On President Trump’s first day in office after his reelection, he issued an executive order terminating “illegal DEI and ‘diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility’ mandates, policies, programs, preferences, and activities in the Federal Government, under whatever name they appear.”
The president’s order echoed the Heritage Foundation’s assessment that “woke DEI” programs undermine U.S. diplomacy. The conservative, Washington, D.C., think tank, which led Project 2025, gratuitously regards DEI as part of the radical leftwing agenda that “betray[s] American values.”
Sadly, the opposition of some evangelicals to government mandates promoting equity and inclusion is not unprecedented. In 1990, the National Association of Evangelicals famously opposed the Americans with Disabilities Act — despite its enthusiastic support by then-President George H.W. Bush.
On February 6, Trump announced the creation of the White House Faith Office with televangelist Paula White-Cain as its senior advisor. White-Cain, who once associated the Black Lives Matter movement with the anti-Christ, is active in a movement known as the prosperity gospel. Purveyors of this fringe Christian offshoot promise that faith, positive scriptural confession and giving to religious causes will increase one’s material wealth.
White-Cain has been widely rejected as unbiblical and heretical by both conservative and moderate Christian scholars. (During Trump’s 2016 campaign, then-Southern Baptist theologian Russell D. Moore described her as a charlatan.) Her appointment by the president was strongly criticized by many Christian leaders, who argued that the gospel she advocates exploits vulnerable believers by promising material blessings in exchange for donations. Her leadership of the White House Faith Office, along with the administration’s statements and actions against DEI, demonstrate a federal government claiming Christianity while disregarding Scripture.
[White-Cain’s] leadership of the White House Faith Office, along with the administration’s statements and actions against DEI, demonstrate a federal government claiming Christianity while disregarding Scripture.
Jesus taught his followers to look to the margins and care for those who are there. Consider his first recorded sermon in the synagogue at Nazareth where Jesus unrolled the scroll from the prophet Isaiah and read these electrifying words: “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:18-19).
After rolling up the scroll and giving it back to the attendant, he declared, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing,” thus declaring the call to which he was anointed. The Gospel record is filled with accounts in which Jesus challenged the imaginations of his listeners with an invitation to equity, justice and inclusion. His frequent parables expanded on his calling to serve the marginalized people of his time.
For example, he couldn’t have been more explicit when he said, “When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends, your brothers and sisters, your relatives or your rich neighbors; if you do, they may invite you back and so you will be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind, and you will be blessed” (Luke 14:12-13).
The outcasts of Jesus’ time included Gentiles, Samaritans, women, persons with disabilities and tax collectors — none of whom were welcome in respectable Jewish company. Yet he went out of his way to embrace and minister to those on the margins of society. Consider the parable of the Good Samaritan or the touching narrative of the Samaritan woman at the well; the encounter with Zacchaeus, a wealthy tax collector; and the accounts of Jesus healing the blind, the leper and the paralytic. He even dined at Matthew’s home with tax collectors and sinners — to the chagrin of the Pharisees. Jesus’ ministry was a textbook example of diversity, equity and inclusion.
But it’s not only in the gospels that we are enjoined to embrace the outsiders among us. The Old Testament relates God’s instructions to his chosen people after their emancipation from Egypt: “When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the Lord your God” (Leviticus 19:33-34).
The New Testament author of the letter to the Hebrews echoed this by intimating that welcoming outsiders may even result in hosting angels: “Keep on loving one another as brothers and sisters. Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it. Continue to remember those in prison as if you were together with them in prison, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering” (Hebrews 13:1-3).
It is disheartening to see that the president and his coterie of followers appear to emulate the Pharisees in Jesus’ day, who could not tolerate the inclusion of marginalized people.
It is disheartening to see that the president and his coterie of followers appear to emulate the Pharisees in Jesus’ day, who could not tolerate the inclusion of marginalized people. Indeed, those who mischaracterize social justice as part of the radical leftwing agenda rather than a Gospel imperative deny the truth enshrined in the Golden Rule: “In everything do to others as you would have them do to you, for this is the law and the prophets” (Matthew 7:12).
But this is not the first – or only – time our nation has opposed diversity, equity and inclusion. Only in my parents’ lifetimes have women had the right to vote. Only in my lifetime has it been illegal to discriminate on the basis of race. And only in my children’s lifetimes has it been legal for same-sex couples to marry.
The pendulum swings slowly, but we are cheered by the observation of Martin Luther King, Jr. that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” It is up to us, therefore, to continue bending that arc as we act on the prayer taught by our Lord Jesus: “[May]Thy kingdom come, thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven.”
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