Skip to main content

Hosting Fr. John Dear at Drew tonight

One of the endowed lectures series at Drew University is the Henri Nouwen Lecture in Classical Christian Spirituality, which provides means to invite to campus note-worthy practitioners of contemplative spirituality and active ministry as embodied in the life and works of Henri Nouwen.
This year's distinguished lecturer is Fr. John Dear--an internationally known activist for peace and nonviolence, and friend of Henri Nouwen.   And someone whom I've known for many years and deeply respect. His lecture on the spirituality of peace-making is on Monday, Sept. 27, at 7:30pm in Craig Chapel of Drew Theological School.

Fr. John Dear is a Jesuit priest, pastor to the poor, peacemaker, organizer, lecturer, and author/editor of 25 books, including The God of Peace: Toward a Theology of Nonviolence, and his autobiography, “A Persistent Peace.”  

John is former executive director of Fellowship for Reconciliation, the largest interfaith peace organization in the United States.  He served as pastor of several parishes in northeastern New Mexico, co-founded Pax Christi New Mexico, and continues to work on a nonviolent campaign to disarm Los Alamos.  He has graduate degrees in theology from the GTU in Berkeley, CA, and has taught theology at Fordham University in New York.  Today, he lectures to tens of thousands of people each year in churches and schools across the country and the world. He also writes a weekly column for the “National Catholic Reporter.”
http://www.johndear.org/

After the death of Henri Nouwen in 1996, John put together Henri's published and unpublished writings on peace in one edited volume. The Road to Peace: Writings on Peace and Justice by Henri Nouwen, edited by Fr. John Dear, SJ. is one of the text books I use in my courses and seminars on the spirituality of Henri Nouwen.

What I like most about this book is how John knitted together the various strands of Henri Nouwen’s experiences and reflections on social justice and peacemaking, including:
  • marching with Martin Luther King Jr, from Selma to Montgomery in 1965
  • speaking at a moratorium rally against the Vietnam War in 1972;
  • his Good Friday Peace Action –a prayer vigil at Groton, CT, in protest to the christening of the navy’s new Trident nuclear submarine called the ‘Corpus Christi’ (when I attended Yale in 1980);
  • his participation in public protests at Nevada Test Sites calling for nuclear disarmament and nonviolent direct action against militarism;
  • his ministry of solidarity with the poor in Peru and Guatemala (1981-82);
  • his participation with Witnesses for Peace on the border of Honduras and Nicaragua (1983);
  • his six-week national Peacemaking tour in north America seeking to raise public support to change US policies in Latin America under the Regan Administration (1983);
  • living and working among the poor and broken in Latin American and at L’Arche community in Canada from 1986-1996).
  • his prophetic call for inclusion and embrace of people with HIV/AIDS as beloved children of God in the 1980’s and 1990’s. 
Nominated by ArchBishop Desmond Tutu in 2008 for the Noble Peace Prize, Fr. John Dear--peacemaker and beloved child of God--will be a Drew tonight.


Popular posts from this blog

Mother Shalom

South Central, Los Angeles, was the neighborhood in the city where Communities of Shalom began in 1992. I met Marx Gutierrez from El Salvador who was there attending High School at the time. He remembers what happened at the corner of Florence and Normandy Streets in South Central, LA, when Reginald Denny was pulled out of his truck and beaten while the crowd looked on and the police did nothing; and how the Rodney King beating resulted in a not-guilty verdict for the police and resulted in a major, 3-day uprising in the neighborhood, until the National Guard came in and finally imposed law and order. He can still remember the fires, the bright orange night sky, the mass looting, 45 unsolved killings, the social chaos...And how the United Methodist Churches responded by creating a zone of shalom in 7 neighborhoods of Los Angeles. Today, Marx is a community organizer, and married to Jennifer Gutierrez, Conference Shalom Coordinator in the Calif-Pacific Annual Conference, and Rev. Vilma

First Generation Lambs Club Reunion

Fifteen of us gathered Saturday night at the Lambs Club for a 35 th year reunion of those who helped start the Lamb’s Church in Times Square in the mid to late 1970’s, including: Rev. Paul S. Moore , Founder of the Lamb’s Church of the Nazarene, and his wife, Tamara Dr. Michael J. Christensen , charter member and former associate pastor, and his wife Dr. Rebecca Laird Fr. William (BJ) Webe r, former Associate Pastor and Director of the Lamb’s Residency, and his wife Sheila who lived at the Lamb’s Jim and Dustee Hullinger, who were on staff together and made the Lamb’s their home for over 25 years Effie Canepa , who was the church pianist under 3 pastors, and her husband Peter Shirley Close, who attended the Lamb’s in the late 1970’s while studying, performing  and teaching music and voice Carl "Chappy" Valente , former associate pastor Rev. Bob DiQuatto , lead singer of the Church’s “Manhattan Project” and staff member of the Lamb’s, and his son Jason Rev. Gabriel

Liberation Spirituality: Henri Nouwen and Gustavo Gutierrez in Dialogue

Liberation Spirituality: Henri Nouwen and Gustavo Gutierrez in Dialogue Lecture Notes: Presented by Michael J. Christensen, Ph.D.,  Associate Professor in the Practice of Spirituality and Ministry,  Drew University;  and  International Director, Communities of Shalom, The United Methodist Church Introduction “There is a little man in Peru, a man without any power, who lives in a barrio with poor people and who wrote a book.   In this book he simply reclaimed the basic Christian truth that God became human to bring good news to the poor, new light to the blind, and liberty to the captives.   Then years later this book and movement it started is considered a danger by [the USA, or Rome], the greatest power on earth.   When I look at this little man, Gustavo, and think about [the President of the US, or the Pope], I see David standing before Goliath, again with no more weapon than a little stone, a stone called A Theology of Liberation (Henri Nouwen