Last week Boy Scouts of America announced they would be Boy Scouts no more, with a name change to “Scouting America” in the works. This comes years after they began accepting “transgender boys” (read: “girls”) and then regular girls a few years later. Prior to that, they had allowed openly homosexual boys and adult leaders.
An American institution that for a century blessed the lives of millions of boys has now squandered all of their good will and sold off their identity entirely.
It shouldn’t surprise anyone who has been paying attention. In a world governed by Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), exclusion can only go in one direction, determined solely by intersectionality.
Boys can’t be allowed male-only spaces because they are “oppressors.” Girls are allowed female-only spaces like the Girl Scouts… unless a boy declares himself a girl. Then, because of the dominance hierarchy rankings, the girls have to bow before the even more “oppressed” trans people.
Boys are expected to know how evil their “privilege” makes them and constantly apologize and prostrate themselves before the people they’ve “oppressed.” The straight cisgender white privileged colonizing 8 year old who wants to camp with his buddies and do dude stuff must be shut down. And in the process, the entire purpose of the Boy Scouts organization goes up in smoke.
Notice how the language of the statement is dripping with the language of DEI: “It sends this really strong message to everyone in America that they can come to this program, they can bring their authentic self, they can be who they are and they will be welcomed here,” said President and CEO Roger Krone (emp. added).
They’re sending the entire organization up in flames as a sacrifice to the god of self. They couldn’t possibly tell somebody “no” and keep them out. That’s denying them their “authentic self,” the gravest sin of our day. Inclusion must reign.
Here’s the reality of inclusion: every effort to make one unaligned group feel included unavoidably results in the insiders growing more excluded.
Talk all you want about “the marginalized,” but it’s a cold, hard reality that there will always be margins. There is no world in which everybody can feel equally included.
“Boy” Scouts by definition excluded girls. Now that anyone is allowed in, the boys for whom the organization was started are surplus to requirement. Boys and girls playing together is something you can find at every school and park in the country. If your club, once exclusively set aside for boys, turns into the same thing you see everywhere else, who needs it? It’s no wonder recruitment is down and the once-thriving organization is striving to dig out of bankruptcy.
But as you can probably guess, I’m aiming at a larger target than the Boy Scouts here.
They just serve as the perfect analogue because the DEI principles that are ruining their club are being used to undermine every other organization.
The nation, the home, the church, and any other group of people can be reduced to nothing when you remove their exclusivity. It is good and proper to build fences that exclude those who are not a part and to protect and nourish those who are.
But in the world of “niceness” that drives DEI, you’re not supposed to do that. Protecting the purity of, say, the church isn’t even an afterthought—rather, it’s being actively branded as “harmful.” Intersectionality has Christians apologizing for the church and doing the brokenness culture bit so nobody is ever made uncomfortable with the concept of holiness. We, too, bow before the altar of self.
Others insist that the only way the churches of Christ can reverse our decline is if we become more inclusive of those who want instrumental worship and women preachers. Even setting aside the important Scriptural arguments, just from a pragmatic perspective it’s a ridiculous suggestion.
Without those distinctive we’re just another community church, and one who’s worse at being a community church than every other community church. And the embarrassing decline of the mainline denominations over the last 100 years tells us that opening the doors to whatever doctrines the world wants us to adopt isn’t exactly a winning church growth strategy.
Still others want to maintain a live and let live, agree to disagree position on the day’s issues like abortion and LGBT matters. A lot of people are far more kind and welcoming to someone who supports and votes for abortion than they are the person who says voting for abortion is a grave sin. As with its predecessor “tolerance,” inclusion is extended to everybody except those who question inclusion. And, once again, the inclusion of wolves inevitably drives the sheep away.
Understanding all of this, the question changes.
Rather than asking how we can include everybody, we instead ask what we as a group want to be.
Once we’ve done that, we can determine what kind of people members are to be. People need clear boundaries for who is and is not a member, and stringent but achievable expectations once they become one.
We don’t want to be a place where everyone is included. Rather, we want to be a place where inclusion means joining in with everyone else in the confession and practice of Christ’s Lordship.
We want to encourage those who are striving to be holy, and growing, and shedding their worldliness, and we want to reprove and rebuke those who aren’t.
Patting ourselves on the back for how nice and inclusive we are keeps the wayward from growing and tells the dedicated they’re not important. Setting a high bar, calling people to meet it, and strengthening and encouraging them in their efforts encourages the dedicated to excel still more and tells the wayward to put up or shut up, just as Jesus did repeatedly (Luke 9:23, 57-62; Luke 18:18-23; John 6:66).
Blindly practicing inclusion might give everyone a warm, fuzzy feeling, but over time it will kill any organization that practices it. “Scouting America” and all their woke companions are learning that lesson the hard way. We would be wise to pay attention and pick it up the easy way.
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DEI has ruined many organizations in this country. There have been far too many instances of unqualified holding a position based on race, sexual orientation, or other factors that have nothing to do with qualifications. Boy Scouts traditionally have been an organization based in Christian values and promoted morality. Now they are just a group of people who have turned their backs on God.
Another good one, Jack. I can use these thoughts for when I preach against the idol of DEI—which every preacher worth his salt ought to be doing, by the way.