Community at Covenant Day School: Unity in diversity for the sake of doxology. Revelation 7:9-10
God is glorified when people who would have reason to be divided by language, by culture, by history, or by ethnicity are brought together in worship of Jesus Christ.
Covenant Day School’s administration and its Board of Trustees have been working for several years on the topic of Christian community and diversity at our school. God’s Word and our school’s core values of Christ-centeredness, truth, and integrity were foundational to our work. It is our hope to have unity in diversity that leads to praising God in doxology. We aim to be a welcoming community where Christian families from various racial, ethnic, and economic backgrounds feel at home.
We now invite you to take time to read our statement on building Christ-centered community in the midst of diversity.
What Does Covenant Day School Believe about Christian Community and Diversity?
Diversity is an important, but ambiguous word. A quick dictionary search online yields two definitions:
1. the state of being diverse; variety
2. the practice or quality of including people from a range of different social and ethnic backgrounds, and of different genders, sexual orientations, etc.
These are two very different ways to talk about the same word. Is diversity simply an observational term to describe variety or does the word carry with it its own set of priorities and prescriptions? Christians may hear the word in different ways as well. For some, waving the banner of diversity signals that we are a welcoming place for people of color and that we are trying hard to include and learn from brothers and sisters from many different backgrounds. For others, an emphasis on diversity suggests an agenda dictated by the world and its assumptions about sex, gender, religious pluralism, multiculturalism, and a postmodern approach to knowledge.
A Christian Approach
As a Christian school, we must start with the Bible. On the one hand, some kinds of diversity are celebrated as great blessings in Scripture. God designed Adam and Eve as a complementary pair, each fit for each other, the woman made from the man and man being born of woman (Gen. 2:18-25; 1 Cor. 11:8-12). The Spirit gives different gifts to members of the body so that the church might be strengthened and edified and that Christians might honor one another and rejoice together (Rom. 12:3-8; 1 Cor. 12:4-26). Most dramatically, God planned from the earliest days of the Patriarchs that people from all nations would worship Him (Gen. 12:1-3). Heaven will be more glorious because of the great multitude from every nation, tribe, people, and language gathered around the throne singing praise to the Lamb (Rev. 5:9-10; 7:9-10). This kind of diversity is good, beautiful, and brings glory to God. On the other hand, diversity is not an unalloyed good in the Bible. The multiplication of languages was the punishment of Babel (Gen. 11:1-9), later to be undone by the Spirit’s work at Pentecost (Acts 2:1-21). Likewise, a diversity of doctrinal beliefs—while sometimes unavoidable in a fallen world—is not the goal of the church (Eph. 4:4-6) and is sometimes deadly (Gal. 1:6-9; Jude 3). And this is to say nothing of unbiblical notions of sex and gender that are sometimes assumed under the world’s definition of diversity.
The Bible never enjoins the Christian to make diversity an aim for its own sake (after all, hell is bound to be just as diverse as heaven). There was nothing inherently virtuous about Egyptians, Babylonians, Israelites, and Philistines inhabiting the same general vicinity in the Ancient Near East. What is amazing is that Rahab and Babylon and Philistia and Tyre and Cush will be counted among the citizens of Zion and enjoy the blessing of Abraham (Psalm 87:1-6). The presence of Jews and Gentiles in the same city was no great triumph for the gospel. The triumph was when historic divisions were broken down in Christ (Eph. 2:11-22). The mere existence of many tribes and tongues is not evidence of the kingdom of God. What makes the scene in Revelation so stunning is that people who were divided by language and ethnicity are unified in their worship of the Lamb. Racial and ethnic diversity find their most beautiful expression as they reflect the power of our cosmic Christ to win for Himself people from every tribe and tongue and to bring those people together in praising His name.
All this is to say that “many-ness” in itself is not the good, but rather oneness in our many-ness. Recognizing (and, where appropriate, celebrating) differences in appearance, abilities, age, background, economic status, music preferences, food choices, and a hundred other things may add spice to life and may be a positive approach for navigating a pluralistic world, but there is nothing particularly Christian about this kind of diversity. What Christians uniquely celebrate is the work of Christ to transcend (but not eradicate) these differences in bringing people with a common ancestor and a common nature into a new community that they might together worship and serve a shared Savior. It is doxology, not difference by itself, that makes diversity worthwhile.
Our Commitments
So where does this leave us? How does this understanding of “unity in diversity for the sake of doxology” shape life at Covenant Day School? Here are four commitments:
1. We are committed to welcoming one another (Rom. 15:7). This means we do more than remove barriers; we actively seek to include, support, and learn from those who—because of race, ethnicity, economic background, or ability—might find CDS a more difficult place in which to feel at home. While there are no fixed outcomes or quotas that determine our decisions in admitting students and hiring faculty and staff, neither do we want to be passive in seeking to reflect the variety of our surrounding community. We will eagerly look for qualified, mission-appropriate students, families, faculty, staff, and board members who might otherwise not consider CDS a viable option for them or their children.
2. We are committed to outdo one another in showing honor (Rom. 12:10). This means we will oppose the sin of partiality wherever and in whatever form it exists (James 2:1). More than that, we want to grow in the kind of sensitivity and cultural awareness that expresses our desire to love as we would want to be loved (Matt. 7:12) and to honor each person as being made in the image of God (Gen. 1:27).
3. We are committed to walking in humility toward one another (1 Peter 5:5). This means we will be slow to anger and quick to listen (James 1:19). In situations or cultural moments that might be controversial or racially charged, our first instinct will be to practice patience with others and to think of others more highly than we think of ourselves. In particular, our community will be eager with open hearts to love, listen, and learn from everyone as we acknowledge possible racial sin in our hearts and the sinful patterns of our national history.
4. We are committed to examining the Scriptures with one another (Acts 17:11). This means we will submit all attitudes, assumptions, behaviors, and beliefs to the unerring truth of the Bible. While we have much to learn from common grace insights found in the culture, our highest and final authority is always God and His word, especially as we are helped by the Reformed tradition in understanding that word.
In all of this, our desire is to glorify God in our own ways, as best we can, as a unified (but not uniform) and diverse school community that seeks to love the Lord with heart, soul, and mind (Matt 22:37), love our neighbor as ourselves (Matt. 22:39), and demonstrate the “more excellent way” (1 Cor. 12:31b) that only comes through the gospel of Jesus Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit.
