The Rev. Samuel Son starts by looking at the difference between diversity and inclusion
by Mike Ferguson | Presbyterian News Service
The Rev. Samuel Son
LOUISVILLE — Many people — even many people of faith — think diversity and inclusion are the same thing.
They’re not, as the Rev. Samuel Son explained this week on “A Matter of Faith: A Presby Podcast,” hosted each week by the Rev. Lee Catoe of Unbound: An Interactive Journal of Christian Social Justice, and Simon Doong of the Presbyterian Peacemaking Program.
Son is the Presbyterian Mission Agency’s manager of Diversity and Reconciliation. Listen to his conversation with Doong and Catoe here. Son comes in at the 16:10 mark.
Jesus had a diverse community serving as disciples, including people who fished, one who collected taxes and a political zealot, Son pointed out. Also key to his ministry was a group of women many today count as disciples. But the 12 were all men.
“That’s the difference between diversity and inclusion,” Son said. “You let people in, but you don’t let them into the center, the place of power and decision-making.”
Another way to look at the matter, Son said, is that “diversity welcomes differences, but it doesn’t allow those differences to impact its way of living and being. It’s a celebration of differences without really living into those differences.”
How, Catoe wondered, do we take practical steps to help Christians and their faith communities move past that?
“It’s not easy, to be sure. That’s why people like to live in that confusion of diversity and inclusion,” Son said. “You are allowing diversity without changing the way you think.” Another way to look at it, Son said, is, “If a church has just one way of doing things, they are asking all these different people to assimilate. That’s not inclusion. If you’re forcing a person to adjust and change the way they think and talk, then you are not accepting them the way they are. That’s actually a form of exclusion.”
Truth be told, we can even exclude ourselves, Son said.
“I may think, when I come into this space, I’ve got to change the code. I’ve got to talk in a certain way,” Son said. “I think you have to be up front about the true cost of inclusion. Jesus said you’ve got to count the cost of faith.”
Son said there are ways to gauge whether your faith community or organization is practicing inclusion, such as, “Do people feel they belong without having to change anything about themselves? How do they feel about their differences? Do you practice inclusion about yourself, or are you hiding some parts from God?”
“Practicing inclusion is important. It’s not about diversifying or growing the congregation,” Son said. “It’s for you to learn to truly accept one another as Christ accepted you. We talk about grace, but I don’t know if we truly live into that grace. In Romans, that’s the whole argument of Paul.”
In effect, Paul told the church in Rome: Let’s take a look at what you use to reject others. “That’s the language Paul uses,” Son said. “He says, ‘All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.’ That thing that sets you apart? That itself is broken, and that’s OK. You don’t have to shore it up. Just be honest with your fallenness. Then you can be willing to accept others as they are, because Christ has accepted you as you are.”
According to Son, preachers ought to be continually asking themselves about what they are most often teaching and preaching. “Look at those points you keep going back to. How do you communicate them?” Son advised. “It may be all the illustrations I use are from my white male perspective.” Small wonder, then, that many in worship would conclude that “the sermon is not preaching to me,” Son said.
“A Matter of Faith: A Presby Podcast” with the Rev. Lee Catoe and Simon Doong drops each Thursday.
It can take a lot of work, Catoe told Son, for people who are marginalized — including people of color and people in the queer community — “to come to spaces that aren’t ready to even receive them.”
“If you’re expecting vulnerable people to do more work to be in the community, that’s not inclusion,” Son said. “Diversity might care a lot about the numbers. Inclusion cares about attitude and heart and openness. It’s a missional attitude. The church recognizes the church doesn’t exist for itself but exists for the world.”
“A congregation may not be diverse in terms of its numbers,” Son said. “But because they are making shifts in the way they lead and the way they preach and do theology, they are doing inclusion work in their neighborhood.”
“Thanks for reminding us that inclusion starts with ourselves internally,” Doong told Son. “There’s a lot of self-work that has to be done, even though it seems like there’s work to be done out there externally.”
New editions of “A Matter of Faith: A Presby Podcast” drop each Thursday. Find them here.
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