Early life John Dear was born in
Elizabeth City, North Carolina, on August 13, 1959 and graduated magna cum laude from
Duke University, in
Durham, North Carolina, in 1981. He then worked for the
Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Foundation in Washington, D.C.
Jesuit formation In August 1982, Dear entered the
Society of Jesus, commonly known as the Jesuits, at their
novitiate in
Wernersville, Pennsylvania. He then spent two years studying philosophy at
Fordham University in the
Bronx, New York (1984–1986), during which time he lived and worked for the Jesuit Refugee Service in a refugee camp in El Salvador for three months in 1985. For his period of
regency, he taught at
Scranton Preparatory School in
Scranton, Pennsylvania, from 1986 to 1988. He then spent a year working at the Fr. McKenna Center, a drop-in center and shelter for the homeless, in Washington, D.C. From 1989 to 1993, he attended the
Graduate Theological Union in
Berkeley, California, and received two master's degrees in theology from the
Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley. He was ordained a Catholic priest in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1993, and began serving as associate pastor of
St. Aloysius Church in Washington, D.C. He had approval from the Jesuits for this protest. As part of the
Plowshares disarmament movement, the defendants argued that they were fulfilling Isaiah's mandate to "beat swords into plowshares," and Jesus' command to "love your enemies." At that time it was the largest interfaith peace organization in the United States, based in
Nyack, New York. In 1999, he led a delegation of
Nobel Peace Prize winners on a peace mission to Iraq, and also an interfaith delegation to Palestine/Israel. Immediately after September 11, 2001, Dear served as a Red Cross coordinator of chaplains at the Family Assistance Center in Manhattan, and personally counseled thousands of relatives and rescue workers. From 2002 to 2004, he served as pastor to five parishes in the high desert of northeastern
New Mexico, and founded Pax Christi New Mexico, a region of Pax Christi USA. In 2006, Dear led a demonstration against the U.S. war in Iraq in Santa Fe, New Mexico. In 2009, he joined the Creech 14 in a civil disobedience protest at Creech Air Force base against the U.S. drone war in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and was arrested and put in the
Clark County, Nevada jail for a night. The group were later found guilty but given time served. In January 2014, Dear left the Jesuits and wrote about his leaving in the
National Catholic Reporter, saying that the Society of Jesus has turned from its commitment to social justice, and that he would not be permitted to work for peace and disarmament. Dear then moved to Big Sur, California where he remains a Catholic priest in good standing with faculties in residence in the Diocese of Monterey. From 2012 to 2020, he worked with
Pace e Bene, a leading peace group and co-founded Campaign Nonviolence and the Nonviolent Cities Project. See: www.paceebene.org He also works with the Catholic Nonviolence Initiative, and helped draft Pope Francis' Jan. 1, 2017 World Day of Peace letter on nonviolence. In 2020, he founded and is Executive Director of the Beatitudes Center for the Nonviolent Jesus. In 2025, he launched a weekly global podcast, "The Nonviolent Jesus Podcast." He has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize several times, including by Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Dear is a vegetarian.
Speaker, writer, teacher Over the years, Dear has given thousands of lectures on peace, disarmament and nonviolence in churches, schools and groups across the United States, and around the world, including national speaking tours of Australia, New Zealand, Scotland, Canada and England. Dear formerly wrote a weekly column for the
National Catholic Reporter and the Huffington Post. He is also featured in several other books and featured in a wide variety of U.S. publications, including
The New York Times and
The Washington Post. He is featured in the DVD documentary film,
The Narrow Path, and the subject of
John Dear on Peace, by Patti Normile (St. Anthony Messenger Press, 2009). He has published over 40 books. His weekly free global podcast, "The Nonviolent Jesus Podcast," posts each Monday on apple, spotify, youtube, substack, the National Catholic Reporter, and many other platforms, as well as www.beatitudescenter.org == Bibliography ==