Is diversity a strength?

We’re told over and over again, like a mantra or a litany that “Diversity is our strength.” It is not just a possible strength, not a strength in some situations, not even merely “a strength,” but it is “our strength.” And it is stated as a dogma, one that calls for the excommunication of anyone who denies this particular confession of faith.

But is diversity a strength? The definitive answer is “sometimes.”

Here is an example of where diversity is a liability, and a lack of diversity is a strength: the language used to communicate between pilots and control towers at international airports. For good or for ill, there is no diversity. English is the world language of aviation. English isn’t the ideal international language, as it is laden with exceptions, the spelling makes no sense, and it is grammatically clunky. But it is what it is. It is the most broadly-spoken international language - especially for people around the world who speak a second language. And so, it is how pilots communicate with control towers around the world. Otherwise, planes taking off and landing would be deadly while pilots and air traffic controllers negotiate to find a common language and end up miscommunicating with each other. The diversity of languages at the tower of Babel was a curse, not a blessing.

Here is a situation where diversity is a strength: a car repair shop that has mechanics with a wide variety of experience: some who deal with American cars, others who specialize in Japanese or German models. Some are experts in carburetors, while others are adroit at fuel injectors. Some are transmission whizzes, while others are masters in dealing with electrical systems or brakes or air conditioners. In such a case, diversity is a great strength.

Here is a situation where it isn’t: a hospital is hiring surgeons, but instead of focusing on hiring doctors who are talented, they decide to give the not-so-good physicians an equal opportunity, thus creating a diversity running the gamut from the incompetent to the excellent. How many of us would like to take our chances being operated on by such a diverse pool of doctors where it comes to ability and talent, of merit and training?

But what about ethnic diversity? The conventional wisdom is that ethnic diversity is better than ethnic homogeneity. But how does that work, exactly?

I used to live and work in New York. I loved the ethnic diversity, being able to walk through Chinatown and be hard-pressed to see any signage in English, to see people walking the streets eating out of rice-bowls with chopsticks in hand, to smell the Peking Duck cooking - not to mention being able to buy silk ties for five bucks. And just a short walk away was Little Italy: a completely different look of the people, of the aromas of delicious Italian food, of the euphonious beauty of the Italian language and patter. There was also a Little India neighborhood, featuring delicious Indian cuisine on every block.

This is a lovely diversity that creates a unique experience for both the residents who live in these ethnic neighborhoods, as well as for visitors. But how is this diversity achieved? By a lack of diversity. The only reason there is a Chinatown is because people of Chinese heritage congregate together and live in an enclave. It doesn’t mean they hate white or black people. But Chinatown exists because there is an overwhelming presence of Chinese people who refuse to assimilate and be assimilated. Little Italy exists because residents and businesses reflect an ongoing Italian presence, and they achieve this by Italian men marrying Italian women and passing their culture and heritage along to Italian children, who in turn run the businesses and pass the baton to their own children. This is, by definition, exclusive and exclusionary - but it isn’t hatred, and it isn’t racism.

Black Americans likewise have a vibrant culture - one that includes the richness of Harlem, the elegance of the American South, and the historical and cultural uniqueness of Creole life in Louisiana. Black America has her own folkways, holidays, customs, folklore, and linguistic patterns. Obviously, black music and cuisine are important to the ongoing culture of Americans of African descent - and they will only keep their identity if they, as a people, are not assimilated into the whole.

So ironically, ethnic diversity is a direct result of ethnic exclusivity.

We are uncomfortable by this suggestion, as we are not supposed to think in those terms. Young people are not supposed to express a preference for dating within their ethnic group. Ordinary folks are not supposed to prefer the company of people who share a common heritage. We are supposed to be inclusive, not exclusive. Of course, if large numbers of whites and blacks moved into Chinatown, that unique neighborhood would become like every other neighborhood. If young black people all married whites, the unique black heritage would dilute and become extinct in a century - as we have seen the death of many Indian languages and even tribes themselves for want of cultural continuity.

We have also seen tolerance come around full circle to become intolerance, which in the name of diversity, decreases diversity. I’m reminded of “In the Heat of the Night". I don’t know if it was the movie or the TV show, but as a child watching this on TV, I remember that the two main characters were police officers in a fictional small town in Mississippi: one black and one white. And if memory serves, the black cop had a portrait of Martin Luther King on the wall. The white cop had his portrait of Robert E. Lee. The two worked together in the aftermath of racial integration in the deep south. There was mutual respect, the ability to work together, and actual diversity expressed in tolerance, as each man represented a culture that looked to different heroes, and yet found common ground in the core values of enforcing the law fairly. Of course, today, that diversity is gone, as King is permitted and Lee is not. And this new reality supposedly represents an increased “tolerance” and “diversity” - when the opposite is, in fact, the case, as we would expect in Alice in Wonderland or George Orwell.

Obviously, excluding certain ethnic groups without regard to ability makes the whole weaker. It is unwise as policy. For example, if I want the very best team of mechanics in my garage, but I say, “No Hungarians will be hired here,” I would be arbitrarily removing a segment of the talent pool that may well produce superlative employees. But by the same token, were I to say, “We must maintain a quota of ten percent Hungarians here,” I may well be excluding talented non-Hungarians. The best way to assure quality in terms of employees is to be “color-blind” about it and focus on skills and merit.

But alas, the experts tell us that to be color-blind is to be racist, that this is now a micro-aggression. We now live in the clown paradigm where Martin Luther King harbors racism. How far are we from his statues coming down?

The same experts would argue that the Scriptures - and by extension - God Himself have sinned and fall short of the glory of diversity, for example Ezra chapters 9 and 10 (especially 9:12), which is shocking to modern ears.

The players in American professional sports are disparately black: far more represented demographically than their 13% of the American population would suggest, ceteris paribus. Dr. Walter Williams addresses this issue - among others here. Is this lack of diversity in sports indicative of some kind of institutional racism? Is this a conspiracy to hold whites and Asians and other ethnic groups back? Not likely. A more likely explanation is that cultural differences account for such aggregation (even as individuals are considered based on individual talents and merit). Back in the 1990s, the joke was that the best basketball player was Asian, the top golfer was black, and the number-one rapper was white. Obviously, even with a collective view of characteristics, achievement is still an individual matter.

But what about churches? Pew research indicates that the LCMS is 95% white. This is treated by some as prima facie evidence of “racism” - whether deliberate and motivated by hatred, or unintentional and institutional and indicative of a systemic problem. Based solely on the percentages, some conclude that blacks are not welcome in our churches, that we need to work to increase our “diversity,” that somehow our conservatism is a contributory factor to our overwhelming whiteness, and that this is a scandal and something that should cause us to beat our breasts and hang our heads in shame.

Ironically, the ELCA - which is radically liberal, hip, woke, and completely on board with BLM - is even whiter than the LCMS. Some denominations actually include ethnic heritage as constitutive of their church bodies: the African Methodist Episcopal Church and the Greek Orthodox Church, for example.

And this brings us to a reason that, as is often said, Sunday morning is the most segregated time in America: ethnic and family tradition.

Is it a bad thing that there are so many Greeks in the Greek orthodox Church? Would the Greek Orthodox Church be “better” if the Greeks were to become a minority, and were to be overtaken by Anglos, or Mexicans, or blacks? Should the Greek bishops deliberately shun their Greek heritage, maybe swap out their Byzantine icons in exchange for Western statues? Should they replace Greek chant with swaying and hand-clapping that one might find in a predominantly black American Protestant church service? Should they decry their lack of diversity and confess it as a collective sin?

And is there a possible explanation that the ELCA, an amalgamation of churches founded by Swedes and Norwegians and Germans - is even whiter than the mostly Germanic LCMS?

And what about black churches in the LCMS? I had the privilege to fill in a few times for a brother pastor many years ago at an area congregation that to my knowledge was 100% black. Should they be treated as a pariah for their lack of diversity? Are they filled with hate? Are they guilty of some kind of sin? Should the DP scold them for not reaching out to white people? I can unequivocally say that that these black Lutherans showed no signs of hatred toward me or my family. To the contrary, they were welcoming of me, my wife, and our infant son. But they clearly appreciate their own customs and culture as black Americans. It is illustrative that their pastor - who is an African immigrant - when he first arrived, had to turn to local white pastors for explanations concerning black American culture. In the name of diversity, should this congregation give up its particular heritage and culture to appeal to white people? And to what end? Diversity? Should they consider downplaying Juneteenth and instead put on a Columbus Day festival?

Ironically, were they to do this, and were they to become less black, they would, in time, just become amalgamated into a more general Lutheran culture and would lose the very identity that they are obviously comfortable with. And it isn’t an expression of hatred if white people are more comfortable among other white people, Hispanics prefer the company of other Hispanics, or Asians congregate with other Asians, deaf people with deaf people, etc. There is a former Lutheran church building in the city that is now a Roman Catholic parish comprised nearly completely of Vietnamese parishioners. Physical changes to the building reflect this reality of an ethnically homogeneous congregation. So is this less diversity, or is it actually more?

And just as I was welcomed and received as a brother by the black church, my congregation, which is overwhelmingly white, welcomes people of every ethnicity. And no matter the color, our custom is to show physical affection to one another. We truly don’t care what color anyone is. My community is majority white, with a fairly large number of black citizens. Most of them do not attend Lutheran churches, as they tend toward the churches of their families and communities: the mainly black Methodist church at the next block and the several black Baptist churches within walking distance. They are not evil for following the train of their grandfathers and grandmothers. The local Roman Catholic Church is overwhelmingly white, as the settlers of our city were German - and those German families remain in our city to this day. All are welcome, of course, but people tend to keep those community and family ties that bind. And does this mean a lack of diversity, or is it actually preserving a patchwork of diversity? It depends on how you look at it.

Some in the LCMS think that we are “too German,” that our more than a thousand year old repertory of sacred music, including our five hundred year tradition of theologically rigorous Lutheran hymnody is too homogeneous. They argue that our liturgy is too formal, and that for the sake of outreach among Americans of color, we should loosen up. Of course, this is simply the inverse of saying that black Baptists should adopt Lutheran liturgy for the sake of increasing diversity by attracting more people of Northern European origin. Who would counsel such a thing? How far would our lords and masters declare we go to attract a more diverse membership? Should we sing Baptist and Methodist hymns? Should we replace our font with a full-immersion baptistry? Should we encourage people to shout “Amen” during the sermon? And to what end?

And what of the largest Lutheran bodies in the world? They are no longer German and Swedish, but rather come from sub-Saharan Africa. Should they be scolded for being 99% (or more) black? Should they be looking to increase their “diversity”? Since “diversity is our strength,” are these churches therefore weak, lacking in blond hair and blue eyes, in people who speak Mandarin or Spanish? Should they be ashamed of their overwhelming blackness? Or does their lack of diversity as church bodies contribute to a larger diversity within the Body of Christ and the worldwide Lutheran tradition? Would a whiter African Lutheran Church and a blacker American Lutheran Church increase, or decrease, diversity? And would it make us “stronger”? Or perhaps are we asking the wrong questions and accepting the wrong premises?

And what is the source of a church’s strength? Is it diversity? Or is it fidelity to the Word of God. Luther’s great hymn did not identify German identity or white heritage to be the “mighty fortress,” but rather “our God” Himself. Perhaps we should stop fawning over ourselves in the mirror and instead look to Christ. Maybe we should not engage each other like actuaries and bean counters, or be made to feel guilty for who were are - both as individuals and as a church body - but perhaps we should look to the Lord whom we serve and the church in her catholicity. And as we open our doors to everyone, maybe we should be comfortable in our own skin and stop looking for a Racial Hygiene Utopia.

Haven’t we learned anything from the 20th century?

Morgan Freeman suggested that the best way to combat racism is to stop talking about it. I would add that we should stop letting activists and academicians - who have a vested interest in stirring up strife - dictate to us and dominate our cultural life. We have a more excellent way. Let the church be the church, and if our local parishes shake out being Greek, enjoy the lamb; if black, savor the soul food; if German, well, my German friends took me to Italian restaurants. But you get the idea.

Let us not destroy diversity in the name of diversity, and let us focus on what we truly have in common: our confession and received tradition grounded in the Most Holy Trinity, in our Lord Jesus Christ who is God and Man, and in our justification by grace through faith by means of Word and Sacrament. And let us be who we are without guilt trips and accusations of hatred. Let us celebrate our diverse heritages and cultures, while remembering that in Christ, “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.”

For ultimately, Christ is our Strength.