Gospel of Matthew are bringing together all the best most basic teachings of Jesus, and they're putting them into what I call one basic campaign platform speech. This is it.

But nowhere does it say, by the way, this is called the Sermon on the Mount. That's just what we call it. And it's not a sermon. It's like if Martin Luther King were appearing, you know, in Wyoming, and 5000 people showed up, and you had a whole day, and he was going to talk. Well, this is what it would be like. And in fact, if anything, he ends up doing a classic Kingian nonviolence training. Isn’t that fantastic?

But it's weird. It's nothing like you or I would say. And he began to teach them. And so, we get the equivalent of Buddha's Noble Eightfold Path. But they're the Beatitudes. That's how it starts. And I'll just say them briefly. Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are those who mourn. Blessed are the meek. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice. And blessed are the merciful. Blessed are the clean of heart. Blessed are the peacemakers. Blessed are those persecuted for the sake of justice.

And then, finally, there's sort of an addendum, and blessed are you when they really go after you and insult you and call you every name in the book – rejoice and be glad, now you're like the prophets of old. Your reward will be great. That's how it begins.

And everybody goes, “Isn't that nice?” Jesus didn't speak Hebrew or Greek. The Gospels are written in Koine Greek. He spoke Aramaic, and his Aramaic is gone. But this French scholar spent his life trying to translate the Beatitudes and what we call the “Our Father,” back into the Aramaic.

And instead of “Blessed are,” “Aren't you nice?” like patting the dog on the head. If Jesus is like Gandhi or Doctor King, that's not what's going on here. Think. He's in the most remote, horrible place. It's a desert by a little lake. It's not pretty 2000 years ago. It's not like it is today.

It's on the outskirts of a brutal empire where the Romans are coming through and raping the women, burning down the houses, killing the kids, stealing the stuff, and making every man immediately now a Roman soldier – and we march on to the next town for the next victory for Caesar, called the gospel. So, these are really scared, oppressed people. Think South Africa under apartheid, Mississippi in the United States, or El Salvador, or Rwanda, or Syria, or Gaza. We can go on.

And this guy, the French scholar, says the word is not “blessed are.” In the Aramaic, it has all these connotations. So, the first sentence would be, “Arise. Get up. Start walking, and walk forth all you poor in spirit, mournful, meek, and you who are hungry and thirst for justice. Doesn’t that sound like King? The empowerment.

So, the guy said it’d be two phrases. Arise and walk forth. Get up and get moving, you who are merciful and pure in heart and peacemakers and persecuted for justice. Get going. He's empowering them to build a movement.

Well, I never knew that until about 20 years ago. It's incredible. And you go, “Now, this sounds like a guy they'd have to kill. And it sounds like Gandhi and Doctor King. It's just classic nonviolence.”

So, the two beatitudes I just wanted to mention, because I think they might help people, that I've done the most work on – and I've written 5 or 6 books on Jesus and nonviolence, including a whole book just on the Beatitudes called, The Beatitudes of Peace, if people want to pursue this – would be the third one, first.

Blessed are the meek, they will inherit the earth. And you go, “Isn't that nice?” Not at all. You know, I wrote a book on Thomas Merton, as pretty much all Catholic writers have to do at some point, 25 years ago, because I'm trying to learn nonviolence. Thomas Merton, Peacemaker.

And Merton wrote this incredible post-doctoral statement explaining the Christian roots of nonviolence for Hildegard Goss-Mayr and the Fellowship of Reconciliation, which he dedicated to Joan Baez in 1965, called Blessed Are the Meek.

Merton says that phrase, “blessed are the meek,” which is throughout the Psalms, does not mean what we think it means. Passivity. Aren't you nice. He said it means Martin Luther King. Thomas Merton said that in 1965. He said it's the active, public, provocative, total nonviolence of Martin Luther King, and we would include Gandhi. And that Jesus is saying that 2000 years ago.

Well, that gets me excited, and I'm going, “Why didn't I know this?” And then you go, “Why does Jesus say, okay, people who were like Gandhi and Doctor King, total nonviolence, they will inherit the earth?” Let's say – my translation, they are one with creation. What the heck does that mean? And why is no one in my whole life ever told me that?

And then I remembered we got rid of the Sermon on the Mount in the third century, created the just war. Constantine converted, made Christianity legal, and said, “You can all be soldiers now. You don't have to follow the nonviolence of Jesus,” in effect.

So, blessed are people of active nonviolence. Well, we're not doing that. And so, we're not one with the earth. And so, catastrophic climate change. To me, it was right there. “Inherit the Earth” is a phrase in the Psalms. “Meekness” is a phrase in the Psalms. Jesus puts them together. Well, nobody had ever said these things before in all of written history. Isn't that interesting, y'all?

And Gandhi's reading that sentence every single day. Nonviolence means oneness with creation. So, I wrote a whole book on that sentence called, They Will Inherit the Earth. If you care about the Earth, according to Jesus, you have to practice total active Gandhian-Kingian nonviolence. Well, that's a very mysterious and beautiful and hopeful teaching, and it's a way forward for all of us.

The second line, and then I'll stop about this for now, is, I guess the seventh beatitude, “Blessed are the peacemakers, they will be called the sons and daughters of God.” All the Beatitudes lead up to that teaching in my mind. So that's the statement. We're called to be peacemakers.

He doesn't say, “Blessed are you if you really like peace.” As someone said to me 30 years ago, “I'm a big fan of peace. But sometimes you just got to kill somebody.” That was in a packed church. I never forgot that. Everybody went, “Well, she's got a point.” Well, anyway, no.

And so, what does that mean? Well, you can't be a warmaker. You can't be part of war. And this is so stupid. It's kindergarten level, and people have wanted to kill me. And I've been kicked out of places all over the country to say, “Well, I think it goes like this, ‘Blessed are the peacemakers.’ Which means he's not saying blessed are the war-makers and following the prophetic language of Jeremiah that the Gospels are reflecting on. He would be saying something like, ‘Cursed are the war-makers, and therefore we have to be against all war, all weapons, all nuclear weapons. Every intention to kill.’”

And you go, as I did when I was a young kid, “Okay, great, I love it. I'm all for peacemaking. Why?” And this, again, is the weird mystery of Jesus that I've talked about all around the world. He said, “You go into the culture of permanent warfare because your fundamental identity as a human being is you are the beloved daughter, the beloved son of the living God of peace.”

Wow! That to me is just game changing. He says God is a peacemaker. No, the whole point is God's got to throw those people in hell. God blesses our troops, not their troops. No, God didn't bless any troops. God doesn't bless any wars. God is on the side of the peacemakers because they're actually like his firstborn sons and daughters.

So, this is so important because I think – I don't know if we've ever talked about this, Michael, and I’ll try to sum up this thing. It's the bottom line for me. And I've said this in all my 40 books. And I get this in Gandhi because he would have gotten this. Gandhi says, “The heart of nonviolence is you see every human being is a sister and brother.” Okay, great. How did he get that teaching?

I think the culture of violence and empire and war, from Rome to Britain to the United States, is always telling us who we are, and we go right along with it. “You're an American. You're a Republican. You're a Democrat. You live in California, or whatever. Or you're rich. Actually, you're a nobody. But you could be somebody if you do.”

And then there was that commercial in the 70s. “You want to be all you can be? Join the Marines and kill to defend the United States.” In other words, the culture of war is saying the highest identity there is, is to kill to protect your empire. Rome said that. The United States says that.

Our guy comes along and says, “No, this is who you are. You are beloved sons and daughters of a living God of universal peace, who only makes peace, doesn’t know how to make war. But he gives us the option because he's nonviolent.”

And I've been inviting people to claim their fundamental identity as the beloved sons and daughters of the God of peace. And so, then you walk into the culture, and you just speak out against war and nuclear weapons and killing everywhere – in your families, in the neighborhood, in your city and the state, in the country, in the world. That's what we do. We can't help ourselves. We’re sons and daughters of God. This is our job. Isn’t that great?

I'll let you tell me what you think about that, and then I'll go on to my other two points. I want to know what you think.

Stephanie: Well, I think it's funny that I have this conception of this kind of beautiful field of daisies and Jesus holding us in the palm of his hand. And you're really like an anthropologist here, an anthropologist of these prayers and pulling it out of the stone, you know, of where these teachings have been hidden from the culture.

Fr. John: They are spectacular teachings, and they're incredibly radical and life-changing and world-changing, and we've totally ignored them. It's incredible, but I find it very exciting. But I get this from Gandhi and Doctor King. Isn't it exciting that they did such great work?

So, after he does the Beatitudes – this is the terminology of the scholars – he offers six antitheses, okay? Remember, he's supposed to be like the new Moses. Here are the new commandments. You're my chosen people. But now every human being is chosen, and it's all nonviolence all the time. This is amazing. And we're going on a movement, and we're going to bring down the Roman Empire. So, they kill him. And he comes back, and he's still at it, by the way.

So, I could go on and on about the first one. But the way they wrote in those days was that the center of the text was the climax. Not the way we write, which is all build-up to a dramatic climax, and there's a short denouement.

So, the climax is this the fifth and sixth teaching, which is sort of at, a third of the way through the Sermon on the Mount. And the antithesis goes like this, “You have heard it said, but I say to you,” okay? And that's the new teaching.

And the fifth one, this just gets me so excited. You have heard it said, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” Well, that's the whole Mosaic Law, which was progress. That's the Torah, I think. You know, “Okay, if they come and chop out your eye, you can chop out their eye.” At least we're not killing each other.

But Gandhi then comes along and says, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth makes the whole world blind and toothless.” But it's then Jesus. “But I say to you,” and this is the best translation from the original Greek. And this is what I've been trying to tell the world, because Walter Wink is the one who – he's the one who really unpacked this more than anybody in history, in the 70s and 80s. He said, “The translation is,” and I always invite people to memorize it with me because maybe the most important thing Jesus said and no one even knows it. “But I say to you, offer no violent resistance to one who does evil.”

I'm going to repeat that: “Offer no violent resistance to one who does evil.” There it is. And that's the sentence Gandhi read every morning and every evening. I kid you not. And he said, “Well, if that's the methodology of Jesus,” then, by the way, if you're going to do an eye for an eye, you really don't need God. If you got money, you got weapons, you don't really need God.

But if you're going to be no more violence, you need God to get you through the day. You know, then the Psalms start to make sense. My rock, my security, because I don't have any weapons and I don't have any money.

This is the basis of everything Gandhi did in South Africa then. He was taking ahimsa to another level and going, “Wow, Jesus means this to be applied not just on the personal level, but on the nation level.” And then he goes to India, and it's on the global level. Indian people should not respond to British imperialism and oppression and violence with further oppression and violence and killing. No, we have to organize nonviolently.

So, then Walter Wink says Jesus does a classic Kingian nonviolence training. Remember, these are oppressed people in the outback. And he goes, “Let me give you five examples, okay? Someone comes along and strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other cheek.” You all heard that.

Well, what I do in my workshops is I stand two people up in the room. I usually say, “No.” I'll bring up a priest who's hosting me, and I'll say, “Okay, now I'm going to demonstrate, I'm going to hit the priest.” Everybody laughs. And I go to hit them, and so I'm going to – I'm demonstrating. And I say, “What's wrong with this picture? It's not possible to strike someone on the right cheek.

Think about it. If you're right-handed, nobody's left-handed because that was for unclean stuff. So, you go to strike someone on the cheek, you hit them on the left cheek. This is not what this is about because it specifically says it.

So, this is like Martin Luther King, you know, in Birmingham now or in Montgomery. Now we're getting somewhere. He's saying the Roman soldier is coming in, you're kneeling down before him, and he's striking you with the back of the hand. It's all top down, humiliation, oppression. You turn the other cheek and say, “Sorry, man, but I'm a human being. You have to treat me like an equal.” And it's scary and risky, but there's no violence. But you're not passive. You're not running away.

So, the world always says in the face of violence, you do nothing, run away, be passive, or you fight back with the means to the opponent. And Jesus, for the first time in history, I think you could argue, presents Gandhian-Kingian methodology of nonviolent resistance, saying, “You stand your ground, but you don't use the means of your opponent, but you deal with your opponent head on with love and truth and say, ‘I'm a human being. Why are you hurting me?’ Even to the point that you accept violence without retaliating until you wear them down, and you reconcile, and he repents,” and so forth.

What gets me about this teaching is the history of it. So, it was totally ignored, basically. You know, when Christianity became an imperial religion, some fled to the desert of Africa. We call them the desert fathers and mothers, and they saved nonviolence.

And then as the centuries went on, some formed monasteries, like in Ireland. But they ended up having their own soldiers, so that didn't work, but they were trying. And then, you know, we had the just war theory. In the Middle Ages, you have the Crusades, and the Cardinals are leading the killing of the thousands of Muslims. It’s so evil. And then slavery and so forth.

Saint Francis and Saint Claire bring it along, and then you get the Quakers. Their translation is wrong, “I say, offer passive resistance.” And that's what got us in so much trouble. But it was enough for them to organize the abolitionist movement, which led to the suffragist movement.

So, in the US, did you know that William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass, when they launched the abolitionist movement in the 1820s, they cited this verse, “We are people – we are pacifists, and therefore we can't support slavery. And therefore, we are now calling for the abolition of slavery.” They based everything on the Sermon on the Mount.

And as the years go on, their best friend, John Brown, says, “Enough with the pacifism.” And by 1859, on the brink of the Civil war, they all renounced the gospel and said, “You're right. We got to just go and kill the white slave owners,” all except for one guy. William Lloyd Garrison's lieutenant, Adin Ballou says, “No, I'm going to stay with nonviolence.” And he lived into the 1880s, had a pile of kids, formed the ashram. He writes a manifesto on nonviolence. He dies, his son publishes it and mails it to the 100 most famous people on the planet – Queen Victoria, the Pope, Rutherford B. Hayes, nobody who cares, except for the most famous guy on the planet, Leo Tolstoy.

And he gets it in the mail, reads that and basically says, “I will spend the rest of my life on this one sentence, ‘Offer no violent resistance to one who does evil.’” And so, he writes The Kingdom of God Is Within You. And the first sentence, “I got in the mail a pamphlet from Adin Ballou's son,” the legendary. It would be like Andrew Young. It'd be like Doctor King renouncing nonviolence to support the Vietnam War and everybody but Andrew Young saying, “No, why are we get…”

And Tolstoy wanted to convert the Russian Orthodox Church to this and to stop making imperial religion, and totally failed. But he gets this letter from this guy in South Africa. “Dear Mr. Tolstoy, I read your thing. I, too, will give my life for this sentence. Mohandas K. Gandhi.” I find that lineage of nonviolence really amazing.

And that's what I've tried to do, like you all, to keep that verse alive. And I tried really hard to say this in the Vatican. Like, this is the sentence that you need to be telling the world. This is why we need an encyclical.

And if we got an encyclical, forget the United States, it would go the whole planet. 1.5 billion people would start reading about nonviolence. Francis could do this, and I don't know if it's going to happen, beyond Gandhi and Doctor King, in some ways, because of the media.

Anyway, that's the fundamental teaching. And that leads to the six antitheses. And this is the climax. And then he says, “You have heard it said, love your countrymen and hate your enemies. But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons and daughters of God in heaven.”

No one has ever said those words before in history. And in the Greek, the way it's been translated and talked about down through the centuries has been, “Well, you know, the person across the street is crazy. He's your enemy, but you're going to love him anyway. Okay?” No, that's not what this is about.

Countrymen – because women didn't count as human beings. So, it's nation-state language. This is very important. And hate your enemies. “But I say to you, agape your enemies. Unconditional, nonviolent, active, aggressive love to the people targeted by your nation state for death.”

So, that means for us as Americans, if you're a Christian during the last century, you have to love the Germans and try to stop our country from killing them. And you have to side with the Jews who are being killed, and stop the Germans. And you have to side with the Japanese, especially the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And then Korea. You have to side with the Vietnam War and stop our country from killing them. And then go down the list – Central America, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Palestine, now Sudan, all the places of the world and now with nuclear weapons and so forth.

It goes beyond the abolition of war. He could have said, “We're going to abolish war.” Well, that would have been helpful, Jesus. But it's taken me a lifetime to realize this is so beyond that. It's so political. It's the end of the nation state system. It's a call for universal love. And the minute you do that, the people are going to persecute you because you're not supposed to side with the Palestinians or the Iraqis or Afghanistan.

And Jesus says, “Well then you pray for them while you're actively speaking out.” And, okay, I'm reading this as a 21-year-old kid, and I'm going, “Great, fine, I'll sign up. I'll do it. Just tell me why.” And I can't find anyone to help me. No one's talking.

And then I find – who talks about the Sermon on the Mount? I go and read, for the first time in 1982, the sermons of Martin Luther King. And the book is still out. It's called Strength to Love. And he has one of the greatest sermons, maybe the greatest in history, called Love Your Enemies. And he explains the whole darn thing.

Martin says, if he were preaching it, “Jesus does not say love your enemies because it's the moral thing to do, even though it is. Jesus does not say love your enemies because it's the philosophic good to be done,” right? Even though it is. That's choosing goodness. “Jesus does not say love your enemies,” and this is where he gets to me, “because it's the only practical political solution left for the planet,” even though it is.

If we all did that, we'd have to stop killing each other. Then we'd have all this money, and we could feed everybody, and we could fund nonviolent conflict resolution. Why? Martin Luther King said, “It's right there. Love your enemies. And didn't we just agree to this?” “Didn't I explain this to you half hour ago?” poor Jesus would be saying. “Then you're really sons and daughters of the God who lets the sun rise on the good and the bad, and the rain to fall on the just and the unjust.”

I remember finally getting that when I was 21 through Doctor King's teaching, and went, “It's just – this is fantastic.” Because number one, it's the most political statement in the entire Bible, and we've done everything we can to pretend he never said it.

It's the measure of Christianity. It's the bottom line. It's beyond nonviolence. Love your enemies. But there in the same sentence, the most political sentence in the Bible, is the clearest description of the mystery of God that Jesus ever said. Because he actually didn't talk that much about God. He's doing stuff to show us what it means to be godly.

But he says, actually, “God is a God of universal love toward every human being.” And he uses nature images – the sun and the rain. It’s so beautiful. And that's why then we say God is a peacemaker.

Stephanie: And for those of you who are listening, we are Nonviolence Radio, and we're sharing an interview that we did with Reverend John Dear.

You can find more about John Dear at JohnDear.org, the Beatitudes Center for the Nonviolent Jesus at BeatitudesCenter.org. And you can find the rest of this interview in full, which is an hour long, at NonviolenceRadio.org. We should have it up on our website in a couple of days. So, we're going to turn now to some nonviolence going on all over the world, our Nonviolence Report with Michael Nagler. Welcome, Michael.

Nonviolence Report 

Michael: Thank you so much, Stephanie. And that was certainly a challenging beginning to our program. And I would like to start off by sharing a couple of resources that are going to be very helpful in responding to that challenge.

Now, the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania has been doing excellent work on the media for decades and mostly documenting how harmful commercial mass media are in promoting violence.

But they now have an institution there at the Annenberg School called the Peace and Conflict Neuroscience Lab, which I am very, very interested in. I think physical physiological sciences weighing in to prove that nonviolence works is kind of the pivotal change that we need in our day and age. So PCNL, if you like acronyms – peace and conflict neuroscience lab.

And what they have done is produced what they call targeted media interventions, which in this instance is just a five-minute video that they can use to bolster reintegration efforts between former enemies. And we are talking former Palestinian activists and former IDF soldiers, who, just looking at a five-minute video are learning how they can, well, basically, and the terms that John Dear was just sharing with us, how they can learn to love one another.

So, we have said so much and the Annenberg School has said so much about how harmful violent media is, and it's wonderful to have the balance of that to show how helpful nonviolent media can be. Which, of course, is what the Metta Center is all about.

Now, another thing that we like to focus on, an event that happened over a period of many years during WWII, is the famous story of Le Chambon, which was a small village in the Dordogne region of France. Where a pastor by the name of Andre Trocme and his brother and his wife, decided that, in contravention to the orders of the Vichy regime, they would rescue Jews.

Bryan Farrell of Waging Nonviolence had started a series, a ten-part podcast series from Waging Nonviolence to take us inside that remarkable and little known story, how they openly resisted the Nazis and rescued more than 5000 refugees.

I want to focus for a second on that word openly. Long after the war, Philip Hallie, who writes his book, Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed. He went to Major Schmäling, who is still alive, who was the commandant in charge of that region for the Nazi occupation and said, “How could you not have known that this was going on?”

And Schmäling said, “What makes you think we didn't know? We knew perfectly well what was going on. But we, I'm a good Catholic, you know?” He said, “And I understand these things. This was nonviolence and violence is powerless against it.” That is a rough paraphrase of what he actually said.

Well, coming back to the present where there is, I'm happy to say, some refreshing nonviolence news. We always like to promote unarmed civilian peacekeeping, UCP, as a front-line organization where the conflicts are at their worst, and where courageous people are facing them down.

And they are doing hard work in Palestine, which we are pretty much familiar with, and in the Western Sahara, where we're not so familiar. Western Sahara has been occupied by Morocco since 1972. And Palestine, of course, has been occupied by Israel for the last 75 years. And UCP is operating in both these areas, like in the village of At-Tuwani in the South Hebron Hills that Stephanie and I visited.

And I want to highlight a couple of things that they say that they are doing because this is what unarmed civilian peacekeeping does. They are documenting and resisting – documenting the daily challenges faced by Palestinians, including settler violence, military harassment, systematic displacement. And by their presence, the UCP’s presence, they were able to not only shine a light on these injustices, but also serve as a shield for vulnerable communities. And they call this, “Embodying the essence of unarmed civilian protection.” And this demonstrates how individuals, regardless of background, can contribute to the global pursuit of peace and justice.

Now, Michael Beer at Nonviolence International has received requests for international intervention by both these groups – Palestinians and the Saharawi groups, to help protect them from violent occupiers. And Michael points out that the US and most European states support or acquiesce to the Israeli and Moroccan illegal occupations and the repressions of these residents.

And so, now the sentence I wanted to quote, “To fill the vacuum, international groups and tourists are helping.” So, this is a major failure of the international community into which non-governmental organizations are rushing to fill that critical vacuum.

A couple of things now on the environment. In Norway, there has been a very big win because the Norwegians are getting ready to do deep sea mining in the Arctic Circle. And this is now a direct quote, “After hard work from activists, environmentalists, scientists, and fishermen, we have secured a historic win for ocean protection as the opening process for deep sea mining in Norway has been stopped.”

Continuing the quote, “The wave of protests against deep sea mining is growing. We will not let this industry destroy the unique life in the deep sea, not in the Arctic, nor anywhere else.” Now that's the spirit of nonviolence for you in its resistant mode.

Also in the United Kingdom, happy to say, as a former academic – as I like to say, a recovering academic myself – in the UK, 77% of universities have now pledged to divest from fossil fuels. The latest ones include, Birmingham City University, Glasgow City of Art, Royal Northern College of Music, and the University of Bradford, where there has been a peace studies program for many, many years now.

Now, this is important because universities sit on major endowments that invest billions in fossil fuels, among other things. And so, getting them to divest is significant. Another very catchy phrase that comes up in this connection, “What good is an education on a dead planet?” That's reminiscent of, “Why should I go to school?” you know, the movement that started by Greta Thunberg. God bless her.

Similarly, some other nice news, in Kenya, there is now an interesting model I want to draw your attention to. I think its connection with nonviolence is obvious. It's called “Food4Education”. And they have been feeding 350,000 kids school lunches every day. And as we know, giving kids school lunches has a huge impact. It enables them to, well, for one thing, stay awake. For another, pay attention to something other than knowing hunger. And it has led to a well focused effort on improving their education and their functionality as human beings.

So, a report by UNICEF that came out in June found that in that country, in Kenya, almost 80% of children in schools had no access to a nutritious school meal. So, this project, Food4Education, they’re feeding a third of a million children, one of their spokespeople in Ajuru said, quote, “We can put an end to this. We have a blueprint that works.” And that is a very, very important thing for nonviolent actions to be able to say that not only are solving this problem here, but we have a model that can be duplicated, that's critically important.

If I have one second more, I'll just mention that there's a development that Doctor King and Thich Nhat Hanh supported called Beloved Community Circles. And since these are difficult challenging times, I think that's a very helpful idea and a very good, resource for all of us – Beloved Community Circles. All right, beloved community, thank you very much. Until our next episode.

Stephanie: So, a Beloved Community Circle, I believe you can find it online. There is a resource, and it's encouraging people to come together, study together, support each other in spiritual practices, and also get involved in community action. I think it's BelovedCommunityCircles.org or something like that. And it's, I think it came out of the Thich Nhat Hanh movement.

Michael: At Plum Village, yeah.

Stephanie: So, this has been a great show. Thank you so much, Michael Nagler, for your Nonviolence Report. We want to thank our guest today, Reverend John Dear. Find out more about his work at JohnDear.org. Also, check out the Beatitudes Center for the Nonviolent Jesus, BeatitudesCenter.org. He has a new book out, Gospel of Peace: A Commentary on Matthew, Mark, and Luke from the Perspective of Nonviolence.

We want to thank our mother station, KWMR, KPCA, to the Pacific Network who helps to syndicate this show. Thank you so much. Matt and Robin Watrous, your transcription work and editorial work is amazing. Sophia, Annie, thank you very much for all you're doing to support and share the show. Bryan, also over at Waging Nonviolence, we appreciate the syndication.

And to all of you are faithful listeners, it's so great to hear from you. Find the rest of this show at NonviolenceRadio.org, and you can learn more about the Metta Center for Nonviolence, and nonviolence at Metta Center.org.

Okay. Take care of one another. Until the next time.