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John Dear (born August 13, 1959) is an AmericanCatholic priest and peace activist. He has been arrested 85 times in acts of nonviolent civil disobedience against war, injustice, nuclear weapons.
Dear was born inElizabeth City, North Carolina, on August 13, 1959.[citation needed] He graduated magna cum laude fromDuke University, inDurham, North Carolina, in 1981.[citation needed] He then worked for theRobert F. Kennedy Memorial Foundation in Washington, D.C.[citation needed]
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In August 1982, Dear entered theSociety of Jesus, commonly known as the Jesuits, at theirnovitiate inWernersville, Pennsylvania. He then spent two years studying philosophy atFordham University in theBronx, 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 ofregency, he taught atScranton Preparatory School inScranton, 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 theGraduate Theological Union inBerkeley, California, and received two master's degrees in theology from theJesuit School of Theology at Berkeley.
He was ordained a Catholic priest in Baltimore, Maryland on June 12, 1993, and began serving as associate pastor ofSt. Aloysius Church in Washington, D.C.
Dear founded Bay Area Pax Christi, a region ofPax Christi USA, the national Catholic peace movement, and began to arrange forMother Teresa to intervene with various governors on behalf of people scheduled to be executed on death row.[citation needed]
Dear was arrested in scores of nonviolent civil disobedience actions against war, injustice and nuclear weapons—from the Pentagon to Livermore Laboratories in California. On December 7, 1993, he was arrested with three others at theSeymour Johnson Air Force Base inGoldsboro, North Carolina, for hammering on an F-15 nuclear capable fighter bomber.[1] He was jailed, tried and convicted of two felony counts, and served seven-and-a-half months inNorth Carolina jails and four-and-a-half months, under house arrest in Washington, D.C., followed by 3 years probation.[2] As part of thePlowshares disarmament movement, the defendants argued that they were fulfilling Isaiah's mandate to "beat swords into plowshares," and Jesus' command to "love your enemies."[1]
From 1994 to 1996, Dear served as executive director of the Sacred Heart Center, a community center for low-income African-American women and children, inRichmond, Virginia. In the Spring of 1997, he taught theology for one semester at Fordham University in the Bronx, New York. From 1997 to 1998, he lived inDerry, Northern Ireland, as part of the Jesuit "tertianship" sabbatical program, and worked at a human rights center in Belfast.[citation needed]
From 1998 to 2001, Dear served as executive director of theFellowship of Reconciliation, the largest interfaith peace organization in the United States, based inNyack, New York. In 1999, he led a delegation ofNobel Peace Prize winners on a peace mission to Iraq, and also an interfaith delegation to Palestine/Israel.[citation needed]
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 northeasternNew Mexico, and founded Pax Christi New Mexico, a region of Pax Christi USA.[citation needed]
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 theClark County, Nevada jail for a night. He was later found guilty but given time served.[citation needed]
In January 2014, Dear left the Jesuits and wrote about his leaving in theNational 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.
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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 theNational Catholic Reporter and the Huffington Post.[citation needed] He is also featured in several other books and featured in a wide variety of U.S. publications, includingThe New York Times andThe Washington Post.[citation needed] He is featured in the DVD documentary film,The Narrow Path, and the subject ofJohn Dear on Peace, by Patti Normile (St. Anthony Messenger Press, 2009).[citation needed] He has published hundreds of articles and 40 books.[citation needed]
