Diversity is Rarely a Good Thing

One of the most commonly used buzzwords in our society today is the term “diversity.”  Almost everyone seems to agree that diversity, whether gender, racial, religious, or otherwise, is a good and important thing.  Efforts to promote and celebrate diversity have become widespread throughout our culture.  Governments, businesses, and other organizations have created diversity task forces in order to promote diversity, or even hired people to work full time to carry out this task.  

The motivation for this effort to promote and celebrate diversity is a desire to counteract the hegemonic dominance of those in the majority and/or positions of power over others.  By intentionally making sure to include a diverse group of people, to listen to their perspectives, and to include them in decision-making processes, one can ensure that the voices of various groups, and not just the dominant group, are taken seriously.  And this can aid in combating the oppression of minorities and/or those who lack power.

One can certainly see the importance of this promotion of diversity when it comes to race and gender.  Women have often been dominated and oppressed by men, and minority races have often been dominated and oppressed by white people.  Making an effort to listen to the experiences of women and racial minorities and to include them in decision-making processes can be a significant help in combating the continuing negative effects of racism and sexism.  

When we turn to the topic of religious, cultural, or ideological diversity, though, the idea that we should promote and celebrate diversity becomes extremely problematic.  Race and sex are inherent, biological facts about a person.  It is a good thing to listen to the perspectives of people of different races and sexes, so that everyone can be treated fairly.  In contrast, religion, culture, and ideology have to do with a person’s values.  And diversity of values is rarely a good thing.  

If two people have conflicting beliefs about what is true, good, and valuable, then there are only two possibilities: only one of them is right, or they are both wrong.  If only one of them is right, then there can be no value in the other person having false beliefs.  The only good thing is for the person with false beliefs to adopt the other person’s true beliefs, thus eliminating diversity.  If both of them are wrong, there is no value in them having differing beliefs.  The only good thing would be for both of them to abandon their beliefs in favor of true beliefs about what is true, good, and valuable, thus eliminating diversity.

A person’s religious beliefs have to do with a person’s understanding of the fundamental nature of reality, their fundamental understanding about what is good and valuable, and thus their fundamental understanding about what is moral and immoral.  It is the height of absurdity to claim that it is good for people to have diverse beliefs about these things.  For it cannot possibly be the case that is good for people to have diverse viewpoints regarding fundamental moral issues.  

Religious diversity is thus not a good thing.  The U.S. Constitution legally guarantees religious freedom because of a belief that the government needs to be restricted from interfering in this aspect of people’s lives.  But, logically, everyone who holds to a particular religious belief should desire to eliminate religious diversity by persuading everyone to adopt the true religious perspective (whichever they think that is).  For no one should be pleased to see others promote falsehood and immorality.  

The effort to promote and celebrate religious diversity is motivated by a fear that the dominance of one religion in society will be oppressive to adherents of other religions.  But surely if that religion is true, then we should want its values to be dominant in our society, should we not?  Promoting religious diversity, and thus a diversity of values and morals, is incoherent.  Every society is held together by a consensus about certain basic values, and if there is a religion/worldview that is true, then that religion/worldview is where every society should get its values.  

Some people try to promote religious diversity by saying that our religious differences do not matter.  This is simply not true.  There are no self-evident values.  There is no self-evident morality.  Each religion/worldview has its own values and morals, and the values and morals of different religions/worldviews differ greatly.  Our religious differences do matter.  They matter a great deal.  

So when some people say that our religious differences do not matter, this is not a serious attempt to describe reality.  Rather, it is an attempt to prescribe that others not take their own religious beliefs seriously, and to allow the ideological beliefs of these people to be smuggled in under the guise of religious neutrality to a position of dominance in society.  As Luke Bretherton points out, “Liberalism claims to stop religion’s subordination of the many to a single religious authority, but in the process it mimics that which it opposes.  For all its vaunting of pluralism, liberalism sublates difference within a univocal moral-political order and thereby consistently becomes antipolitical when it becomes hegemonic.”^[1]Luke Bretherton, Resurrecting Democracy: Faith, Citizenship, and the Politics of a Common Life (New York: Cambridge University Press), page 40.  The movement to promote religious diversity thus frequently masks an attempt to de facto eliminate genuine religious diversity by imposing a very particular set of religious/ideological values on everyone, while allowing space only for superficial, surface-level religious diversity.

Genuine acceptance of religious, cultural, and ideological diversity requires that we recognize that these differences of beliefs and values are real, and that they matter a great deal.  Then, we can have real discussions and debates about which of these beliefs are true.  As we do so, we can tolerate the fact that others have different beliefs and values than we do.  But it makes no sense to see this diversity as a good thing.  Instead, we should seek to eliminate this diversity by seeking to persuade others of the truth as best we can.