Courier Conversations
This Podcast of Courier Conversations will be a conversation of topics with a variety of guests that concern, inspire and inform Christians about current events Worldwide. We hope you'll find our stories informing and encouraging in your daily walk with Christ.
Courier Conversations
Examining DEI Through a Biblical Lens: Unity, Division, and Scriptural Alignment
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) are buzzwords that dominate contemporary discourse, yet their implications and origins often remain unexplored. Join us as we host Travis Kearns, trustee at the Baptist Courier, to shed light on DEI through a biblical perspective. Challenging the conventional wisdom of DEI's Marxist roots, we explore how its focus on equal outcomes may diverge from the Christian principles of merit and opportunity. Our conversation also delves into the political landscape, reflecting on significant actions like President Trump's executive order against DEI programs, and questions how such cultural ideologies could potentially contradict biblical teachings.
Turning our focus to unity in faith, we discuss the importance of spiritual gifts over external characteristics like ethnicity or social status. By referencing biblical texts such as Revelation 5-9 and Romans 12, we highlight the potential for DEI principles to inadvertently sow division rather than foster unity within the church. Drawing from Ephesians 2, we underscore the biblical ideal that in Christ, there is neither Jew nor Greek, advocating for church practices that truly reflect this unity. This episode offers a thought-provoking examination of how contemporary ideas align—or conflict—with Scripture, encouraging a robust and faith-centered approach to modern challenges.
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Welcome to another episode of Courier Conversations. My name is Jeff Robinson, I am president and editor-in-chief of the Baptist Courier and the ministries that are tied to us, and my co-host is Travis Kearns, who is the DOM. I have to call it DOM because that's what I've lifelong Southern Baptist Travis, that's what I've called it, travis Kearns. Travis is also a trustee at the Baptist Courier, so he can hold anything I say here over my head, which is probably a good thing for me. But welcome to our podcast middle of the month here and we're going to talk about a bit of a hot-button topic today, but it's in the news every day and I think as Christians we need to talk about what Christians, how Christians should be thinking about these issues, and today we will be discussing the topic of DEI diversity, equity and inclusion.
Travis Kearns:Definitely not. Dale Earnhardt Incorporated.
Jeff Robinson:It's not Dale Earnhardt Incorporated, although I think that might be a pretty popular. That could be our all-time greatest listener, especially with Daytona coming this weekend. That's right. That's right. And you're a racing fan and so you had to get that in Pitchers and catchers report next weekend, so I've got to get that in as well. Yeah, there you go. We love to give each other a hard time for those sports that we love.
Jeff Robinson:So, diversity, equity, inclusion, president Equity inclusion President Trump has signed an executive order basically banning DEI programs from the military and from all the government agencies where Joe Biden, president Joe Biden had put those programs in place four years ago. And while we're not as interested in that, what we're interested in is what does the Bible say about this? And of course it doesn't. We know it doesn't address DEI directly. But principally, what should we think as Christians about diversity, equity, inclusion, not really so much in the culture but in the church, because this has been a discussion for what? Six or seven or eight years now, about the place of these kinds of sort of entitlement programs, I guess, for lack of a better word in the church. So, travis, why might we object to the culture's rendition of DEI?
Travis Kearns:Yeah, historically, dei comes from Marxism, from Marx's writings, specifically in his writing the Capital three-volume set and then in his co-authored book, the Communist Manifesto. Marx wasn't necessarily as interested in equality in an equal beginning point as he was with equity, which is the middle E in DEI, in equity and equity is a common ending point. Interestingly, vice President Harris in the recent presidential election argued for both equality and equity. But what Marx argues in the Capital is that and I'm sure some of our listeners have heard this, not most of them Marx argues that there are two classes of people, that there are workers and there are employers. The workers are the proletariat, the employers are the bourgeoisie. So if you ever say that's so bougie, that's where it comes from. It comes from Marx's writings, the Capital, which makes me crazy when people say that because they don't really know what they're referencing when they use it. But Marx wants to see a revolution take place that the workers will overthrow the employers or the company owners or whatever they might be, so that in the end there's an equal footing of equity between the workers and the employers. So when you hear in secular society people talking about spreading the wealth around, or you hear outright socialism, like you hear Senator Bernie Sanders from Vermont talking about these things on a regular basis. We hear Representative AOC from New York talking about things like this very regularly. Other representatives are part of the squad talking about these things.
Travis Kearns:It's not an equal beginning point, that's equality. It's an equal ending point in equity. So I think this is why President Trump, as you mentioned earlier, has signed some executive orders to move the US away from a DEI-based system and back towards a meritocracy, so that the ending point is not equal. We all know that that's just common everyday life. Life isn't fair, that's how these things work, but it's in the US anyway. The system of government, and especially the system of capitalism, is based on your merit, your worth, in not only your talents but in what you're able to do and the amount of work you put into it.
Travis Kearns:So, as a Christian, we cannot accept any sort of culturally based DEI, because it's diversity for the sake of diversity, it's equity which is a common ending point and it's inclusion for the sake of inclusion, and it's diversity of ethnicities. It's equity that's an equal ending point and it's inclusion that's more of the gay and lesbian side of things, so that we should include everybody, regardless of how they feel or however they present themselves, or whatever pronoun, he, she, they, it, them, they zur zim, whatever it is they choose today. So this is why, as Christians and as the church, we can't accept a culturally based version of DEI, because it's unbiblical, it's outright Marxist, which being Marxist doesn't necessarily make it wrong just because Marx said it, but it's based in a Marxist system which is unashamedly atheistic and non-Christian.
Jeff Robinson:That's right and I agree with all that, of course, and it seems to me it's racist, it's inherently racist. And you know, you and I, both, we stand together, of course, with Southern Baptists, south Carolina Baptists, evangelicals throughout history, that we believe racism is a sin of any kind, whether it's racism we've seen in this country the last 150 years as a result of the Civil War, before the Civil War and even after, or reverse racism. Any kind of favoritism, I believe is banned by the Scripture and we'll get to that in a moment. But there's many tentacles to this octopus of DUI, isn't there? There's the tentacle of intersectionality, which says the more times you're as a minority, a minor, an underrepresented people I guess is the language that's used the more intersections you have, the more categories you have, the more rights you should have, the more.
Travis Kearns:The less majority you are. So if you're female and you're part of a minority ethnicity and you're lesbian and your pronouns are not she, her or whatever, yeah, the more minority talking points you can bring up, the more rights you deserve or the more money you deserve.
Jeff Robinson:Yep, and there's good money in that, but that's another podcast, another time. But the more of those you qualify those categories, the more oppressed you are, and of course the oppressor is the majority, which is odd in a country that has those in the government.
Travis Kearns:Which is straight from Marx and the Capitol Right exactly 100%.
Jeff Robinson:It is definitely anti-capitalism. Just odd for a constitutional republic to be driven by this for so long. And you know, even talking about this, I think there's a time when we would feel kind of like there's somebody watching us. Now I think there's become a freedom to talk about this over the past few weeks, and I'm very thankful for so let's talk about the Bible. Okay, I would argue and this is provocative if you only listen to this for about two minutes of this, so you've got to listen to the whole thing. I would argue that DEI, biblically understood according to confessional, historic Christianity, is a good summary of the Christian faith because you have diversity. God has Revelation 5-9,. Jesus died and shed his blood for people from every tribe and tongue and people and nation. You have all the ethnicities represented in the cross of Jesus Christ. Of course, equity we are all equally sinners before a holy God.
Travis Kearns:And we all have an equal ending point around the throne. That's right.
Jeff Robinson:We equally deserve the wrath of God and when we are regenerated, we are equally regenerated. There's neither Jew nor Greek slave, nor free all in one in Christ and inclusion, the body of Christ, is by necessity inclusive. And, of course, when we do exclude and we've seen this you and I are both in the Deep South, we've seen this the less recently, I think, and I'm thankful for but when we include based on external things, exclude based on external things, then that's where sin comes in, that's where racism comes in and of course we condemn that in all its forms. But DEI am I? Am I right about that? Do you think that this, if you understand each of those words in and of themselves, according to the dictionary and the dictionaries Definition and biblically understood that, yeah, we would be for that, but not but, but against the cultural version of DEI.
Travis Kearns:Yeah, and the problem becomes when we talk in these terms is that we, as soon as you say the Bible affirms DEI. The definition in a person's head or explanation a person said of DEI that comes to mind immediately is the cultural societal definition that we just talked about being unable to accept.
Travis Kearns:The problem is that we've allowed culture to co-op what the Bible says and allowed culture to put their own meaning into these things. So when the Bible talks about diversity as you mentioned Revelation 5, 9, every tribe, every tongue, every people, every nation, equity, we're all equally sinners. Romans 3, 23,. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. It's not one ethnicity has sinned more or less than another, it's all have sinned. All persons who have do and will ever live have sinned, do sin and will continue to sin. Also, as you mentioned, when a person is regenerated, it doesn't matter if the person is from a certain ethnicity or not. That regenerate person has an equal ending with all other regenerated persons and that's around the throne of Christ worshiping in heaven for eternity. And then, as we also talked about a little earlier before we came on, james, chapter 2, talks about the sin of partiality. So we should include everyone. So the kingdom is diverse, the kingdom is equitable, the kingdom is inclusive, but not from a cultural DEI perspective.
Jeff Robinson:Yeah, that's right. Yeah, and so James 2, we're talking about my brother show no partiality. The chapter starts off with this. So show no partiality as you hold the faith. Well, faith, once wrong, delivered to the saints, the faith. Don't miss that.
Jeff Robinson:And our Lord, jesus Christ, the Lord of glory. For if a man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing comes into your assembly and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in, and if you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing and say you sit here in a good place, well you say to the poor man you stand over there or sit down at my feet, have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts? Listen, my beloved brothers, has God not chosen those who are poor in the world and that's all of us right, all of us poor in spirits, poor in the world, to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom of God which he has promised to those who love him? And he goes on to condemn favoritism.
Jeff Robinson:And it seems to me that if, insofar as we judge everything by externals, we bought into the religion of the Pharisees, jesus upbraided the Pharisees time and time again in the Gospels for understanding the law in terms of externals, understanding who was in the covenant and who was outside the covenant in terms of externals, and so those things seem to be according to James 2, revelation 5 and 9,. That's our basis for rejecting the world's version of DEI, which I think just our listeners probably know this. But I think the sort of catch-all term is wokeness. You hear that out there. I think that's what people mean when they speak of well, it's what I mean when I speak of wokeness.
Travis Kearns:Yeah, I think it is important to mention that there is one external quality that's mentioned in Scripture that is exclusive for a particular office in the church. We see that in 1 Timothy 2, 1 Timothy 3, and Titus 1, that males are the only ones who can hold the office, title and function of elder pastor, overseer, however you want to translate it, but those are God-created and God-ordained exclusions from Genesis 1. It's not a I feel like a man today, I feel like a woman tomorrow, or I identify as a whatever, and it's not excluding females for the sake of doing so. It's a God-ordained complementary exclusion, if we can put it that way. So, otherwise, though, there is no exclusion. It's as you mentioned, it's just wokeness run amok.
Jeff Robinson:Well, the $10 million question for us is what about when this comes into the church, when I think well-meaning people say well, we need to hire from this particular group, we need to evangelize this particular group and we want to evangelize all groups and we want to hire people. But how do we think about that? Do we say, you know, we need to shy away from that, or are we correcting something that needs to be corrected? When we do that, how do we think about that?
Travis Kearns:I'm going to go out on a limb here and say and try to be as non-controversial as I can, but I'm sure will be controversial and say that there are two classes of people on the earth believers and unbelievers. We should treat everybody as either a believer or an unbeliever and I think I can make that case pretty easily from Scripture, from both the Old and the New Testaments. So when we talk about evangelizing a certain group, whether it be an ethnic group or a financial background group, social status group, whatever it might be, we're being unbiblical if we focus on one specific group rather than all unbelievers. I don't think there's an evangelical on the planet who would say we need to go and evangelize unbeliever X because he or she is of this ethnicity or of this financial background or this social background, rather than unbeliever Y because he or she is not of one of those categories. I don't think there's an evangelical on the planet who would celebrate unbeliever X coming to Christ because he or she is part of some group ethnic, financial or social and not celebrate unbeliever Y coming to Christ because he or she's not part of this certain ethnic, social or financial background. Those things are just ridiculous. So allowing DEI from a social standpoint, cultural standpoint, to come into the church is not only unbiblical. It's ridiculous to say that there are either certain ethnicities, financial backgrounds or social status backgrounds.
Travis Kearns:Let's make it even more specific. I'm from South Carolina, jeff, you're from Georgia. I'm going to celebrate if a Georgian comes to Jesus as much as I am if a South Carolinian comes to Jesus. But if we put this in a social DEI setting, then we would say, oh, we only need to evangelize people from Georgia, not from South Carolina, or the opposite. Or let's say, somebody from South Carolina comes to faith and I don't celebrate near as much as I do if somebody from Georgia comes to faith. Now, being a South Carolinian, I would celebrate a Georgian coming to faith, obviously, because we know that all Georgians are lost, so you're welcome.
Jeff Robinson:Yeah, I appreciate that. Shout out for the move on.
Travis Kearns:Seriously, it's an utterly ridiculous and unbiblical notion to say we should work to evangelize one group more strongly than another group because of an ethnic, financial or social status, rather than because he or she is an unbeliever. Again, revelation 5-9 comes into perspective here. There are no quotas in Revelation 5-9 for this certain set of ethnic, financial, social status. This percentage needs to be in heaven versus that one. The same thing holds true for hiring. We hire people based on the talents God has given them. Not every person gets the same talents. We see this in Romans 12. Some people are gifted with some things and some people are not gifted with those things. We hire based on talents given by the Spirit, provided by the Spirit, not based on something external.
Travis Kearns:Again, the only external thing we look for is specific to office, title, function of pastor, as defined by 1 Timothy, 2, 3, and Titus 1. Otherwise, it's unbiblical. Let's get the person that's talented by the Holy Spirit for the role. Let's evangelize unbelievers. Let's see new churches begin in places where there's not an evangelical, bible-believing, jesus-preaching church. Now, again, that is probably a controversial thing to say, but so be it. I think I can defend that from Scripture all day long and twice on Sunday, as my grandfather would have said.
Jeff Robinson:Well, obviously, I couldn't agree more. This is why we're broaching this topic. You know and are known for fighting about things except football and why, you don't seem to get golf, and why I don't seem to get NASCAR.
Travis Kearns:Ford and Chevy. They're really important.
Jeff Robinson:Ford and Chevy is the big one, but it will keep us out of heaven. I don't think. Maybe there will be a Chevy section, I'm not really sure, but I think Matthew 25, the parallel of the talents, also validates this. While salvation and the church are certainly not a meritocracy, we're not advocating that. There are plenty of cults and you've written about a lot of them and written some good books about them who believe salvation is a meritocracy. You're working your way to heaven. It's certainly not true. Salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone and Christ alone, the glory of God alone. But Jesus, there, in giving out the talents, he gave a different number of talents to a different number of people and he commends the one who was a good steward of the talents, and I think that's important. It really is important.
Travis Kearns:I mean they were good stewards of the talents that they were given, and Jesus commends that. I think it's also important to note here that saying we should not focus on specific groups, whatever that subset group may be, is not to say we should not do missions in certain areas or we should do more missions in other areas. Places where we should do missions are where there are unbelievers, period. There might be a higher percentage of unbelievers in some areas than another, but there are just as many unbelievers in our neighborhood as there are in other places. Where we're sitting right now is 77% non-Christian, so there are plenty of unbelievers around us. It's 77% non-Christian, so there are plenty of unbelievers around us. The problem really creeps in when we tend to look at quotas in reaching unbelievers or in hiring practices or whatever it may be, versus sharing the gospel with people who are unbelievers and hiring people based on talents given to them by the Spirit. So this is not a mission, a plea to stop missions by any means. No, no, no.
Jeff Robinson:As the old Puritans used to say, preach the gospel promiscuously, meaning every tribe and tongue of people and nation and the church. We're unified. I would ask the question has this worked? Has this brought us together? Has the focus on the has this worked? Has this brought us together? Has the focus on the DEI principles within the church brought us together? I would argue it's divided us. It's called a rupture between good Christians. I believe, and I'm sad to see many brothers, friends of mine, even become divided. And even in Ephesians 2, jesus creates one new man in the place of two. So what unites us is what we have in common, which is the Spirit of God and the fruit of the Spirit and being regenerate in Christ, not external things.
Travis Kearns:Yeah, in Christ, there's neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, slave nor free. All are equal.
Jeff Robinson:And so I think that the argument for those principles being brought into the church, I think that the argument for those principles being brought into the church, what is it in Southern Baptist life? The helpful tools, or whatever the phrase was a few years ago I think that dies at the hands of Scripture. I agree. Well, we've certainly we're not going to solve any problems. This is a very much deeper debate than we can go here, of course, but we did want to raise the issue and hopefully this will be helpful to somebody. This will probably not make some people as you said, this is controversial. It may not make them as happy with this podcast, but we want to be rigorously biblical about everything we do in the church and every idea that comes in from outside. We want to weigh it on the scales of Scripture and if it passes muster, we keep it. If it doesn't pass muster, we throw it out, and so this is where we see this issue right now. Well, thank you for listening to us. We appreciate your time.
Jeff Robinson:I know there's a lot of competing podcasts out there. We are available on all the different social media platforms, so be sure and follow us there. Consider leaving a five-star review and don't miss the books in the other parts of our ministry. On our website, baptistcouriercom and baptistpublishingcom, we have a whole parcel of new books. In fact, you've got one. I've got one coming out in the months ahead, so don't miss that. You can subscribe to this podcast. We would really appreciate you doing that, especially the five-star review. So until next episode, which will be later on this month, we pray that God's glorified in your lives and in everything that we do and say and think.
Jeff Robinson:We're glad you joined us for Courier Conversations, where we are informing and inspiring South Carolina Baptists and beyond. For more information about these topics and more, subscribe to our e-edition or go to our website at baptistcourier. com. The Courier is located in Greenville, south Carolina. As a multimedia ministry partner of the South Carolina Baptist Convention. To comment about today's podcast, email us at conversations at baptistcourier. com. This podcast, produced by Bob Slone Audio Productions,
