Approaching D.E.I. Within Christian-Centered Colleges and Universities

One Body, Many Backgrounds: Real Inclusion on a Christian Team

Diversity, equity, and inclusion gets talked about constantly in college athletics right now, and I think a lot of that conversation has drifted from what actually builds a strong team. I don't buy into Critical Race Theory, and I don't think the best way to understand people is by sorting them into competing groups based on race or identity. A lot of what gets labeled equity today is really about engineering outcomes, not offering genuine opportunity, and I think that's a mistake. But none of that means I'm against real inclusion. I want every athlete who walks into my gym, whatever her background, her country, her faith, or her story, to know she belongs there. I just think Scripture already gave us a far better foundation for that than any campus DEI office ever will.

It starts in Genesis. Every athlete on a roster is made in the image of God, full stop, before she's ever swung an arm or served a ball. That's not a slogan. It's the actual reason a person has worth, and it means her value was settled long before anyone graded her stats. Galatians 3:28 says it plainly: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus." Paul isn't pretending those differences don't exist. He's saying they don't get the final word on who belongs and who matters. That's a completely different foundation than the one our culture usually hands us, and it's a sturdier one.

Jesus takes this even further. In Luke 10, He tells the story of the Good Samaritan to a crowd that had drawn hard lines between insiders and outsiders, and He makes the outsider the hero. That parable isn't a soft point about being nice. It's a direct challenge to tribalism, the kind that decides someone doesn't deserve your mercy just because of where they're from. In John 15:12, He puts it even more simply: "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you." A coach who takes verses like that seriously doesn't need a training seminar to treat every athlete on her roster with real respect. She just needs to actually live out what she says she believes.

First Corinthians 12 gives us the best team metaphor in the whole Bible, honestly. Paul describes the church as one body with a lot of different parts, an eye, a hand, a foot, none of them identical, none of them able to do what the others do, every one of them necessary, and verse 18 puts it plainly: "But now hath God set the members every one of them in the body, as it hath pleased him." That's not a call for sameness, and it's not a call for quotas either. It's a celebration of real difference, held together by something bigger than the differences themselves. Any coach who has built a roster already knows this. You don't win with six players who are all the same. You win with a libero who reads the court like nobody else, a middle blocker with a completely different build and instinct, and a setter who brings her own personality into the huddle, and none of that has anything to do with where any of them grew up or what they look like. It has to do with gifting, character, and how those different pieces fit into something whole.

So what does real inclusion actually look like on a team, practically speaking? It looks like recruiting athletes from other countries, other income levels, other denominations, and other walks of life, and then actually getting to know their stories instead of treating them as a box to check. It looks like fair playing time based on effort and ability, not identity, and refusing to lower that standard for anyone, in either direction. It looks like a coach who sits down with an athlete from a completely different background than her own and asks real questions, not out of obligation, but because she actually wants to know her. That's inclusion that costs something and means something, and it doesn't require a mandatory training module to make it happen.

Christian colleges and athletic programs can build real inclusion without abandoning what makes them distinctly Christian. That means staying genuinely open to hard conversations about culture and background instead of pretending differences don't exist. It means real support, like counseling and mentorship, for students who feel isolated, whether that's because of their faith, their culture, or just being far from home, without turning that support into a political project. It means holding firmly to what the institution actually believes while still extending real hospitality to people who see the world differently. A great education and a great athletic experience shouldn't depend on anyone's politics, and belonging on a team shouldn't require signing onto a specific ideological framework either. It just requires treating people like the image bearers they already are.

Because every human being is made in God's image and likeness, we're pushed toward something more than mere tolerance. We're pushed toward actual love, humility, and understanding for people who don't look like us, vote like us, or worship like us. Everyone carries the same intrinsic value, not because a policy says so, but because God said so first. That's the foundation I want under every team I coach: not a framework borrowed from outside the church, but the one the church was given from the very beginning.