John Pavlovitz is a lot like his office: Soothing, warm, and welcoming. A table lamp emits a warm glow in the corner of the room. Dancing leaves are the view from his open window. A diploma hangs on the wall, suspended in a wooden frame.
From my vantage point on the other side of a screen, I can see why Pavlovitz likes to write from here. It’s a great place to churn out words that unify and inspire. I devoured his most recent book, Worth Fighting For: Finding Courage and Compassion While Cruelty is Trending, and couldn’t wait to talk to him about it.
Pavlovitz hears stories all over the country from people just like you and I: People in fractured relationships who are trying to figure out how to navigate difficult conversations at one of the most dire junctures in American history. Those conversations are more critical than ever.
In November, we have to uphold this 248-year-old experiment known as democracy — and we can’t do that if we don’t talk to each other.
Pavlovitz knows this struggle intimately. When he was a Methodist minister, he began writing provocative blog posts about the day’s controversial news. As the 2016 election began to heat up, Pavlovitz’s words became a necessary balm for those of us entrenched in our conservative Christian communities who could not understand Donald Trump’s rising popularity. In 2017, his essay, “It's time we stopped calling Donald Trump a Christian" was all over my Facebook feed. Everyone I knew either loved or hated it.
I wanted to talk to Pavlovitz, who is now an author and public speaker, about Project 2025 and the sky-high stakes of this election cycle. Worth Fighting For came along at the perfect time for those of us who are desperate for some insight into how to restore broken relationships while actively working toward a more compassionate world.
Sometimes his chapters read like a hug around the neck. Other times, a cape around the shoulders.
“And sometimes, a kick in the behind!” Pavlovitz quips.
He sees his book as a series of small encouragements for people in the trenches. The main thing he wants us to know: It’s not hopeless.
The second thing: We have the power to turn things around.
His book combats what Pavlovitz describes as a profound cocktail of fear, grief, and loneliness that is slowly poisoning us.
“I get to remind people of their own capacity to grow, and I get to share their stories. Sometimes I think we just need better stories.”
I know I certainly did. I read Pavlovitz’s book after a trip to Texas to visit my conservative family. While I was there, I hung out with my nibling — a word the trans community has adopted to describe the child of a sibling (instead of saying niece or nephew). No one in my family had told me they were transgender, but I used my skills of deduction and clues from previous visits. Even though it had been a few years since we’d seen each other, I noticed distinctive changes in this young adult who used to be my niece. A more defined jawline. A deeper voice. Hairs sprouting from their chin.
“So…,” I said, sidling up to them. “What name and pronouns do you use now?”
A sly smile crossed their face. “Is it that obvious?”
“Maybe not to everyone, but definitely to me.”
They told me their chosen name and pronouns and explained how much better health care was in the city they lived now than in Texas where they were raised. I wondered how scary it was to return to a state that has taken such brazen steps to ignore and erase their personhood and how our own family members seemed to be perfectly fine doing the same. The anger flowed.
Women raised as in Christianity are taught to distrust anger, but my conversation with Pavlovitz reminded me that anger is useful — necessary even — in the face of stark injustice.
“You can’t have any movement of civil or human rights without anger as a sort of propellant,” he said. “That is spirituality at its best.”
So how do we live amongst those who want to erase our LGBTQ+ loved ones, ignore the stories of our BIPOC brothers and sisters, deny women fundamental choices over their own bodies? How do we stay in relationship with people who swear Donald Trump is the solution, even as he openly plans to steal democracy from us? More importantly, how do we stop “inexplicably waiting for saviors and superheroes” — as Pavlovitz puts it — and discover that we have the power to be the change we want to see?
He told me he tries to remember some fundamental truths as he counsels and speaks to people who are burdened by those questions:
Learn how to be in relationship with others while staying true to yourself.
If a person still wants to connect with you, receive that. This fight needs relationships more than it needs boxing gloves or carefully crafted online arguments. Pavlovitz explains, you don’t owe people performance or proximity. You do owe them authenticity. If a person is working hard to be in relationship with you, and doing so in a way that allows you to continue to honor yourself and convictions, then let them — even if they vote, think, or believe differently than you.
You don’t have to pretend everything is okay. But don’t blame everything that’s not on the people you love.
Accept anger, but don’t live in bitterness.
“Respect the anger by noting it, but then transform it into something redemptive, positive and tangible.”
Righteous anger has fueled some of history’s most pivotal moments: The abolition movement, women’s suffrage, civil rights. It might inspire you to write to your senator, register people to vote, start a substack, have a hard conversation with a family member, or march for equality.
“The worst thing we can do is become angry and just sit with that anger because there’s nothing productive there. It doesn’t do anything other than making us bitter and ineffective.”
Acknowledge that fear comes from lack.
Are the people in your life driven by fear because they are exhausted? It’s hard for exhausted people to make rational choices, so the first step toward rationality is helping them.
Other people gravitate toward fear because they lack solid data and truth. This happens when people surround themselves with partisan media. How do we help introduce them to healthier resources?
Other people lack community. Punishing them with isolation will exacerbate that void for them, not fill it.
Don’t forget to rest.
There isn’t a single day that goes by where news doesn’t cross my desk that either makes me sink or sing. If you’re new to activism, you’ll most likely go through phases of feeling exhausted and phases of feeling energized. It’s important to know when to retreat, so you can prepare for what’s to come.
“There’s a large army of people who are similarly exhausted,” Pavlovitz said. “Find places of rest so you can get back into the fray to fight for what matters because now is not the time to shrink back.”
Stop expecting instant results.
You’ve heard the phrase, “the moral arc of the universe is long, but it always bends toward justice.” If you feel like you’ve been bending a long time and haven’t arrived at justice yet, you’re not alone. Instead of focusing on your exhaustion or wondering how long it will take to get there, try to remember all the people who came before — who fought for the treasures you take for granted.
Pavlovitz says he spends a lot of time thinking about Anne Frank, a teenager who faced unspeakable suffering but was defiantly joyful.
“We are the caretakers of everything beautiful. It’s our job to steward that so that people in the future have something beautiful to inherent. If we have something worth losing right now, it’s because someone fought so that we could have it to begin with.”
Learn more about Worth Fighting For and Pavlovitz’s other work at JohnPavlovitz.com. Check out his insightful Substack here.
Onward, Democracy Defenders!