Last year I celebrated my nineteenth ‘real’ birthday on February twenty-ninth. Yes, I am a leap year baby. In fact, I am a leap year twin, and I have in my office at home in Connecticut a New Haven Register account and a photo of that happy event. My mother often repeated the story about her doing everything she could to avoid a leap-year delivery from praying to exercising to eating spicy food and the one she talked about the most, drinking castor oil! Yum! Nothing worked; so, Craig and I were born on February 29, 1948. Since that date, we have observed nineteen ‘real’ birthdays. One of the questions ‘leapers’ or ‘leap lings’ are asked often is, When do you celebrate your birthday in your off years, February 28th, or March 1st? Believe it not, leapers are split fifty/fifty! I chose February twenty-eighth, preferring to justify it by saying that February is my birth month. BTW, this also makes me a Pisces, the symbol for which is two fish captured by a string, typically by the mouth or tails. The fish are typically portrayed swimming in opposite directions. Over the years, I have felt just such a tug! (Don’t you think that my symbol reveals such a meaningful religious irony?)
I learned the other day that February twenty-eighth also has a national significance this year. In response to the administration’s ruthless rollback of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, the People’s Union, USA. has scheduled for my non-birthday a “February 28th Economic Blackout,” to be followed by weeklong protests against specific retailers. USA Today has described it in the following way:
In one of several videos about the Feb. 28 blackout, the Instagram handle "TheOneCalledJai" said the day of economic resistance is to show that "we the people are the system."
"For decades, they have told us that we are powerless, that we have no control, and that this system is too big, too strong, too unshakable."
"We are going to remind them who has the power. For one day, we turn it off, for one day. We shut it down for one day. We remind them that this country does not belong to the elite, it belongs to the people and this will work," the Instagram video said.
"Some of you might say one day won't make a difference and that's exactly what they want you to believe," he said. "If enough of us participate, they will feel it and if they don't listen, we escalate." (USA TODAY, February 22, 2025)
A partial list of companies includes the big three: Amazon, Target, and Walmart. It also identifies Coca Cola and Pepsi, Google, Disney, McDonalds, Lowes, Ford Motor Co, Harley Davidson, and John Deere. I am honored that the People’s Union, USA selected my non-birthday to assert its opposition to the adopted anti-DEI policies and practices of corporate America, behavior that offends most Americans. The statistics are quite telling. Recent Harris Poll/Axios Vibes polling confirms the following:
The Big picture:
There is broad support for the idea of diversity inside companies. 61% of those surveyed said diverse employees have a positive impact on organizations, and 75% agreed that more needs to be done to guarantee everyone is advancing.
Between the lines:
Even as they feverishly cut programs, business leaders appear to have good feelings about DEI, according to a separate survey out this week. Nearly three-quarters of 3,200 global CEOs and business leaders said initiatives tied to social issues — such as diversity and inclusion — have had a positive impact on their company's economic performance, per the AlixPartners Disruption Index.
94% of executives whose companies lead their industries in growth and profitability view diversity and inclusion as a competitive advantage.
The Bottom line: There is a big disconnect between political rhetoric and reality.
In my view, there is also a big disconnect between the Gospel (Good News) of the Bible and this illegal and immoral abuse of power by our vindictive “Long Live the King, Donald,” whose administration and its allies, including Christians, are waging war on DEI.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) is built into the DNA of Christian faith and is very much a part of our identity. William Sloane Coffin Jr died in April 2006, after a long prophetic ministry of confronting all forms of discrimination in society. One of his oft quoted lines was:
Diversity may be the hardest thing for society to live with, and perhaps the most dangerous thing for society to be without.
Our Christian community is having its Pisces moment, two fish pulling in opposite directions. one fish is swimming with a willingness to accept the difficulties and challenges of DEI, the faithful thing to do, while the other swims in the opposite direction promoting its destruction and creating a life in a nation dangerously divided.
A nation deeply divided politically and a church in accelerated decline is what the data show. Nicholas Kristoff, in an op-ed for the New York times wrote:
…evidence is growing that Americans are becoming significantly less religious. They are drifting away from churches, they are praying less and they are less likely to say religion is very important in their lives. For the first time in Gallup polling, only a minority of adults in the United States belong to a church, synagogue or mosque. (Most of the research is on Christians because they account for roughly 90 percent of believers in the United States.)
More recently, numerous articles have cited the top two reasons why people are leaving the church.
- People are leaving the church because church leaders and members are too judgmental and hypocritical. The lack of acceptance, selective moralizing and a holier than thou attitude is corrupting. Because church people are focused on the speck in another’s eye, they cannot see the plank in their own.
- They disagree with the church’s stance on political and social issues, among them, LGBTQ, abortion, immigration and racial justice, The political aims of the “Christian agenda” or “Christian values” seem contrary to the actual biblical stories and teachings.
John Pavlovitz, a fellow blogger, wrote a piece on Substack titled “Hey MAGA White Christians, You Do Know DEI is Just the Gospel, Right?”
In it he writes:
God’s DEI program was delivered and incarnated in Christ. Waging war against diversity, equity and inclusion is to choose the side of the oppressors, the powerholders, those born into (and/or, holding, my words) wealth and privilege who would horde all they have. There is no way in hell, or the Bible, Jesus would be found making such choices.
To champion an end to efforts ensuring that all human beings have equal access to opportunity, health, education, community reveals an insidious racism, a narcissistic greed, and contempt for difference—all of which Jesus preached and taught and lived and died pushing against. (Pavlovitz, January 31, 2025)
I consulted the revised common lectionary for February twenty-eighth. The suggested reading for my non-birthday is the tenth chapter of Acts, the story of the conversion of Cornelius and Peter’s understanding of diversity within the Christian community. The story is remarkably relevant for the day. Cornelius is a centurion in the Italian Regiment. Although he was a Gentile, he was “a devout man, and one who feared God with all his household, who gave generously to the people and prayed to God always.” (Acts 10:2) He converts to Christianity, and because of him, Simon Peter and all subsequent generations learn an essential biblical truth about the DEI intent of God:
34 Then Peter began to speak to them: “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, 35 but in every people anyone who fears him and practices righteousness[d] is acceptable to him.
Reminds us of the Apostle Paul when writing to the Galatians, doesn’t it?
…in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. 27 As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28 There is no longer Jew or Greek; there is no longer slave or free; there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians. 3: 23-28, NRSVU)
Although today we may be sadly two schools of fish swimming in opposite directions, wearing our symbols separately, somehow, we urgently need to find a way to swim in the same direction, following the Jesus we see and know as he presents himself and his teaching in scripture. (BTW, let us not forget that the symbol for Christ is the fish, and we are meant to find/recognize our unity in Him.)
Finally, please let me close with another quote from Reverand Coffin. Preaching at Duke University on September 9, 1979, he said:
… According to the ancient religious vision, we have always known that we are all one, everyone of us on the planet. That’s the way God made us. Christ died to keep us that way. Our sin is only that we are putting asunder what God himself has joined together. Am I my brother’s keeper? NO! I am my brother’s brother and sister and sister’s brother. Human unity is not something we are called on to achieve, only something we are called on to recognize.