Just this past Sunday I attended a Missions luncheon at the church I’m now serving. A short-term team who had recently returned from Egypt showed a video featuring several friends of ours who are Christian leaders in Cairo. It was fun to see their faces and hear their voices. As I watched, however, I was stunned by the words of the Dean of Missions at a Cairo seminary we knew well and had visited on more than one occasion.
In commenting on the boldness of Egyptian Christians sharing their faith within their society, he said (I’m paraphrasing slightly): “We don’t fear here. You (looking into the camera and speaking to the video’s intended American audience) don’t need to fear either. Don’t build walls and give in to fear.”
It was a remarkable moment for me. I don’t know this man personally, but I have listened to the stories of several missionary friends who have or are currently serving at his institution in Cairo. Here’s a Christian leader who knows more about living in genuine fear than 99.99% of Americans ever will! Yet he asks us to not give in to fear and to not build walls.
Hearing these words touched questions that have been festering in me for some time: How have we Americans become so fearful? More important, what are the potential consequences of our fear? What dangers might this sincere Egyptian friend see for us, that he is warning us to not give in to fear?
Today begins several posts on the topic of fear. I plan to look at fear from several different angles in the coming weeks.
To make a start today, while I don’t think my Egyptian friend’s comment about “building walls” was politically motivated (he could be referring to several kinds of walls, not necessarily the famous wall Donald Trump wants to build), fear has fueled our current political campaign as perhaps never before in my lifetime. CNN (December 14, 2015) offered “How Donald Trump plays the politics of fear.” New Republic (March 31, 2016) ran a long op-ed piece about how Donald Trump is channeling the fears of Americans for political advantage.
Particularly interesting to me is, “Trump Culture: Threat, Fear and the Tightening of the American Mind,” published April 27, 2016 in, of all places, Scientific American (reprinting from another journal).
The academic “tightness—looseness” theory described in this article postulates that the more fearful societies become, the “tighter” they become; the less fearful they are, the “looser” they are. Tightness is a survival mechanism: “communities are more likely to survive…threats when they set clear rules for behavior, put strong leaders who can regulate those rules in charge and punish those who deviate from the norm.” The authors share research in both world nations and our own American states to buttress their theory:
We have also found that people in tighter societies tend to prefer autonomous leaders. Such leaders have extreme confidence in their own abilities and make independent decisions without the input of others. These leaders can be successful in high threat environments because of their quick and unambiguous decision-making, which often comes at the cost of more democratic dialogue.
After surveying Americans about their fears, the authors find:
Americans’ concern about threats—especially attacks from countries like North Korea or terrorist groups like ISIS—was associated with both desired tightness and Trump support. It also predicted support for many of the issues that Trump has championed, such as monitoring mosques, creating a registry of Muslim Americans and deporting all undocumented immigrants. Those with a high level of threat concern also supported policies even more radical than what Trump has endorsed—like ending affirmative action, changing the constitution to make Christianity the national religion and installing more monitoring devices on American streets.
Their conclusion:
Trump is just one symptom of a larger principle that echoes across human history: perceptions of threat tighten societies, leading to social coordination at best, and intolerance at worst.
Later this week: why are American’s so fearful?
As you know Rich, I have been pondering this issue for quite a while. Some of my current personal questions go something like this: In what ways does fear, especially subtle forms of fear, influence my decision making in community? Does fear erode my moral values after eroding my morale? How does fear make me reactionary, polarized, deaf, to ANY other people? How often is fear the root emotion behind other emotions, especially anger? What am I really afraid of?
All good questions, giving me and others reading your comments much food for thought! I hope to perhaps address a few of them eventually.