That someone who looks more and more like the caricature of the antichrist every day would launch an attack on diversity, equity, and inclusion is not surprising. That’s what antichrists are supposed to do. However, I have seen more and more conservative Christians not merely falling in line behind him but repeating his lies.
As an example, take T. Michael W. Halcomb’s recent Substack piece.
He claims that what diversity, equity, and inclusion mean for Christians and for everyone else is different. It is true that conservative Christianity of the sort he identifies with does a lot of exclusion, and inclusion with conditions and limits. However, for a great many Christians, these words mean the same thing as they do for everyone else.
Bait and Switch
He says there is a bait and switch, and that is true. He and those who line up behind Trump and his cause, if they ever use one of those three words positively, have an asterisk or footnote that reads some exclusions may apply.
You want to talk about bait and switch? The so-called conservative Christians offer something that substitutes small tidbits of Bible in a package that is presented as though it were “what the Bible teaches.”
You want to talk about bait and switch? When the Bible excludes, sometimes it does so to the foreigner, but then we also get the inclusion of Ruth, of the repentant Ninevites, of the Syrophoenician woman and the Samaritan and the centurion. Who is consistently excluded? The rich. The haughty. The proud. The self-righteous. The boastful. The liar. Do you hear any of Trump’s supporters talking about any of that biblical teaching?
Halcomb claims that DEI is a recent Marxist innovation. I am sure there are Marxists who talk about DEI, but DEI is much broader than that and it does not belong to that particular ideology. Let me offer my own institution, Butler University, as an example.
Butler University
Our Compass Center, formerly our Center for Faith and Vocation, falls under the heading and oversight of our VP for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. The Compass Center is our home for campus ministries. The inclusion of Cru (formerly Campus Crusade for Christ) is part of DEI at Butler. Butler does not have a religious affiliation, but we welcome and make room for those who do. At the end of your interfaith Baccalaureate we have regularly had Evangelicals who have more or less preached the gospel as they understand it, alongside voices from Catholics, mainline Protestants, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, secular people, and others.
This is what Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion means. I am so proud and privileged to work at an institution for which DEI is part of its founding values and core mission. Conservative Evangelical Christians are welcome under this heading of diversity, equity, and inclusion. His claim that his more restrictive ideology offers true diversity, equity, or inclusion is a lie, and I trust you can see through it.
Deceitful Tactics
Despite the fact that I know these tactics, seeing someone well-educated like Michael Halcomb engage in it still saddens me. He calls his opponents “dumb” and tries in a bizarre way to imply that the early church’s lack of a “corporate DEI office” is significant. The suggestion that Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female were all one was a radical emphasis of the early church…and now the distant descendants of that movement have so distorted things that they begrudge others for trying to embrace and implement those teachings! They actually attack diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts while claiming that they do not. They are like the disciples who objected to others who cast out demons in Jesus’ name but were not part of their group.
That there were no corporations and no democracy in the time of Jesus doesn’t justify objecting to corporate offices concerned with ethics, nor opposing democracy. The government then did not do most of the things that the Jesus movement thought ought to be done and tried to do themselves. That doesn’t explain why anyone who considers themselves a follower of Jesus would object to a government that cares about such things. My guess is that when society as a whole, historically reflecting the influence of progressive Christians, moves in directions that actually align with things the Bible emphasizes, those with a conservative outlook, those who think that the only way to be right is for everyone else to be wrong, feel threatened. If only they could truly grapple with Jesus’ reaction to the centurion, praising his faith as an outsider over those who were part of the right group.
Make American Diverse, Equitable, and Inclusive (whether Again or For the First Time)
Halcomb then suggests that we’ll “blow a gasket” if we have to answer the reciprocal question to the one he spends his whole post avoiding answering (which part of diversity, equity, and inclusion is he against). Which part of Make American Great Again am I against? None, if one understands greatness in accordance with Jesus’ teaching. The one who would be greatest should serve all. Yet I also won’t pretend that America once lived up to the teaching of Jesus, in our past filled with slavery and segregation, with women who could not vote and could not lead.
Let’s make American finally great for the first time, not that it hasn’t had a measure of greatness at other points in our history, but we can make it not merely what it once was but better than it has ever been. You’ll get that, if you embrace the teaching of Jesus about diversity, equity, and inclusion. What Donald Trump and his followers (sadly including Michael Halcomb) offer leads in the opposite direction. I hope that most people won’t find Halcomb’s nonsensical silly questions about “where Jesus appointed a Chief Diversity Officer” compelling. But alas, I fear that some who are looking for anything that will allow them to feel a sense of superiority over others may embrace this nonetheless.
That is precisely why those of us who actually follow Jesus need to be his emissaries, his representatives, his “officers” if you prefer. We need to engage in the acts of welcoming diverse people and groups, judging matters with equity, and including those whom others exclude. We need to stand against every attack on diversity, equity, and inclusion. Especially one that is based on lies, particularly if one of the lies is the egregious one claiming that you can reject diversity, equity, and inclusion and follow Jesus.
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