#33 with activist Brad Wolf on "The Ministry of Risk": "Philip Berrigan was the first priest ever to get arrested in the US!"
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: