Author: John Pavlovitz

“I would cite you to the apostle Paul, and his clear and wise command in Romans 13 to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained the government for his purposes.” – Jeff Sessions, U.S. Attorney General The words Sessions quoted were used in the 1840s and 1850s to justify slavery. When abolitionists argued that slavery was cruel, and that separating families was a violation of religious ethics, they were met with the argument of religious compliance with the law. “Whenever Romans 13 was used in the 18th and 19th century, and Sessions seems to be doing...

“So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.” – Genesis 1:27 New King James Version (NKJV) If I hear one more Evangelical claim that God chose Donald Trump, I swear I am going to rapture myself. Christian Trumpers really need to stop spiritualizing the man, his campaign, and his Presidency. It is sinful. It is blasphemous. It is lousy evangelism. It is also just plain asinine. The hypocrisy on display is historic: after spending the past 8 years straining to find infinitesimal specks in Barack...

America, Your children are beautiful. They are original, once-in-the-history-of-the-planet human beings with a near limitless capacity to do and be extraordinary. They are wild and bright and funny and lovable. But they are not special. The fact that your children were born here, does not endow them with greater worth or deeper humanity than children who were not. It does not make them more deserving of defense or protection or advocacy. It does not make their fear more valid or their wounds more grievous. It does not make their needs more pressing or their disappearance more outrageous. Or at...

When I was a child, Fred Rogers always made me feel that his home was my home, and I gladly spent countless afternoons there learning and listening and dreaming. Sitting in a packed screening of Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, a much older, much more cynical me traveled back in time to that place, and for an hour I remembered what it felt like to be so welcomed and so filled with hope. The moment that familiar front door opened, and I saw those twinkling eyes and heard his soft voice singing me into his living room again—the tears...

To People of Color Living in America, I’m not sure whether you’ve noticed, but a lot of us white Christian folks here in America are really on edge these days. We could really use your help by doing what you can to put us at ease in such emotionally charged times. Here are a few suggestions: Don’t linger in coffee shops… or restaurants… or campuses… or parks. Sure, I know it looks as though they’ve been purposefully designed to be places people feel comfortable and want to relax while waiting for, you know, meetings and stuff. But your quiet...

Comedian Michelle Wolf stepped to the podium at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner and verbally eviscerated everyone: The President, The Press, Mike Pence, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Kellyanne Conway. MAGA Nation, unsurprisingly lost their collective minds. By their wild histrionics, you would have thought she murdered a crowd filled with concertgoers with an arsenal of high-powered weapons. Trump supporters, Conservative pundits, and Evangelical preachers rushed to social media and to partisan talk shows, to lament the comedian’s “cruel, mean-spirited, vicious words;” to clutch their pearls at the seemingly unprecedented nastiness, to openly weep over the supposed inappropriate nature of her...