The first time I heard the phrase “Dear John letter,” I was a freshman at Wake Forest being coached by a sophomore on the proper way to write a breakup letter to my high school sweetheart. My mentor advised me to sustain a genial tone throughout and to close with the promise, “We can always be friends.” It worked.
My only other experience with a Dear John letter happened recently, but this time my husband and I were on the receiving end of a breakup email from an old friend (coincidentally named John) whose online mentor had urged all “good people” to “sever ties” with known Donald Trump voters — including family members and close friends. In a Substack screed titled “For America’s Survival, His Supporters Must Be Ostracized,” Pastor John Pavlovitz holds Trump voters responsible for “war crimes in Gaza and Ukraine,” for “joyously ripping the lunches from children living in poverty,” for “terrorizing transgender students in their school hallways,” for “accosting pregnant women in emergency rooms” and for supporting a “fascist dictatorship.”
Trump supporters who “come to their senses, those with the humility and empathy to admit their errors” can be forgiven, but Pavlovitz would impose a strict penalty on those who have proven themselves “unreachable with reason, impervious to compassion, and mortally allergic to anything that reasonable human beings value.” When friend John decided that my husband and I belong to the latter camp, he emailed a link to Pavlovitz’s screed, then followed Pavlovitz’s directive to “withhold our friendship, exclude them from our holiday gatherings, cut personal and professional ties, and practically speaking, marginalize them.”
An online search uncovered a probable cause behind Pavlovitz’s mission to have his followers marginalize the likes of my husband and me. Pavlovitz himself has been marginalized (fired) twice — first from Charlotte “megachurch” Good Shepherd United Methodist, then again in 2013, from North Raleigh Community Church — after he posted “provocative articles” online. Pavlovitz, it seems, has a long history of inciting wrath against conservatives who have “ignored revered journalists” (presumably himself). Pavlovitz, it seems, has forgotten that he once published a book titled “If God Is Love, Don’t Be a Jerk.”
My husband laughed out loud at the sheer lunacy of Pavlovitz’s charges, but I replied to our friend’s email by testing the accuracy of Proverbs 15:1: “A soft answer turns away wrath.” I assured now former friend John that we would miss him but would treasure our memories of a longtime friendship.
Exactly one week later, on impulse, my husband called John, ostensibly to discuss the opening of football season, but really to see if John would pick up. John answered on the first ring, and the conversation that followed assured us that John had regretted his impulse to marginalize the Millers.
Perhaps it was my soft answer to John’s email that turned away wrath, or perhaps John’s wife had quoted Christ’s directive to “Love your enemies.” Let’s just say that friend John’s change of heart sets an example for all good people to follow, while Pastor John’s spite calls to mind pundit Thomas Sowell’s appraisal of zealots “whose own egos are served by their zealotry in imposing their vision, however costly or counterproductive it may be for others.”
Case closed until late afternoon on Sept. 10, when Pavlovitz posted his reaction to Charlie Kirk’s tragic death. In an article titled “Charlie Kirk and the Value of Empathy,” Pavlovitz condemns the shooter’s “despicable disregard for life,” then pivots to the “countless hours” conservatives have spent “letting us know that they believe compassion is a character flaw and a cultural danger, something to drive out and to rid ourselves of.”
Three days later, Pavlovitz posted again, this time to decry “The Shameful Christian Idolatry and Fraudulent Martyrdom of Charlie Kirk” and to censure those who share Kirk’s “racist, phobic, misogynist, Islamophobic antisemitic, supremacist sentiments.” What Pavlovitz has failed to acknowledge is the link between the left’s call to fight against “fascists” and the message etched on the shooter’s bullet: “Hey fascist! CATCH!”
Pavlovitz would do well to note what fellow journalist and fellow leftist Van Jones learned from Kirk the day before he died. Following their online dispute about the connection between crime and race, Kirk reached out to Jones and invited him to have a “respectful conversation” on Kirk’s show. Kirk died before he could have that conversation, but his death inspired Van Jones to implore all Americans to “seek common ground and look for off-ramps from the vitriol — as Kirk was doing with me the day before he died.” Pavlovitz would do well to follow Jones’ lead.
Nan Miller is professor emerita in literature from Meredith College and lives in Raleigh.
