John Pavlovitz is the former youth pastor of the Good Shepherd United Methodist Church, a “megachurch” in Charlotte, North Carolina. He was born in Syracuse, New York, to a middle-class family of Italian and Russian descent, and was raised as a member of the Catholic Church. He studied graphic design at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia.
During his college years, he began feeling led into vocational Christian ministry. Sometime after graduation, he attended Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary, then served in a youth ministry role at Providence United Methodist Church in Charlotte. He was later called as youth minister to Good Shepherd where he met and married his wife Jennifer. He served for nearly a decade in that role where he led a program serving several hundred students.
Good Shepherd is a theologically conservative church, and Pavlovitz himself was originally of that persuasion. However, over time, he began buying into theological liberalism. Finally, in 2013, after increasingly being more outspoken about his liberal beliefs, he was fired from his staff position.
The reasons for his firing included:
- Support for LGBTQ inclusion – Pavlovitz had become outspoken in his affirmation of LGBTQ people in the church. This was a highly controversial stance in many United Methodist churches at the time, and certainly in his church.
- Voicing doubts about his faith – He increasingly emphasized “honesty, uncertainty, and not having all the answers” as a means of expressing his doubts about the truth of the Bible. This didn’t sit well in a church that had a clear biblical understanding of the Christian faith.
- Pushback against conformity – Pavlovitz often challenged what he considered the narrow, judgmental expressions of Christianity he saw around him. His outspoken advocacy for a more inclusive, social justice oriented faith created tension between himself and the church leadership.
- Critique of institutional norms – He challenged the value of the contemporary worship style that was the church’s chosen model.
Some time later, after leaving church ministry, Pavlovitz began his own ministry called “Stuff That Needs To Be Said.” It reflects what he calls a progressive, socially engaged Christian perspective. He focuses on love, justice, mercy, gender equality, and LGBTQ+ inclusion in the church. He is also profoundly anti-Trump, and has made that a central part of his outspokenness concerning faith matters.
In fact, in one impassioned blog post, he went beyond his normal Trump denunciation and declared that even Trump supporters can’t be good people. He considers Trump’s positions on political and social policy, such as racial and economic justice, immigration, transgenderism, healthcare, climate justice, and just about every other topic, to be grossly immoral. Additionally, he believes that anyone who agrees with Trump’s policies is also immoral.
Pavlovitz is a true believer in his liberal theology. He defines morality based on it, and considers anyone who disagrees with him to be immoral.
The only problem is, his liberal theology is focused purely on this worldly social justice, and has no place for biblical teachings about eternal salvation by faith in Jesus Christ.
One thing that is important to understand about the topic of worldview is that worldview beliefs are not mere religious beliefs. It certainly includes that, but in its essence a worldview is the way people understand the actual structure of reality. That is, anyone who believes anything different from one’s own worldview is considered to be living in a fantasy world.
While Pavlovitz considers himself to be a Christian, his worldview beliefs are not biblical beliefs. His religious authority source is his own personal preferences, not what is taught in the Bible. He has essentially redefined Christianity to correspond to his own personal religious preferences rather than what is taught in the Bible. And he considers people who do follow the Bible to be living in La La Land.
While claiming to be a Christian, Pavlovitz’s beliefs about religion are based on naturalistic worldview presuppositions, not biblical ones. A biblical worldview finds its moral values in the Bible itself. On the other hand, all the moral values that Pavlovitz promotes (his focus on love, justice, mercy, gender equality, and LGBTQ+ inclusion in the church) are defined by his own personal preferences. None of his views correspond to what is taught in the Bible.
As a result, Pavlovitz’s evaluation of the morality of President Trump and his supporters is a meaningless assessment. Based on his own worldview beliefs, his judgment about who qualifies as a “good person” is no better than anyone else’s. It is based purely on his personal preferences. For his evaluation to have any objective meaning, there has to be an objective source for his judgment – and there simply is not.