“Love casts out fear,” says 1 John 4:18, concerning which the late John Claypool once observed, “As surely as love casts out fear, fear casts out love.”
Fear casting out love may help explain the current national obsession with dismantling programs dedicated to diversity, equity and inclusion. Peel away all the rhetorical layers that have been wrapped around the frantic flurry of state and federal actions aimed at “ending DEI” and what we may be left with, at the bottom of it all, is fear.
Chuck Poole
Those who have held most of the power for most of the time are fearful they might be losing some of their culturally advantaged hegemony and privilege; fear casts out love’s embrace of the beauty of diversity, the righteousness of equity and the justice of inclusion.
Those who know such things say roughly 1,000 offices of “diversity, equity and inclusion” have been closed recently due to the efforts of the Trump administration and some state legislatures.
One thousand community voices, intentionally lifting up the importance of diversity, equity and inclusion, is a lot to lose.
I suppose that leaves us with about 250,000 other community voices in the United States left to lift up the beauty of diversity, the righteousness of equity and the justice of inclusion; all 250,000 of which, thankfully, are beyond the reach of any government order or intimidation.
That’s 250,000 institutions of people who wake up every morning to say, all over again, that God doesn’t tolerate diversity, God celebrates diversity; God’s joyful circle of inclusion is as wide as the whole human family, a circle so expansive that the last time anybody caught a glimpse of it, it included “every creature in heaven, on earth, under the earth, and in the sea, singing together forever around the throne of God.”
That’s 250,000 communities responding to the present national campaign of erasure by working harder than ever to teach our children the beauty of diversity, the righteousness of equity, the justice of inclusion and the courage of Medgar Evers, Rosa Parks, Fannie Lou Hamer and the countless others, known and unknown, who stood up for inclusion by standing up against injustice.
That’s 250,000 relentless voices saying, “No” to the fear that casts out love and “Yes” to the love that casts out fear.
That’s 250,000 of them, all across the United States — “one on every corner” as they used to say back home.
They’re called churches.
Chuck Poole retired in 2022 after 45 years of pastoral life, during which he served churches in Georgia; North Carolina; Washington, D.C.; and Jackson, Miss. He has served as a visiting preacher and teacher on the campuses of multiple universities, seminaries and divinity schools. He was the founding teacher of the Wood Street Bible Class in Jackson, which he led for 21 years. The author of nine books, numerous published articles, one gospel song and the lyrics to three hymns, Chuck has served as a “minister on the street” and as an advocate for interfaith conversation and welcome. He and his wife, Marcia, now live in Birmingham, where he serves on the staff of Together for Hope.
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