Today I'm speaking with Dr. Ken Butigan, author, organizer, activist, speaker, nonviolence trainer, and leader of Pace e Bene, a Franciscan-based peace organization.

Ken is Professor of Practice in the Peace, Justice, and Conflict Studies Program at DePaul. He has worked in a series of movements for social change, including campaigns addressing homelessness, nuclear weapons, freedom for East Timor, and the US wars in Iraq.

In the 1980s he was a founder and national coordinator of the Pledge of Resistance, which for nearly a decade mobilized nonviolent action for peace in Central America. He has worked for over 30 years with Pace e Bene Nonviolence Service, which has trained tens of thousands of people in the power of nonviolent change and which organizes Campaign Nonviolence, a long-term, nationwide effort seeking to foster a more nonviolent culture free from war, poverty, racism, and environmental destruction.

In recent years, Ken works with Pax Christi International's Catholic Nonviolence Initiative and the Vatican to promote Gospel nonviolence literally around the world through the Catholic church. He has published seven books, including Pilgrimage through a Burning World: Spiritual Practice and Nonviolent Protest at the Nevada Test Site; Nonviolent Lives; and From Violence to Wholeness. Ken earned his Ph.D. in the Historical and Cultural Studies of Religions at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. He lives in Chicago with his wife Cynthia and daughter Leah.

He shares with me his spiritual awakening as a young man and how it changed his life path and led him to take part in anti nuclear weapon demonstrations.

Dan shares with me: "I wasn't particularly political, but I was distressed by nuclear weapons, so I called Daniel Berrigan and asked to visit him when I was going to be in New York City. He invited me over. I was transformed in those 3 hours." Listen as he tells us how Dan Berrigan clarifies why Ken should in nonviolent organization.

When describing his leadership in various campaigns, he keeps returning to the refrain:

"We have more power than we think.” “

We stopped the official U.S. invasion of Nicaragua because of ordinary people power….Through the Nevada Desert Experience, by 1993, after over 25,000 were arrested at the Test site, we generated enough people power to get a test-ban treaty promulgated and signed by over 187 nations.

Through the Declaration of Peace, we helped end the U.S. war in Iraq in the mid-2000s.”

Be inspired and motivated by this conversation with this amazing human being who believes:

"We need each other, we need to be rooted in prayer, we need to follow the nonviolent Jesus, and create conditions for a global shift.”

Check out: www.paceebene.org

Philip Berrigan’s “Ministry of Risk” with Brad Wolf

By John Dear

On this week’s episode of “The Nonviolent Jesus Podcast,” I welcome former prosecutor, professor, community college dean, and now full-time activist Brad Wolf from Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

Brad is executive director of Peace Action Network of Lancaster; co-coordinator of “The Merchant of Death War Crimes Tribunal;” and current chair of the U.S. organizing committee for the “People’s Tribunal on the Korean Victims of the 1945 Atomic Bombings.”

Brad recently edited the first ever collection of writings on peace and nonviolence by legendary activist Philip Berrigan, called A Ministry of Risk (Fordham University Press).

Brad tells me why his writings are so important, and how Philip and his brother Dan Berrigan were the St Peter and St Paul of their day as nonviolent activists:

With his brother Daniel, he was a leading voice and organizer against the Vietnam War in the 1960s and 1970s. By the time of his death in 2002, he spent over 11 years of his life in prison for acts of nonviolent civil disobedience against warmaking and nuclear weapons.

We discuss Phil’s leadership and daring actions from the Baltimore Four action in 1967, the Catonsville Nine action in 1968, and to the 1980 Plowshares disarmament action and the other plowshares actions Phil did, including one with John in December 1993.

Brad tells how during the pandemic, he read through Phil’s archives at Cornel and DePaul, and how on the first day, he found a quote from Phil that became the title of his book: “A ministry of risk goes unerringly to the side of the victims, to those threatened or destroyed by greed, prejudice, and war. From the side of those victims, it teaches two simple, indispensable lessons: first, that we all belong in the ditch, or in the breach, with the victims; and second that until we go to the ditch or into the breach, victimizing will not cease.”

“Phil was not fazed by anything,” Brad says. "You have to be faithful enough to suffer and daring enough to serve," Phil wrote. "Obeying God's Word can get you killed."

Reflecting on his long friendship with Phil and Dan, John added that they were the most “biblical” Christians he ever knew, who read the Bible day and night, and spent every day trying to obey the Word of God.

Brad talks about a question Phil put to a youth retreat in the late 1950s, a question that came to haunt him and motivate him for the rest of his life. “What does Christ ask of me?” Brad concludes that Phil would want us to wrestle with that question, and take new risks for peace and justice, to go into the breach, and follow the journey of the nonviolent Jesus. Listen in and be inspired! And check out:

www.philipberrigan.com

www.danielberrigan.org

www.merchantsofdeath.org

www.beatitudescenter.org

*Note: Terry can sometimes be difficult to understand due to a medical condition: a written transcript of this episode is available for reading.

This week I welcome teacher, organizer and author, Terry Rynne, author of two important books, Jesus Christ Peacemaker, and Gandhi and Jesus” (Orbis Books).

Terry is a former priest from Chicago, who became a hospital administrator. Then from 1983-2003, he was President of Rynne Marketing Consulting Services which advised over 400 hospitals, in 48 states, over the 20 years.

In 2006, he received his PhD in Theology from Marquette University, and then in 2008, he co-founded, with his wife Sally, the Center for Peacemaking at Marquette University, which has gone on to make a huge difference in Milwaukee teach nonviolent conflict resolution skills in schools. For years, he has taught the Introduction to Peace Studies course at Marquette University. He is also chair of the Board of Beatitudes Center.

Terry speaks about the power of Gandhi’s salt march to mobilize the people of India to demand justice and independence, and in particular, the famous silent march to the Dharasana Salt Works, and how the world was shocked by the British response to the peaceful, unarmed, nonviolent movement.

“Jesus devoted his life to confronting the structures of oppression and violence and changing them,” he says. In the earliest Gospel, in one of his first public actions, Mark’s Jesus heals the man with the withered hand in the synagogue, and in the next sentence, we read that that the religious authorities met with the political leaders to plot the assassination of Jesus.

What did Jesus do? Terry asks. Why do they want to kill him? How are we to model his approach in our unjust world?

“Why did Jesus die?” Terry asks. "We, too, need to stand up, speak out and resist the structures of violence and oppression, even to the point of offending the powers that be".

Jesus also removed suffering from people; changed the culture's attitude towards violence; and turned enemies into friends. That’s his challenge for us.

“Nonviolence is at the heart of the gospel,” he concludes. “Nonviolence adds love even in the midst of conflict. These days, I have hope in the Catholic Church becoming a peaceful church that embraces nonviolence. We can get there.”

Listen in to this great teacher of nonviolence and be inspired!

For more information on the nonviolent Jesus: https://www.beatitudescenter.org