A Biblical Evaluation of DEI

Before getting into DEI as it relates to Scripture, it should be pointed out that DEI is basically nothing more than reapplying Marxism to race and sexuality rather than class. Even the relatively leftwing political site The Hill admits that at least the more stringent DEI ideologies are Marxist in origin.2 A more honest reading looks at DEI as Marxism packaged with infiltration devices to install commissars and take over organizations, governments, and eventually, the world.3 In either case, Christians should be very concerned about anyone trying to baptize Marx into the church.

Diversity

None of the words in the DEI acronym seem scary when first read. Why wouldn’t someone want to support diversity, equity, and inclusion? The problem here is not the words themselves, but how they are used. Take diversity as an example. According to Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary, diversity means—

The condition of having or being composed of differing elements: Variety
especially: the inclusion of people of different races, cultures, etc. in a group or organization.4

Aside from the Bible making it clear there is only one race (Acts 17:26), this definition is not bad. However, the word is not prescriptive. In other words, the existence of diversity does not explain what diversity does in practice. It is here that the proverbial rubber meets the road.

It should be self-evident to the Christian that not all diversity is good diversity.

It should be self-evident to the Christian that not all diversity is good diversity. For example, a room full of married couples could be described as diverse if there were both hetero- and homosexual couples in the room. Yet biblically, such diversity would not be good. In fact, it would be an abomination (Leviticus 18:22; Romans 1:26–27). In the same way, a church composed of people of multiple skin tones would be considered diverse, and that diversity could be good or bad, depending on whether the church is doctrinally sound or not.

However, often in the modern church, diversity is made the highest priority. In a Lifeway survey of 1,000 Protestant pastors, 88% agreed a church should strive toward racial diversity.5 Often this argument is supported with verses from Revelation. Revelation 5:9 and 7:9 both talk about a multitude of people from every tribe tongue and nation praising the Lord. Ed Stetzer6 argues from these passages: “Therefore, the beauty of heaven should be reflected in the diversity of the church. Multiethnic churches are a preview of God’s eternal kingdom.”7 What Stetzer, and others like him, fail to appreciate in these passages is that they are not prescriptive. They are descriptive. In other words, the passages in Revelation are describing the appearance of the whole church, throughout all of history, not your local church. When we reach heaven, there will be a multitude of people from every tongue, tribe, and nation there to praise Christ with us. That does not mean your church in rural Idaho needs to have the same representation. Your local church might have a multitude of skin tones in it, and if so, praise the Lord. It might not, and if so, provided you’re not unwelcoming to anyone based on their outward appearance or ability, praise the Lord. Diversity is not the goal of the church. Bringing glory to God, equipping the saints for ministry, and evangelizing the lost is.

To illustrate just how absurd Stetzer’s argument is, apply it to a church in Kenya. Is it reasonable to expect a Kenyan church to be ethnically diverse? For context, approximately 0.18% of Kenya is of European or Asian descent.8 Most Kenyan churches would struggle to find a single non-African to worship with them. Yet under Stetzer’s logic, they would be an imperfect picture of the heavenly kingdom because they literally have no non-Africans available even if they wanted them.

Diversity of What?

Why then is there such a push for diversity in the church? Because there has been a clever bait and switch. To the people using the word, diversity does not mean difference in skin tone. It means a difference in ideas. Often, this is viewed in a racial/cultural way. For example, Jarvis Williams, a current professor at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said it this way,

I think often when a certain predominately white churches talk about multi-ethnic church, I think what many mean is they want black and brown faces but not black and brown voices. They want black and brown people in the seats of their churches, but they don’t want to leverage privilege and power with vetted qualified black and brown people. So one thing I would exhort predominantly white churches and pastors to do in this room—if you’re wanting to engage in a serious gospel reconciliation, you must not approach the black and brown body from the posture of the person who’s going to help those people assimilate within your predominately white culture.9

In this mindset (which is not a biblical mindset, where there aren’t white, black, brown, etc. people, because our identity is in Christ, not skin shade), people who are “black or brown” have different ideas and ways of seeing things than “white” people, and both have their own truth, which isn’t right for the other. There are many problems with this view, some of which we will investigate, but this point should not be lost: there are cultural elements and there are doctrinal elements, and some try to blur them. The dividing line is where core Christian doctrine cannot be abandoned. Remember Paul’s stern warning in Galatians 1:8, “But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed.” For example, the musical instruments used would likely be a cultural element that people could have a preference on but agree that their brothers and sisters in Christ may enjoy a different style (and not be coerced to enjoy someone else’s style)—all to the glory of God. The lyrics, on the other hand, should have at least some doctrinal elements and thus all believers should agree on those elements as truth and be in unity.

Now, diversity has been hijacked and extrapolated to acceptance of even cultures that are antagonistic to sound biblical doctrine. In this mindset, telling someone of a different culture that something they believe is false, even if it actually is false, would be attempting to exert power over them. This is called cultural relativism—where no culture can be superior and ultimately there is no right or wrong—a clearly antibiblical concept.

But, the idea of such cultural relativism can be destroyed with just a quick glance at the Old Testament. The Canaanites had a very wicked culture that featured temple prostitution, child sacrifice, and almost endless violence. God replaced them with the Israeli culture, which forbade all those things. No Christian can seriously argue that the Canaanite culture was equivalent to the Israeli one. And that is what the current idea of diversity asks us to do. Should the Israelites have welcomed the Canaanites to sacrifice their children to Molech because, after all, the Canaanites simply had different ways of knowing things? Of course, we know from history that the Israelites often did adopt Canaanite cultural practices, which led to God’s judgment and eventually exile.

A diversity of ideas in the church has a further problem. The Bible forbids it on doctrinal issues. God calls for the church to be unified in Christ (Ephesians 4:1–7). Further, Scripture asks, “Can two walk together, except they be agreed?” (Amos 3:3 KJV). How can a church function if it has no unity? Certainly, people with different nonessential doctrines can be friends, and even do some ministry together (i.e., abortion clinic, general outreach, etc.). But eventually, they will likely decide to attend different churches, and this isn’t a problem so long as the core tenets of Christianity are upheld at each church.

However, diversity goes even further than a group of different ideas. It often functions as a smoke screen for activist infiltration.

However, diversity goes even further than a group of different ideas. It often functions as a smoke screen for activist infiltration. In the name of ideological diversity, some “oppressed” minority is hired. Once hired, they act as a virus, co-opting the institution to their goals. Lest anyone feel the term virus is unkind, it is one they have used for themselves!10 As James Lindsay points out in his “Translations from the Wokish,” “‘Diversity’ in the Critical Social Justice usage therefore tends to mean uniformity of viewpoint about ideological matters.”11 In other words, advocates for diversity really just want you to agree with them about everything. That’s it. Diversity is a demand for ideological conformity to whatever group is demanding it. The old adage that “Marxists share your vocabulary but not your dictionary” is apt here. While ideological unity within a local church is good, ideological conformity to a loud minority who reject Scripture is not. Thus, diversity in its modern sense is unbiblical.

Equity

The word equity, unlike diversity and inclusion, is used in the Bible multiple times, all in the Old Testament. In most cases it refers to either the king or God’s judgment (2 Samuel 8:15; Psalm 75:2, 96:10). Multiple Hebrew words are translated as equity, depending on the translation. However, the original Hebrew words have a remarkable convergence of meaning. The most common is the word mêšār which means “in an ethical sense, uprightness, equity” or “uprightly.”12 Sometimes, the word is translated as “uprightly” or “rightly.” Clearly, the implication here is judging righteously, according to God’s commands. However, the modern use of the word equity is something entirely different.

According to Merriam-Webster, equity means “justice according to natural law or right.”13 Like diversity, this sounds innocuous, until you see how it is being used: “Equality means each individual or group of people is given the same resources or opportunities. Equity recognizes that each person has different circumstances and allocates the exact resources and opportunities needed to reach an equal outcome.”14 In other words, equity in the modern sense means completely leveling the playing field so that everyone has the same outcome. According to the argument, society is biased against certain people, often either described in racial, sexual, or ability terms. Therefore, those people should be given a head start on everyone else to make sure they achieve the same as the people with the advantages (read, particularly, Christian, straight, white, male).

Of course, such an argument is flagrantly unbiblical. The Bible makes it clear that partiality is to be condemned. Yet the people advocating for equity openly argue for discrimination. African-American activist Ibram X. Kendi openly makes statements like “The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.”15 In other words, according to Kendi, we must always be discriminating to achieve equity. Such a statement is so obviously antithetical to Scripture that it is shocking so many Christian leaders promoted Kendi and people in his orbit in 2020.

Further, equity raises three significant questions: where are the resources to make all outcomes equal going to come from? Who is going to decide who gets what? And what about personal responsibility? The obvious answer to the first two questions is the government. Yet nowhere in Scripture do we find God authorizing the government to take from those who have and give to those who have not. Such an idea has its roots in Marx, not Scripture.

It may be argued that the Old Testament law made provision for the poor by commanding those who owned fields to leave a little standing for the poor to come and gather (Leviticus 23:22). This is, however, very different from the government taking grain from the landowner and giving it to the poor. Under the Levitical system, the poor would have to come to the field and glean the grain themselves. Further, the landowner could be as generous as he wished, as long as he left something behind. A landowner could decide to leave a cubit from the edge unreaped, or ten cubits. In the equity model, the government will take what it deems right from the oppressor, and instead of the oppressed working for it, the government will just hand it to them in the form of reparations.16 Personal responsibility is thus erased and partiality, particularly on ethnic lines, is promoted. The Bible is clear that if an able man will not work, he should not expect to be provided for by others (2 Thessalonians 3:10). The drive for equity makes the government show partiality, abrogates personal responsibility, and drives unnecessary wedges between people groups.

Inclusion

Like the other words in the DEI acronym inclusion sounds benign and even positive. Including people who are different than us is something most of us are glad to do on at least a small scale. However, it is important to think biblically about the idea of inclusion. Often the idea goes well beyond being friendly to someone different—instead, it requires you to affirm people in ideas and lifestyles that are unbiblical and clearly evil.

Most Christians would understand that not all inclusion is good. The Bible makes it clear that certain people (i.e., heretics) are to be excluded from the church (Titus 3:10). Further, unrepentant sin can also exclude a Christian from the body for a period of time. Jesus gives us a pattern for addressing these issues in Matthew 18 as does Paul to the Corinthians. So obviously for a Christian, not all forms of inclusion are acceptable.

Even apart from the church, it is obvious not everyone can be included in everything. It should be obvious that a sex offender should not be included in a women-only event or an arsonist in a hayride. However, at least in the former case, society is beginning to lose its collective mind and housing male offenders who claim to be women in female prisons with predictable results.17 Such types of inclusion are antithetical to Scripture and common sense.

However, inclusion is even more insidious in that it forces people to affirm lies.

However, DEI’s inclusion is even more insidious in that it forces people to affirm lies about God’s created order. In the case of the men self-identifying as women, they are placed in female prisons because it affirms them. Worse, the affirmation of the idea that men can become women or vice versa has led to a massive spike in teenagers either trying or succeeding in mutilating themselves.18 Often, this results in sterility or other health problems, both physical and mental.19 Yet both the Bible and common sense make it clear that a man cannot become a woman. They are separate categories with separate roles that do not mix. Yet in the name of inclusivity, all are expected to affirm someone in their sin. The Bible makes it clear we are not to excuse sin but to call it out and point the sinner to the hope they can find in the gospel and a true identity in Christ. When Jesus dealt with the woman taken in adultery in John 8, he did not excuse her for her sin. Instead, he told her to go and sin no more.

Inclusivity in a church context is often used to smuggle in pro-LGBTQIA+ sentiment. Under the pretext of just being inclusive, Christians are encouraged to invite the LGBTQ community to their churches merely to make them “comfortable” but not to reconcile them to Christ. This was recently done at Andy Stanley’s Unconditional Conference, where “married” gay men were platformed to tell the church how to interact with gay people.20 Of course, many in the LGBTQ community are atheists or spiritualists that hate God, so what makes them comfortable is affirmation of their sinful lifestyle. That is what Stanley and others like him are hoping for: affirm their sin so maybe they will like God more. But the gospel doesn’t make sense without first impressing on people their sinfulness in the sight of a holy God and thus their need for a Savior.

The problem with inclusivity, at its core, is it denies a biblically informed doctrine of sin. Taking the LGBTQ example, being inclusive requires accepting it as an identity rather than calling it out as a sin, as God commands. In fact, several of the sins listed in 1 Corinthians 6:9–10 that keep people from the kingdom of God are in regards to sexuality. That is not to say that such people cannot repent; in fact, the next verse indicates very clearly that repentance and forgiveness is possible. However, the church cannot affirm such behavior in the name of inclusivity.

DEI Needs to DIE

The American church for the last century has been captivated by cultural fads. Whatever the culture does, we want to Christianize it in some way. We have been so captivated by the cultural norms of our decadent society that many of our churches and sermons would be unrecognizable to those whose traditions we claim to follow. Sometimes such baptizing of concepts might be acceptable, but not in this instance. DEI as a concept is antithetical to the Bible, because it denies personal accountability, encourages partiality, and attempts to make Marxism palatable to the church. It sounds incredibly benign on the surface, but diving in just below the surface, it is poison. For all the evangelicals running around calling for diversity, equity, and inclusion, the words don’t mean what you think they mean. We need to make sure that the Bible is our ultimate guide as we examine these ideas, not the voice of culture.