No hate, no fear! Refugees are welcome here,” chanted the growing crowd at JFK Airport on Saturday, January 28. They gathered—“out of nowhere” according to a New York Times report—in support of refugees and others detained at the airport as they sought to enter the country in the hours following President Donald Trump’s executive order the day before.
No fear . . . Encounters between humans and the divine in sacred texts often begin with precisely those words, “do not fear.” That is the heart of the good news. It is the message proclaimed by the angels at the moment God broke into the world in the form of a child. “Perfect love casts out fear,” says the author of 1 John.
We are at our best when we embody this message of love and resist fear. By contrast, governing by fear is deeply antithetical to our...
