Is diversity always a good thing?

Today “diversity” is a god-word.

That’s the new term for a word or term that immediately inspires agreement.  Even if one does not believe in God, there are certain words for certain principles that all agree on and thus are treated like a god before which one must bow.

“Diversity” is one of those. Another is “inclusion.”

Both of these are god-words in the academic world, and indeed in much of our culture.

But Christians must ask if diversity is always a good thing.  Paul did not seem to think think so.

He commanded the Philippians to be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind (Phil. 2.2).  Then he said that if they disagreed with him, they were wrong and should change their minds: Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you (Phil 3.15).

So diversity in beliefs about God is not always a good think, according to Paul.

Following Paul, the Church has taught something similar–that agreement on the essentials is necessary if one is to remain within  orthodoxy.  Diverging from those essentials is heresy, the kind of diversity which is not to be permitted within the Church.

Diversity in non-essentials, which the Reformers called the adiaphora (things indifferent) is another matter.

Today at Public Discourse Michael Bradly has a fine piece arguing that our obsession with diversity is silly.  Do we academics really think, he asks, that having people on campus promoting genocide or eugenics is a good kind of diversity?

Read the rest of his argument here.