"We have nothing to fear but fear itself."
Those iconic words were spoken by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1933 on the occasion of his first inauguration as President of the United States. As he stood there that day, relying on heavy metal braces to offset the impact of the polio that had by then taken over his body, he was encouraging this nation to look beyond the pressing issues caused by the Great Depression impacting financial markets and the Dust Bowl that devastated agricultural markets.
The nation was locked in fear. The outgoing President Herbert Hoover seemed to have no answers about moving the nation forward. Things were daily going from bad to worse.
Fear is a powerful force. Unless it can be resolved, it can alter how people think and act going forward.
I want to talk about the atmosphere of fear that is being spread by our nation's current leader, President Donald Trump. In response to allegations made against him involving his relationship with the convicted and now deceased pedophile, Jeffrey Epstein, Trump is trying to intimidate and terrorize anyone who will not swear to his innocence.
Most great changes in history involved people moving beyond their fears. … One by one, people can stop being afraid and start speaking up and opposing the lies and cruelties that had long been reinforced by fear.
Trump is filing a $10 billion lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal and its owner, Rupert Murdoch simply for claiming that Trump sent a bawdy birthday card as part of Epstein's 50th birthday celebration. He is making the ridiculous claim that former President Barack Obama is somehow responsible for the creation of the file that links Donald Trump to Jeffrey Epstein. He went so far as to charge President Obama with treason, the single worst charge that can be made against any citizen.
Beyond the issue of Epstein, Trump is generating fear in other ways against other groups. He is punishing universities and private sector companies that embraced diversity, equity, and inclusion. Undocumented persons living in this country are terrorized by the possibility of being detained and deported by Immigration and Customs Enforcement that might send them to a prison in El Salvador or to some other country where they had never lived before. Many Wall Street law firms are being denied access to federal buildings and other resources needed for them to function in the federal judicial system until they agree to offer pro bono legal services at Trump's direction.
Former U.S. Senator Mitt Romney of Utah and current Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska agree that an atmosphere of fear keeps many Republican politicians in Congress from voicing their true feelings about what Donald Trump is doing. That fear is not limited to their reelection chances. More frightening is the fear that some Trump loyalist or MAGA sycophants might seek to physically harm members of the Congress and/or members of the family of any Republican politician that does not toe the party line concerning the Trump agenda.
What can be done to resist and reverse this atmosphere of fear? The answer is courage and commitment to a contrary set of values. At first, it may seem risky to speak out against MAGA or Project 2025, or any ridiculous claim made by an American president who is untethered to the truth about anything ranging from the state of the world to the state of his own life. However, if and when more citizens speak out against these of power, people will begin to feel less isolated, less vulnerable, and less voiceless in their resistance.
'Bloody Sunday', April 1963
Most great changes in history involved people moving beyond their fears. Whether it involved the formation of the labor union movement of the 1930s, the Nazis and the Holocaust of the 1940s, Jim Crow laws and lynch mob justice in the 1950s, inter-racial marriage and women's liberation in the 1960s, the anti-Vietnam war movement of the 1970s, LGBTQ rights in the 1980s, anti-apartheid policies in South Africa in the 1990s, or the environmental and anti-nuclear war efforts that are part of the 21st century justice agenda today.
One by one, people can stop being afraid and start speaking up and opposing the lies and cruelties that had long been reinforced by fear.
As James Russell Lowell wrote:
Truth for ever on the scaffold, Wrong for ever on the throne,—
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.
As I have said in hundreds of sermons and at dozens of rallies and public protests, God keeps saying to us, "’Fear not for I am with you.’
We have nothing to fear. If God is for us, who can be against us? If people in this country do not take hold of their faith and speak truth to power, we will soon be living in an authoritarian regime maintained by fear of our government and fear of one another!
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The Rev. Dr. Marvin A. McMickle is pastor emeritus of Antioch Baptist Church in Cleveland, Ohio. He also served as president of Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School, Rochester, New York, from 2011 to 2019.