Author: John Pavlovitz

I have always despised bullies. Ever since I was a young boy I could see them clearly; on the playground and in the hallways and on the street corners – the way they terrorized people while being themselves internally terrified. Even as they brutalized the other kids with words and fists, I heard the shaking of their voices and noticed their quivering hands, and I knew how petrified they were. I almost pitied them. Almost. I watched them prey upon those who were vulnerable or alone or different — not because these people posed any true threat to them,...

America is facing a growing poverty in these days. We are going broke an alarming rate, and we need to do something quickly to change our corporate fortunes. This is a national paucity of the gravest kind: a base level lack of compassion for the welfare of other human beings. It is trickle-down cruelty flowing from the top; an unapologetic callousness that revels in its contempt for people who are hurting or hungry or vulnerable—and it is changing us. Though they claim to embrace both the Golden Rule and the command by Jesus to love others as they love...

The United Methodist Church is currently in the midst of potentially Denomination-splitting discussions over the Church’s official stance on LGBTQ inclusion. As someone who has served in the UMC for 17 years, nearly a decade of those in one of the 100 largest churches in the country, it’s about time. This should be a pass-fail deal breaker for people who claim to love LGBTQ human beings. Traveling this country and engaging thousands of Christians every month, I encounter local faith communities, both inside and outside the United Methodist Church — who claim to be LGBTQ-affirming or LGBTQ-inclusive, but who...

To the Evangelical community, I want to talk to you about Life. No, not the word you’ve weaponized as ammunition in your incessant, hollow holy culture war; the one you use to justify your political alignment with an amoral monster; not the word you wield like a legislative hammer against women’s autonomy over their own bodies. I’m talking about Life, in its most expansive, most elemental definition. Life, as describing the glorious entirety of all creation. Life, as the interdependent community of every being, every creature, every atom, every bit of matter. I’m talking about Life as the interconnected...

We all know the real State of the Union. We know the version we’ll hear from one person — and we know the truth. We know, because we are here on the ground in the trenches of our daily lives here; in communities we love, living alongside people we know, building the America that actually is. And yes, we know well the horrors of these days; the human rights violations and the daily gaslighting and the abject cruelty of those holding power. We know their peerless corruption and their limitless enmity, and we know how sickening it all is...

I had just finished a speaking event a couple of months ago, and was meeting with people who had stayed after to say hello, have a copy of my book signed, or share some thoughts about the evening. After saying goodbye to the man I was been talking to, I lifted my head and my eyes locked with a middle-aged woman who had been standing behind him. Her wide smile dissolved almost immediately, and tears welled up in her eyes as she leaned in to speak. “I am a Fox News orphan,” she blurted out as she grabbed my...