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“No company should want anything to do with this approach to the workplace because it’s rotten, from the root to the fruit. But trying to incorporate DEI into a company with conservative and/or Christian values is like trying to drink just a little poison — it will still kill you.”
–WILLIAM WOLFE
The cultural Marxists’ “long slow march through the institutions” has finally come to chicken sandwiches.
Recently, it was brought to national attention that none other than the sole producer of “God’s Chicken,” the closed-on-Sunday sandwich shop, the one and only Chick-fil-A, might be going woke with the addition of a vice president for Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion (DEI) and a Corporate Purpose Statement about how the fast food chain is “Committed to Being Better at Together.”
Reporting for the Daily Wire, Ben Zeisloft explained that Chick-fil-A received backlash from conservatives after learning the restaurant’s corporate office “advances a number of diversity initiatives, a revelation which came as brands such as Bud Light and Target face criticism for embracing woke ideology.”
It’s been a rough few months for conservatives witnessing their favorite brands going off the rails of the 21st-century cultural revolution. Yet, despite the personal inconvenience, Christians and conservatives are boycotting stores like Target in protest of its Pride Month products aimed at kids, causing significant market share loss.
And now Chick-fil-A is joining the cadre of secular companies who have caved to the woke agenda? Is this a hoax?
Let me explain what is going on here and how Christians should think about DEI programs. While the owners of Chick-fil-A might be well-intentioned, the reality is that DEI doesn’t care how good your intentions are — it’s going to demand that you submit to its Marxist vision of the workforce either way. The bottom line is that DEI culture is at total odds with Christian and conservative values.
Here’s why: The best way to understand DEI is as a form of cultural Marxism. It is corporate Marxism, applied to the personnel practices (hiring, training, promotions, etc.) of companies across America (and the world). As with all woke tricks, the name itself is an act of subversion. Taken just on the words alone, who could be opposed to “diversity, equity, and inclusion”? How are those goals Marxist?
Let’s break it down. At the center of DEI is the concept of “equity” — which is a modern way of formulating the Marxist vision of a perfectly equal society in which no one class of people has more than the others. Equity is the solution to the Marxist view that all people fit into one of two categories: “oppressed” and “oppressor.”
DEI sacrifices merit on the altar of intersectionality. Intersectionality is defined as “the complex, cumulative way in which the effects of multiple forms of discrimination (such as racism, sexism, and classism) combine, overlap, or intersect especially in the experiences of marginalized individuals or groups.”
That is the theory. This is what drives DEI. Thus, in practice, intersectionality-powered DEI racks and stacks people according to the inevitable overlap of “oppressed” status (for example, a black lesbian woman is far more oppressed than a white straight man, of course, but also more than a black straight woman) to corporate HR practices. Now, hirings and promotions will be determined less on the basis of merit, and more on which intersectionality “boxes” are checked. Doing so works to overcome the oppression inherent in the system, advancing a more “equitable” society and moving the world closer to a communist utopia.
As one critic explains it:
“Equity is the goal of all DEI programs, which is to say that DEI programs exist to force captive audiences of people to achieve ‘equitable’ redistribution of resources, status, and wealth according to neo-Marxist Identity Theories like Critical Race Theory.”
Ultimately, such a worldview is fundamentally anti-Christian and irredeemable. The Bible clearly commands us that we are to “show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory” (James 2:1). Christians are called to treat all people equally as image bearers of God (Genesis 1:26-27) — but not to enforce “equity” in the hiring process.
Christians are also called to judge fairly based on the facts, based on the truth. Consider Proverbs 18:17, “The first to present his case seems right, till another comes forward and questions him,” and Proverbs 23:23: “Buy the truth, and do not sell it, Also wisdom and instruction and understanding.”
These principles — the necessity of judicial proceedings, impartially hearing both sides of a case, and valuing objective truth over subjective feelings — are in direct conflict with the practices of DEI. For example, with DEI, disputes might be settled according to considerations of “power dynamics,” whereby accused parties are presumed guilty simply because of their race, gender, or religious commitments.
One Christian apologist put it this way:
“DEI programs are rooted in contemporary critical theory, a deeply unbiblical ideology that Christians must reject. This fundamentally unbiblical understanding of ‘Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion’ is so ubiquitous that I’m not very comfortable with Christians even using the phrase ‘Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.’”
Amen. DEI must be totally rejected by Christians because, at the end of the day, DEI aims to set itself up as a deity; that is, it demands to be the highest moral frame of reference for understanding justice and humanity. It rejects the concept of the Christian Creator God, and it demands that all its adherents bow only to its Critical Theory-informed, intersectionality box-checking judgments.
No company should want anything to do with this approach to the workplace because it’s rotten, from the root to the fruit. But trying to incorporate DEI into a company with conservative and/or Christian values is like trying to drink just a little poison — it will still kill you. (Just ask Vizzini from “The Princess Bride.” Oh wait, you can’t. He’s dead.)
We’ll see how this gambit works out for Chick-fil-A. But only one person was wise enough to try to “split the baby” — and that was King Solomon, not Andrew Cathy. In the meantime, we can be confident in our Christian rejection of DEI and the false deity of equity because our God is a God of truth and impartial justice. And not just justice but undeserved grace in Jesus Christ — something DEI knows nothing about.
Follow William on Twitter! @William_E_Wolfe
Ready to dive deeper into the intersection of faith and policy? Head over to our Theology of Politics series page where we’ve published several long-form pieces that will help Christians navigate where their faith should direct them on political issues.
