A new anthology of essays, After DEI? A Theological Exploration, has just appeared. It is a slim volume comprising a dozen readable chapters. Contributors include Erik Varden, Mark Lilla, and Word on Fire Institute senior director Matthew Petrusek.
For a few years, the principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) were a source of explicit partisan division in the United States. Then, the DEI label fell out of favor in light of concerns about the fairness of programs and policies being advanced under it. Some institutions gutted DEI programs and personnel. Others rebranded DEI programs without changing their substance. But most institutions are navigating a middle course, seeking to replace DEI—and what it represents—with a fairer, less divisive, and more effective set of values.
That is where this volume comes in. Instead of merely defending or attacking DEI, the volume pursues the more difficult but ultimately more fruitful tasks of reconciliation and moral reconstruction. Siding with neither “camp,” it asks why DEI proved divisive and what a better framework might look like. Along the way, it engages irenically with DEI supporters and critics, presenting their views fairly and addressing them substantively.
The volume’s most important and unique feature is its Christian theological lens. The book assumes little save that truth is real and coherent and that the Christian intellectual tradition offers underutilized resources for thinking about diversity, equality, inclusion, belonging, and related values such as justice, charity, and friendship. Its goal is not to argue for Christianity or belief in God but to show how religious perspectives can provide valuable insights, point toward shared commitments and common objectives, and help to break the partisan impasse that burdens American politics.
One might ask what value religion can add to a discussion of diversity, equity, and inclusion. In Paul J. Griffiths’s formulation, a religion, from the perspective of adherents, is comprehensive, unsurpassable, and central: comprehensive in that it “takes account of everything,” unsurpassable in that it cannot be “replaced by or subsumed in a better account,” and central in that it answers—or helps to answer—the most important questions in one’s life. The values of diversity, equity, and inclusion bear on essential questions, including how we should relate to other human beings and how we should understand ourselves. Religion is therefore richly, directly, and often explicitly relevant to them.
The values of diversity, equity, and inclusion bear on essential questions, including how we should relate to other human beings and how we should understand ourselves.
The essays in the collection affirm that from a theological perspective, there is much to commend in each of these values. Justin Anderson notes that in the Judeo-Christian tradition, diversity is part of God’s plan. He created the world for his creatures to share in his goodness, but because humans would be unable to apprehend him fully—and no array of finite beings could exhaust his infinite goodness—he created a great and growing diversity of creatures living in symphonic harmony to point us toward himself.
Arguably, modern notions of equality and equity rest on a Christian foundation. Central to Christianity is the view that every person is made in God’s image. As such, each of us is the bearer of inherent dignity and worth. Christianity may be more responsible than any historical force for implanting in Westerners’ heads not the idea of equity, but its precursor, the idea of human equality: the revolutionary, counterintuitive idea that human beings are equal in dignity regardless of differences in sex, lineage, or worldly status or success; moreover, they are equal in a way that makes each person inviolable.
This belief in inherent and equal dignity can breed a radical inclusivity. Christianity teaches that all human beings have a profound, innate need to commune with one another and with God. At their best, Christian communities are among the most inclusive in the world. No person is turned away at the church door, whatever his abilities, station, or past misdeeds. All are summoned to full and active participation in church life.
At the same time, diversity, equity, and inclusion are not unconditional or primary values in the Christian framework or according to natural law. It would be foolish and counterproductive to attempt to remove all inequalities of treatment, circumstance, and outcome in human life. The very existence of a group or community presupposes a measure of unity and boundedness, as diversity without unity leads to atomization, and inclusion without boundaries erodes identity.
From a Christian perspective, DEI advocates are right to highlight issues of group power differentials, structural oppression, and collective responsibility. Christianity treats human beings as finite, fallen social animals with an ingrained vulnerability to the temptation to reduce others to means for our narrowly conceived ends: a distortion of vision and will that Augustine famously described as a libido dominandi. We are tribal and often engage in group conflict. We malform our social structures, which in turn malform and mistreat the people living under them. Justice demands that we take responsibility for the moral harm, exclusion, and privation brought upon by structural oppression, regardless of personal culpability, as in response to a natural disaster. Charity beckons us to lament structural evil and join victims in solidarity.
But on the Christian account, human relations are not only or even primarily an arena of conflict and oppression; people are friends, cooperators, and good Samaritans who contribute to structures of grace as well as to structures of sin. Also, human affairs are not reducible to group dynamics; individuals are important agents in their own right and can transcend tribal and other group attachments.
Attention to fundamental values reveals the deeper purpose of social advocacy, the uncrossable lines, the proper intentions, and necessary considerations.
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. 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.
Of course, the kind of analysis we are calling for unavoidably implicates questions of intrinsic value and teleology. Attention to fundamental values reveals the deeper purpose of social advocacy, the uncrossable lines, the proper intentions, and necessary considerations.
A Personalist Proposal
Although the perspectives represented in the collection vary and sometimes take opposing views of DEI, they converge in placing the human person in the center; in 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. 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. 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 a particular communities. It is also attentive to the ways in which political ideology can hamper organizations, exclude people, and ill-serve even intended beneficiaries.
As a whole, the collection suggests five principles that would help to keep future social justice initiatives within personalist boundaries. First, unity, concord, and healing are achieved through relationship and sympathy more than through rules, trainings, and bureaucracy. Second, institutions should clearly state their core values and seek to avert the twin dangers of rigid exclusivity and boundless inclusivity. Third, treating people differently based on ascriptive traits tends to undermine human dignity. Fourth, one should seek to foster virtue and wisdom in others; since grievances and demands are not necessarily virtuous or wise, one should be discerning, although not suspicious or mistrustful, in response to them. Fifth, greater attention to educational stratification and economic precarity is needed. Though not by initial design, every chapter in the volume supports one or more of these principles, but not necessarily others.
The Structure of the Collection
The collection is organized in four sections. In the first, “DEI, Charity, and Lamentation,” Sebastian Milbank (Chapter One) provides an eloquent critique of liberal theories of justice and DEI initiatives from a classical, Christian perspective. Marcus Gibson (Chapter Two) offers a Catholic account of lament and vicarious contrition and considers how these concepts could enrich social justice advocacy.
In the second section, “Inclusion and Recognition,” Jennifer Herdt (Chapter Three) argues that certain critiques of DEI—particularly those that deconstruct demands for inclusion and recognition—are both historically and theologically misguided. James Greenaway (Chapter Four) 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. Samuel Wells (Chapter Five) distinguishes between secular and Christian ways of thinking about identity and inclusion, drawing on biblical accounts of the resurrection and transfiguration. Mark Lilla (Chapter Six), engaging Alexis de Tocqueville, argues that educational stratification is generating new feelings of exclusion in broad swaths of the US population.
In the third, “Equity and Equality,” Matthew Petrusek (Chapter Seven) defends a Catholic conception of equality, according to which it is legitimate and necessary to treat people differently on the basis of their actions but wrong to do so on the basis of race or sex. Eugene McCarraher (Chapter Eight) presents a Christian Socialist view of equality, which would imply a renewed focus on the problem of exploitation.
In the fourth, “Friendship and Enmity,” Spencer Klavan (Chapter Nine) argues that resources from the Bible and the American founding offer a way out of the friend-enemy dynamic portrayed by Carl Schmitt and Herbert Marcuse. Jeff Liou (Chapter Ten) vacillates between anxiety and biblically grounded aspiration in contemplating whether friendship through trauma and injustice is possible. Joshua Hochschild (Chapter Eleven) presents a Catholic account of structural evil, collective responsibility, and social justice, noting points of similarity and difference with DEI.
In the conclusion, Catholic bishop and Trappist monk Erik 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.
We close with some words of praise for the volume from Princeton professor of religion, Eric Gregory: “It is perhaps fitting that one of the most marginalized disciplines in the academy—Christian theology—here offers some of the most compelling ways to both think and act beyond the standstill of DEI’s lazy critics and defenders. After DEI? is a rare assembly of politically and theologically diverse reflections united by commitment to the common good and the dignity of the human person. Readers hoping for a more serious conversation about virtues and social institutions would do well to begin here.”
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Most of this essay is drawn from the foreword and introduction of After DEI? A Theological Exploration. The passages are republished here with the permission of Angelico Press.
A version of this article has been published concurrently on Public Discourse.