Analysis of new essay collection highlights value and limits of diversity, equity, and inclusion from a theological lens

A new collection of essays is investigating the principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) from a Christian theological lens to help break “the partisan impasse that burdens American politics,” according to an Oct. 20 Word on Fire article. 

The volume does not defend or attack DEI but rather “asks why DEI proved divisive and what a better framework might look like,” according to the article’s authors, Brandon Van Dyck, editor of the collection After DEI? A Theological Exploration, and Robert P. George, the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University.

A Trappist monk and Norwegian bishop penned the collection’s conclusion, examining the relevance of diversity, equity, and inclusion — as well as their “damaging flip side” — in monastic life.

“The essays in the collection suggest that in our institutions and advocacy, we need to strike the right balance between diversity and unity; inclusion and boundedness; equality, freedom, and abundance; and solidarity and subsidiarity,” the authors wrote. “Equally, they suggest that in our analyses of social relations, we must appropriately balance the interests and well-being of the community and the interests and rights of the individual.”

Because the principles of DEI raise questions related to how human beings should relate to one another and understand oneself, considering the issues through a religious lens is important, the authors argued. The volume’s writers operate from the foundation that the Christian intellectual tradition contains extensive wisdom regarding charity, friendship, and justice, and that it has underutilized insight related to diversity, equity, and inclusion. 

They argued that modern-day ideas of equality and equity have been built on Christian ideas, pointing out that a key Christian belief is that every person is made in the image and likeness of God, and thus each person has inherent dignity and worth. 

The authors pointed out that neither natural law nor the Christian framework hold diversity, equity, and inclusion as unconditional or primary values. Inequality is a reality of human life, the authors indicated. They added that the existence of a group necessitates a level of “unity and boundedness,” that diversity without unity causes fragmented individualism, and that “inclusion without boundaries erodes identity.” 

The volume’s authors are: Sebastian Milbank, Marcus Gibson, Jennifer Herdt, James Greenaway, Samuel Wells, Mark Lilla, Matthew Petrusek, Eugene McCarraher, Spencer Klavan, Jeff Liou, Joshua Hochschild, and Bishop Erik Varden. Each author engages with different aspects of DEI, offering critiques, comparisons of worldviews, and arguments. For example, according to Van Dyck and George, Hardt argues in the second section of the volume “that certain critiques of DEI — particularly those that deconstruct demands for inclusion and recognition — are both historically and theologically misguided.” 

In the following chapter, introducing a perhaps complementary or somewhat contrary view, Greenaway “posits that inclusion and recognition are important but instrumental values that should be subordinated to and serve the complete, terminal value that is the human person,” the authors wrote. 

According to Van Dyck and George, in the volume’s conclusion, Bishop Varden “imaginatively recasts the Benedictine monastery as a schola dei, or ‘school of God.’ He argues that the qualities of diversity, equity, and inclusion are relevant to monastic life, but each has a damaging flip side necessitating purposeful formation to learn their just exercise.”

Van Dyck and George wrote that while the volume’s authors sometimes present opposing views on DEI, they all write with the human person at the center of their arguments. 

The volume authors do this by “proposing the dignity and centrality of the person as the inviolate ground of social advocacy and the flourishing of the person — including through communion with others — as its ultimate end,” Van Dyck and George wrote. “In the Judeo-Christian tradition, it is the human person alone whom God made in his own image and likeness. The collection proposes to situate the pursuit of social justice within a personalist framework so as not to deflect attention from what ultimately matters: the dignity of the human person.”

“This approach naturally preserves what is right and good in DEI while guarding against its missteps,” the authors wrote. “On one hand, personalism aligns with DEI’s mission to combat prejudice and unjust discrimination, which undermine human dignity. But unlike DEI, personalism focuses on what unites people: their status as human beings and their membership in particular communities. It is also attentive to the ways in which political ideology can hamper organizations, exclude people, and ill-serve even intended beneficiaries.”