God's DEI
The true DEI is rooted in the Gospel, and it remains countercultural.
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God’s DEI
Text: Luke 1:46-55; Luke 15:1-10
Christmas Sunday, Dec. 29, 2024
In today’s society, things can sometimes change rapidly. Four years ago looked like a more optimistic time. The former U.S. president, who is now the president-elect, was ousted by the voters nearly two months prior. We were still in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic and vaccines were just being rolled out for some high-risk people.
2020 was the year of the elections and the year of COVID. It was also the year of national reckoning with systemic racism and wider injustices in society. The death of George Floyd that spring ignited the wave of collective awakening. Even big corporations got on the Black Lives Matter bandwagon. “DEI” was the hottest new trend: diversity, equity, and inclusion.
It didn't take long for the organized backlash against these alphabets to begin to materialize. Once a fringe movement of parents shocked by what their kids were learning in their Zoom classroom during the pandemic school closures, the growing far-right populism declared war on CRT, DEI, and ESG -- as well as LGBTQ.
To them, DEI was divisive, anti-American, and reverse discrimination against white men, and therefore a covert Marxist conspiracy to destroy their Christian nation.
Four years fast-forward, we are here again, with the right-wing populism re-emerging as the president-elect declaring war on “woke,” promising the greatest “mass deportation” in history, and pledging to end the “transgender lunacy.” Big corporations such as Walmart and John Deere have already abandoned DEI. Now DEI is a dirty word to Corporate America, unless you’re Costco.
Yet, DEI isn’t an invention of Karl Marx, nor is it intrinsically anti-Christian or anti-American. In fact, the Gospel is “God’s DEI.”
Today’s reading is from the Gospel of Luke, chapter 1. Here we find one of the most famous passages in the New Testament commonly known as the Magnificat.
"Mary said, 'With all my heart I glorify the Lord! In the depths of who I am, I rejoice in God my savior. He has looked with favor on the low status of his servant. Look! From now on, everyone will consider me highly favored because the mighty one has done great things for me. Holy is his name. He shows mercy to everyone, from one generation to the next, who honors him as God. He has shown strength with his arm. He has scattered those with arrogant thoughts and proud inclinations. He has pulled the powerful down from their thrones and lifted up the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty-handed."
Luke 1:46-53 (CEB)
The Magnificat is a song of praise to God, written in a format not unlike the Psalms. In verses 51 through 53, Mary describes God as One who scatters the arrogant and proud, pulls the powerful down and lifts up the lowly, and fills the hungry while sending the rich away. The New Interpreter’s Study Bible comments on these verses more succinctly: “Viewing the coming salvation as a great reversal, Mary’s song anticipates key motifs that will recur throughout the Lukan narrative.” (2003, p. 1854.)
Amy Kenny is a disability rights activist and the author of the book, My Body is Not a Prayer Request (2022). In her book, Amy retells her daily encounters with ableism in church and wider society, often packaged in the guise of "equality" and "fairness." In chapter 3, "Disability Doubters," she recounts the challenges she experienced while getting a driver's license and renting an apartment. Petty government bureaucrats and landlords would throw barrier after barrier at her in the forms of unreasonably excessive forms to fill out, just to ask for a "reasonable accommodation."
She writes, “My left leg was withered, blue, and spasmic. All of this to say that my disability was visible and legible to anyone who so much as glanced my way. There was no reason that my disability needed further endorsement — the paperwork was only for intimidation purposes... Excessive paperwork was a means to justify administrative ableism.” (2022.)
Here in the United States, we almost deify ideas such as equality, opportunity, and entitlement. On the surface, we are a culture that still romanticizes the old American Dream: that regardless of who you are, or where you come from, America offers an equal opportunity, and with hard work, anyone can succeed. To casual observers, it seems that way: the United States is perhaps one of the very few countries in which just about every ethnic group on the Earth is represented; stories abound of rugs-to-riches successes and billionaires who built their business empires from just a computer in a garage, many of whom are immigrants or sons of immigrants.
Yet, national mythology does not usually represent the facts; instead, it whitewashes them.
The uncomfortable and inconvenient truth about American society is that we are a nation built on exclusion. Even as we pay lip service to equality or diversity, fundamentally everything in this country revolves around excluding someone.
The culture of exclusion is hard-baked into the nation’s laws and regulations, starting at the ports of entry. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection website even says just as much: “The [Immigration and Nationality Act] is based on the law of presumption: an applicant for admission is presumed to be an alien until he or she shows evidence of citizenship; an alien is presumed to be an immigrant until he or she proves that he or she fits into one of the nonimmigrant classifications.” (2024.) In other words, everyone is a suspected illegal immigrant to be excluded from the United States unless proven otherwise and that burden of proof rests entirely on the arriving travelers. Therefore the mission of the U.S. Customs is the business of excluding, not welcoming, despite the “Welcome to the United States” sign at every border crossing.
Once on U.S. soil, people find that survival in America means overcoming the endless obstacle courses set by government agencies, private businesses, nonprofit charities, membership organizations, and even churches all designed to exclude a large number of people. Amy Kenny speaks of a bureaucratic system designed to exclude from the "disability benefits" even those who are clearly, most obviously disabled. To these decision-makers who arbitrarily enforce the rules created by career bureaucrats and elected politicians, Amy's words are not to be believed.
Similar systemic issues exist and persist across American society. If you're in doubt, just think of when you tried to rent an apartment, buy a house, apply for a job, get a driver's license, open a bank account or get a credit card, apply for a college, or even trying to receive healthcare that you needed. If you already have some levels of middle-class privilege, none of these are daunting tasks to overcome, just some errands that might cause a minor nuisance, but too often, those who are in the most need of those are rejected, and many people fall through the cracks because of the catch-22s created by the intersections of exclusions.
What makes all this insidious is that the American culture of exclusion is done in the name of equality and fairness.
The DEI movement was originally intended to examine this systemic failure and attempt to rectify it before the big corporations and their PR and HR departments began co-opting DEI for marketing.
DEI addresses one of the worst tendencies of our human nature, that is, we like to judge others and exclude them. We love the idea of "us versus them." It is everywhere, from advertising to political campaigns, and from football games to even our churches. Too often we define who we are by positioning ourselves against others and derive our meanings and pride by not being like them. More egregious symptoms of this manifest in racism, xenophobia, aporophobia, classism, and religious exceptionalism, among others. Unchecked, this leads to violence.
In the Gospels, Jesus taught a lot about equity and inclusion, while reserving choice words for the “Pharisees.”
Before I go further, let me comment a little about the "Pharisees." Historically, Christians have used Jesus' critique of the Pharisees as a justification for antisemitism. What they usually miss is that Jesus lived as part of the Jewish community and taught primarily to a Jewish audience and that Jesus himself was likely a Pharisee -- he was addressed as a "rabbi," and his teaching of the most important commandment, Matthew 7:12, is nearly identical to Hillel's summation of the Torah (found in the Talmud Bavli, tractate Shabbat 31a:6). Perhaps had Jesus been born elsewhere, in a different era, the target of his critique would be different but the underlying message about our human nature remains the same. Imagine if Jesus was born in Thailand. He would criticize the Buddhist establishment and corrupt monks. So this isn't about Judaism but it is about how we justify horrible behaviors and oppressive actions in the name of religion.
Like the so-called “law and order” politicians today, the Pharisees weaponized “equality under law” to burden and oppress the marginalized, building the barriers of exclusion against all who are not like them. They used religious observances and compliance with the law as tools to keep people away from God. This was the backdrop against which the Gospel was preached.
In the Gospel of Matthew, two parables used by Jesus illustrate what the Kingdom of Heaven is like -- and the vision of its DEI program.
“Jesus said to them, ‘I assure you who have followed me that, when everything is made new, when the Human One sits on his magnificent throne, you also will sit on twelve thrones overseeing the twelve tribes of Israel... But many who are first will be last. And many who are last will be first.’” — Matthew 19:28-30 (CEB).
In Luke 15, Jesus uses three parables to demonstrate that the values of the Kingdom of God differ from those of the world. He told these parables in response to the Pharisees complaining that he was including those whom they were excluding into his circle. In the first parable, a shepherd leaves his 99 sheep behind to look for one lost sheep. In the second, a woman spends time and makes an effort to look for one lost coin. In the third parable, a "prodigal son" is welcomed back to his family and is given royal treatment. None of these made sense to the Pharisees, just as today's "law and order" ideologues and proponents of "meritocracy" might decry it as "reverse discrimination," "affirmative action," and "amnesty."
Yet, the Kingdom of Heaven is, in the words of the New Interpreter's Study Bible, "a great reversal." In a world that elevates the top one percent while discarding the unprofitable bottom one percent, God elevates the bottom one percent, seemingly at the expense of the top 99 percent. In a world in which writing off a 10 percent financial loss is just a "price of doing business," God spares no efforts at reuniting the one lost coin with the nine others. In a world in which "justice" means permanent retribution and punishment for those who made bad life choices, God throws a party for the lost soul who returns.
In Acts chapter 10, exhausted and hungry Peter falls asleep while trying to pray. He sees a strange dream. He sees the sky open up "and something like a large linen sheet being lowered to the earth by its four corners. Inside the sheet were all kinds of four-legged animals, reptiles, and wild birds." God tells Peter to kill and eat the animals. Peter refuses, saying that he has always kept kosher and these are all treif. God responds, "Never consider unclean what God has made pure." (Acts 10:11-15, CEB.)
As it turned out, the dream wasn’t about kosher food, but instead that an Italian military officer named Cornelius was about to visit Peter, and that Peter should welcome a non-Jewish person who wanted to hear the Gospel.
Once again, the Gospel trumps exclusionary laws and customs in favor of radical inclusion as the Kingdom of Heaven expands.
To recap, the Kingdom of Heaven as taught in the Gospel repeatedly proclaims equity and inclusion, even when they appear unfair and unequal in the eyes of the predominant social and cultural norms.
Just as in the days of Jesus of Nazareth, once again DEI may now become countercultural in the coming years. Yet, it is our calling as believers to follow the values of the Kingdom of Heaven, and we must cultivate discipleship that echoes God's visions of diversity, equity, and inclusion even when they are not trendy or fashionable. Since the early centuries of church history, Christians have championed causes that were previously unthinkable: They have adopted abandoned children. They have built hospitals and cared for the sick expecting nothing in return, even in the midst of epidemics. They've created schools to educate children whether their parents could afford to pay for education or not. Universal human rights, a concept now taken for granted in most of the world, originated in Christianity. Even the controversial idea known as "social justice" was originally part of Catholic social teaching.
The Gospel was indeed God’s DEI, and the inclusion is open to you, me, and everyone else. Let’s proclaim it. Let’s live it. And let’s always examine our hearts and minds when we find ourselves excluding.
Notes:
Scripture taken from the Common English Bible®, CEB® Copyright © 2010, 2011 by Common English Bible. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
Kenny, A. (2022.) My body is not a prayer request: Disability justice in the Church. Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2022.
New Interpreter’s Study Bible: New Revised Standard Version with Apocrypha. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2003.
Talmud Bavli, Tractate Shabbat. Sefaria. https://www.sefaria.org/Shabbat.31a.7?lang=bi
U. S. Customs and Border Protection. (2024.) Immigration inspection program. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (2024, Mar 6). https://www.cbp.gov/border-security/ports-entry/overview