Participants in this year\u2019s Church of the Brethren Minister\u2019s Association were privileged to receive the teaching and story telling of Fr. John Dear, a Jesuit priest, author, and activist for nonviolence. John (who preferred that we call him that and not \u201cfather dear\u201d) came to speak with the Brethren with the strong conviction to affirm who we are as a living peace church, and to challenge us to step further into that calling.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n <\/p>\n His presentation, \u201cWalking Toward Peace,\u201d was based in large part on his book titled \u201cThe Non-Violent Life,\u201d one of some 30 books he has written related to nonviolence and peacemaking. Each participant received a copy of this resource.<\/p>\n He described his task with us to be a cheerleader, calling us to take our peacemaking heritage \u201ca step further\u201d in our own lives as pastors. In our culture and society, he candidly stated, \u201cwe are experts in violence.\u201d To counter that, we need to consciously choose to be nonviolent in our responses to situations and to each other.<\/p>\n The compelling question that pervaded his presentations was, \u201cWhere are you on the road to peace?\u201d He spoke of this path as a journey for the followers of Jesus, and offered his particular challenge to pastors through these three commitments:<\/p>\n — To be perfectly nonviolent to oneself Fr. John Dear\u2019s story itself is a profound testimony of the road to peace. As a young man, he found himself challenged by the words of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. In the Chapel of the Beatitudes in Galilee, confronted with the words of Jesus emblazoned on every wall, he had the compelling sense that Jesus was serious about peacemaking and nonviolence. His days of learning and experience of nonviolent civil disobedience with Daniel Berrigan shaped him powerfully. His journey could be summarized as a response to Berrigan\u2019s answer about how to proceed on this path of peace. Berrigan told him, \u201cAll you have to do is to make your story fit into the peacemaking story of Jesus.\u201d In his current work in a parish in New Mexico, he continues to challenge the pervasive powers of violence with a persistent activism of nonviolence.<\/p>\n Guiding his testimony is the core conviction that our work as followers of Jesus is to promote the reign of God as Jesus did. He reiterated the consistent actions and words of Jesus, from the gospel accounts, that addressed the violence of his world and culture with nonviolent responses.\u00a0 While a departure for many of us from traditional interpretations of the Eucharist and the cross, he reminded us that the Eucharist or Communion is the new covenant of nonviolence, and that Jesus\u2019 last words to the church (his followers) before his crucifixion were \u201cput away your swords,\u201d and the testimony of the cross is that \u201cviolence stops here.\u201d<\/p>\n His prophetic perspective challenged pastoral leaders to stand up against what he calls the \u201canti-reign\u201d of God, exemplified in the pervasive culture of violence that often uses the language of peace to describe its conduct. Drawing on the testimonies of Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, and the Berrigan brothers, he reminded us of the power of unconditional and sacrificial love.<\/p>\n Through exploration of the Beatitudes and Luke 10, he compelled us to see our calling in Jesus\u2019 work of nonviolence, to be public but not political in our nonviolent activity aware that our citizenship is in the kingdom of God, and to remember that we ourselves are \u201crecovering addicts of violence\u201d and need to address the violence toward and within ourselves as we work on nonviolent responses to our culture.<\/p>\n Jokingly describing his many incarcerations, he made us aware that being a follower of the nonviolent Jesus has serious implications. Sprinkled throughout his presentations was the reminder that we as peacemakers are a part of the prophetic community. As such, we are called to be people of hope, which in the words of King \u201cis the final refusal to give up.\u201d<\/p>\n — Del Keeney pastors Mechanicsburg (Pa.) Church of the Brethren.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Participants in this year\u2019s Church of the Brethren Minister\u2019s Association were privileged to receive the teaching and story telling of Fr. John Dear, a Jesuit priest, author, and activist for nonviolence. John (who preferred that we call him that and not \u201cfather dear\u201d) came to speak with the Brethren with the strong conviction to affirm who we are as a living peace church, and to challenge us to step further into that calling.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1258,1267,1263],"wf_post_folders":[],"class_list":["post-11635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-annual-conference","tag-ministry-office","tag-peace"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11635"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11635\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11637,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11635\/revisions\/11637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11635"},{"taxonomy":"wf_post_folders","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wf_post_folders?post=11635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2018\/10\/john-dear-wows-the-ministers.jpg\")
John Dear wows the Ministers Association.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\n— To have a ridiculous commitment to nonviolence toward all people and all of creation
\n— To have one foot in the global grassroots movement of nonviolence.<\/p>\n