Demagoguing Diversity

Even Chick-fil-A can't escape the manufactured outrage machine

It’s hard these days to scan the headlines and not roll your eyes in exasperation as people manufacture controversy and outrage in a world where real horrors more deserving of our attention occur daily. My wife warns me not to give these faux crises oxygen with my time and attention, and she’s wise and right. However, sometimes a topic hits me at the wrong angle and sticks in my brain until I do something to dislodge it.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI for short, is just such a topic.

Ecclesiastes 1:9 says, “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.” These words of wisdom ring true when it comes to DEI, which used to be affirmative action, which used to be fair labor standards, and so on. In 1920, the U.S. Department of Labor established a women’s bureau to “formulate standards and policies which shall promote the welfare of wage-earning women, improve their working conditions, increase their efficiency, and advance their opportunities for profitable employment.” Putting that into context, the idea of creating hospitable and equitable workplaces for diverse employee groups has been a thing for over a century.

Anyone who runs an organization that draws its workforce from the general public would tell you it’s logical to foster a diverse, equitable, and inclusive culture in the workplace to attract the best talent and serve the most people. I’ve worked in every employment sector imaginable - public, private, military, and non-profit - and each promotes and believes in DEI. Acronyms like EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) and DEOMI (Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute) rolled off the tongues of managers and commanders in my circles of employment, and other than the perennial discussion of how affirmative action should be implemented, there has always been a consensus that a more diverse workplace is a good thing.

However, something changed in the past quarter-century, and influencers with an agenda have successfully turned a segment of the population against DEI. Incidentally, I find it ironic that one group of elites, in their ongoing battle with another, has managed to persuade a select non-elite group that they are one of them and are looking out for their best interests. The non-elite group has nothing in common with the wealthy, educated, and influential people manipulating them other than the fact they fuel their bitterness, resentment, and anger. But that’s a topic for another day.

The authoritarian conservatives with the levers of government at their disposal, primarily at the state level, have been busily enacting legislation to neuter DEI at public institutions such as colleges, universities, and government agencies. Florida, led by the self-designated slayer of “woke” policies and agendas, Governor Ron DeSantis, was the first state to ban DEI at public institutions of higher learning, and Texas is following suit. Meanwhile, the elite influencers pulling the strings of the general public are calling attention to corporate actions oriented toward DEI and encouraging “go woke, go broke” boycotts with mixed results. As I wrote in a previous article, people have the right to boycott within the parameters of the law, although it’s not my thing:

Still, if I decide to boycott something, it will be between me and the person or company that wants to sell me something. In general terms, I don’t begrudge businesses the right to sell to whomever they want; after all, business is transactional, and the fiduciary responsibility of any business, from a sole proprietorship to a multinational corporation, is to maximize profit, hopefully within legal and ethical boundaries. I recognize they’re going to try and sell their product or service to people who aren’t like me, and to my way of thinking, that’s what they’re supposed to do. While some businesses are committed to specific causes and build their brands around them, most are trying to go where the culture goes to sell as much as possible. If it bothers me, I don’t have to buy their product - but I don’t have to be obnoxious about it.

You can read the rest of it if you’d like. I try to view everything through the eyes of Christ and capture every thought in obedience to Him, even when discussing beer boycotts, so check it out!

However, what stuck in my brain and prompted this commentary was an article about a prospective boycott of Chick-fil-A, an institution so engrained in the conservative Christian zeitgeist that its primary product is called “Jesus’ chicken.” Chick-fil-A is no stranger to controversy and has weathered many cultural storms to be ranked at or near the top of most lists of favorite fast-food establishments. According to the American Customer Satisfaction Index, as of 2019-20, it was the top-rated restaurant brand in America for six consecutive years.

While there was some grumbling among the Chick-fil-A faithful a few years ago when they decided to modify their charitable giving in response to criticism from the LGBT community or when the company’s CEO in 2020 publicly shined the shoes of black Christian rapper Lecrae as an act of contrition mimicking Jesus washing the feet of His disciples, this new call for a boycott is the first significant sign of dissent I’ve witnessed between the corporation and its loyal customers.

The offense? Chick-fil-A’s vice president for DEI announced a new initiative called Better at Together:

One of our core values at Chick-fil-A, Inc. is that we are better together. When we combine our unique backgrounds and experiences with a culture of belonging, we can discover new ways to strengthen the quality of care we deliver: to customers, to the communities we serve and to the world. We understand that getting Better at Together means we learn better, care better, grow better and serve better.

The horror.

For many, this was their first realization that Chick-fil-A had a VP for DEI. Erick McReynolds, a 16-year employee of the firm, has been a leader in the company’s DEI office for almost three years, first as an executive director and then as VP since November 2021. The announcement of this new campaign came just as the manufactured outrage machine, still high on the taste of blood from Anheuser Busch’s corporate veins, was seeking another victim to devour. Old grievances about their charitable giving and the CEO’s words and gestures supporting racial justice were dredged up and piled on top of the Better at Together social media post like anger-whipped cream and a red-hot cherry on top of an outrage sundae - which Chick-fil-A would not serve on a Sunday if they offered it. I’m sorry - I had to get that out of my head, too!

The manufactured outrage beast is insatiable, so expect to see other companies targeted for their DEI efforts and other state governments pressured to ban DEI offices and funding at their public colleges and universities.

However, they should up the ante - why not Liberty University? The conservative Christian juggernaut has had a DEI office and a chief diversity officer since 2017. However, the office is now labeled Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity (IDE) as if rearranging the words distinguishes it from DEI. Nevertheless, the IDE office and chief diversity officer's purpose is to “support the University’s desire to have culturally and ethnically diverse students, faculty, staff, and leadership, free from all unbiblical and unlawful discrimination.”

Such heresy.

My incredulity over this created controversy should be pretty apparent by now. It’s like the child who covets a toy until it’s given to a rival, after which the child no longer wants it. Such is the way with DEI, which both political parties supported until one claimed primacy over it, and now the other acts as if it never desired it and wants to destroy it.

Should we ask questions and express concerns about how DEI is practiced? Yes, we should. For example, empirical evidence and numerous studies raise legitimate questions about the effectiveness of diversity training as it is currently conducted. Free inquiry and critical thinking are indispensable tools for anyone seeking the truth.

However, what’s frustrating to me, and it always seems to come to this, is how many professed Christians have abandoned all discernment and wisdom and allowed themselves to be manipulated into joining these virtual lynch mobs. Christians should be the most diverse, equitable, and inclusive people on the planet because they worship the God whose creation is infinitely diverse and who, through the sacrifice of His Son Jesus Christ, excludes no one from His saving grace and invites us all to become equal heirs to the Kingdom. God revealed to us in His Word the diversity that would be present at the end of days to honor Him:

After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” (Revelation 7:9-10)

In the interest of full disclosure, I was a finalist to become Liberty University’s first chief diversity officer. While I wasn’t selected, I was then, and I remain today, a passionate advocate for DEI, as God would have it. It is why I serve as the president of the No Walls Ministry here in central Virginia. I wrote a proposal on DEI for the selection committee at LU, and some of my thoughts are repeated here:

When I speak of diversity in the body of Christ, I am deliberately pointing us to the Scriptures in 1 Corinthians 12:12-27, which capture the key components of diversity as God intends it. They are complementarity and unity.

In using the metaphor of the church as “one body” and its members as “many parts” (1 Corinthians 12: 12), Paul encapsulates the complementary nature of the diverse people - “Jews or Greeks, slaves or free” (1 Corinthians 12: 13) – that comprise the church. The metaphor uses the human body, the Lord’s foremost creation, to illustrate how each of us maintains our unique function within the Christian community yet we do not – indeed, we cannot – stand alone. “If all were a single member, where would the body be?”, Paul asks (1 Corinthians 12:19).

The Oxford English Dictionary defines complementarity as “a relationship or situation in which two or more different things improve or emphasize each other’s qualities.” Biblical diversity means that we are greater together than apart and each of us enriches the other. Paul writes, “But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together” (1 Corinthians 12:25-26). This is a profound picture of racial reconciliation in the body of Christ; those that lack honor are bestowed honor and we all care for one another and share our pain and happiness.

Ultimately, Biblical diversity should lead to unity – “the state of being united and joined as a whole.” On the night of Jesus’ arrest, which would lead Him to the cross and mankind ultimately to salvation, He prayed passionately that, above all else, we would be one:

 “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.” ~ John 17:20-23

Some translations of this verse use the phrase “complete unity” to describe what Jesus asks God the Father to bestow upon his disciples, not just the ones who walked with Him but those yet to come “who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one.”

The imagery of Christians unified across centuries and into infinity is powerful.  We are not the same – each of us is “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:14) – but as Paul wrote to the church at Galatia, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28).

So, beloved ones, I implore you to let the culture warriors thrash about in the mire of their faux apocalypses and set your minds and hearts on bringing God’s diverse creation to the foot of the Cross.

And as you go about that good work, treat yourself some time to a Chick-fil-A Spicy Deluxe Sandwich with Chick-fil-A sauce on the side as a condiment, waffle fries, and a large lemonade with light ice — a meal worthy of being called a good and perfect gift.