For Christians in troubled times, faith represents trust in God’s promises, and hope the expectation that God fulfills those promises. For the abolitionist minister Theodore Parker, hope came in a series of sermons he published in 1853. In one, he lambasted the evils of slavery and Christianity’s role in maintaining the institution, before suggesting that a long arc of the moral universe would ultimately bend back toward justice.

Over a century later, Martin Luther King, Jr., cited that same moral arc during his 1965 March to Montgomery, then again in a 1968 speech at the Washington National Cathedral less than a week before his assassination. Both Parker and King answered the fear of their age with an inspired faith in hope, the hope for a better future, the hope of a more empathetic people, and the hope for justice. Symbolically, that same hopeful arc showed up on President Barack Obama’s “rug of quotes” in the Oval Office. The hope for so many seemingly became reality. But a festering backlash, organized before the 2016 Presidential Election, has exploded in the politics of fear and challenged the very essence of long held American principles. [“The Orator of Abolitionism: Theodore Parker and the Moral Arc,” The Eclective Podcast, August 19, 2024, https://eclective.substack.com/p/the-orator-of-abolitionism-theodore; and “Theodore Parker and the ‘Moral Universe,’” All Things Considered, National Public Radio, September 2, 2010.]

John Meacham’s 2018 book, The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels, addresses the politics of fear. Almost in an optimistic calm, Meacham argues that the forces of fear and hope have often clashed in our nation’s history, a long-standing struggle between our worst fears and our better angels. He reminds us that bending the arc back to justice remains something the nation has accomplished time and time again. But Meacham also cautions that hope of reaching justice is not a sure thing. The United States, including its sordid chapters in history, remains an ongoing experiment that never guarantees progress. Our current politics of fear returns a divide and conquer strategy used before, and preys on our national anxieties of changing demographics, economic insecurity, and cultural shifts. Contrast that, argues Meacham, to the “politics of hope,” which seeks to unite American potential into a broader definition of human equality. Critical to Meacham’s push for equality of past and present is his requirement for moral leadership from presidents to ordinary grassroots activists to force the nation to live up to its founding ideals. The most effective presidents in our history, Meacham maintains, never amplified public anger or prejudices; instead, they acted as moral compasses who appealed to the country’s highest aspirations rather than its darkest impulses. [John Meacham, The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels (New York: Random House, 2018), 3, 4, 7, 10.]

Indeed, God requires us to pursue hope over fear. Meachum finds hope in sociologist Gunnar Myrdal’s 1944 American Creed, written in the shadows of World War II. Myrdal described the country’s devotion to the principles of liberty, of self-government, and of equal opportunity for all Americans regardless of race, gender, religion, or nation of origin. The oft-cited creed shaped the hope of a generation of theological scholars, including Baptists such as T. B. Maston and Henlee Barnett. Maston recognized this dichotomy of fear and hope in his signature book, Why Live the Christian Life?. He demonstrates how hope and fear coexist, and that our Christian identity remains in a constant tension between our attempt to measure up to God’s expectations and our recognition of failures through prejudice and racism. Maston understood that believers were commanded to limit their fears and use them for greater good. [Thomas B. Maston, Why Live the Christian Life? (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, Inc., 1974), 175-76.]

Likewise, Scripture acknowledges that mankind naturally experiences fear by framing hope as a conscious choice to be developed. Indeed, the Bible instructs us to choose hope over fear when it comes to political anxiety, especially when fear fails to recognize faith in God’s future promises. The phrase “fear not” appears dozens of times across Scripture. In passages like Isaiah 41:13, God contrasts human terror with His protective presence: “For I, the Lord your God, hold your right hand; it is I who say to you, ‘Fear not, I am the one who helps you.'” He assures us that love overcomes fear and explicitly states that “perfect love casts out fear.” [Hebrews 6:18-19; Isaiah 41:13; and 1 John 4:18.] Where fear expects punishment and harm, biblical hope expects goodness because of God’s love. We should acknowledge our fear but trust God anyway. Psalm 56:3 states, “When I am afraid, I put my trust in you.” The Bible expects believers to feel anxious, but it also demands that fear should never drown out hope. Our ultimate source of biblical hope is not a vague optimism, but a confident expectation based on historical facts where justice eventually prevails. This history gives believers a tangible reason to choose hope over despair, even when we view current events as the worst of times.