Author: John Pavlovitz

In organized religion, one of the central questions has always been and continues to be “Who has it Right?” For millennia, billions and billions of human beings spanning the planet have individually and collectively struggled to correctly discern the source of life, the character (if there is one) of that source, and the implications of that. For some, this has led to fully embracing a precise religious tradition, others to a vague and shifting spirituality that doesn’t quite feel truly at home in any rigid system, and others to be passionately adversarial to religion of any kind, seeing it...

Every single day I am inundated with professed Christians who steadfastly and loudly refuse to be vaccinated under the auspices of their faith. They write to me or respond on social media with lengthy, passionate sermons, chastising me for my heresy and boasting that they “trust God, not Science” to protect them from the virus. Nearly all of them aren’t being completely honest. They don’t really trust God alone, He’s just their first line of defense. If they’re in really trouble they call for backup – and it won’t be a minister, priest, or pastor. A man named Brett...

Watching the Taliban gloating in the Presidential palace in Kabul this week after violently overthrowing the government there, gave me major January 6th déjà vu. The muscle memory of that day kicked in again: the disbelief and shock, the stark helplessness, the repeating question of how this could be happening. While the world looked on in horror at Afghanistan, marveling at the seemingly impossible speed and ferocity with which a group of extremists could overtake a foreign nation’s leadership and throw it all into chaos, the familiarity of the moment is something America needs to wrestle with. We cannot...