Diversity: what it means, how it is expressed, and the value any given culture assigns to it can swing on the popularity pendulum. In recent months in North America the pendulum has swung broadly.

The way our culture recognizes or interprets the need for diversity has always been subject to the winds of change, and that is likely to continue. Recent federal government data in both the United States and Canada indicate that both nations are becoming increasingly racially and ethnically diverse – and that is just one way of measuring the variety seen within our populations. There are, of course, other ways: age, gender, language, and religion, to name a few.

That theological schools across North America have historically grappled with diversity is not news. But what does that grappling look like today?

In Trust connected with several schools, to talk about what diversity means in their respective contexts.

Berkeley School of Theology

At Berkeley School of Theology (BST) in Berkeley, California, the Rev. Dr. James Brenneman, Ph.D., president and professor of Hebrew Bible, describes diversity as being in BST’s DNA at all levels of the institution “from our founding in 1871 to today. For us it really means intercultural competency and representation.”

Previously known as American Baptist Seminary of the West, Brenneman says the school underwent a name change in 2020 not as a catalyst for thinking about diversity, but rather to reflect how diverse it actually had become.

“Our students had already been coming from 21 different denominations,” he explains. He concedes that the name change helped create a larger pool of students, which led to a quadrupling of enrollment over the past few years (tripling their FTE). Student ethnic, denomination, and gender representation aligns almost exactly with that of their faculty, administration, and board. He says 50 percent of students are African American; only about eight percent are White.

The school received a Pathways Phase 2 grant to create affordable theological, intercultural, and innovative leadership training. Brenneman says that one of several emphases has been to establish an affordable Spanish-language fast track by creating a new, stackable B.A. equivalency certificate in Christian Leadership in Spanish.

The grant also funded and filled a new faculty position (associate professor and director of intercultural leadership) to equip students for intercultural ministries.

Historically, homogeneous churches were the norm in the United States, says Associate Professor Brian Leander, Ph.D, who is in the newly created role of director of intercultural leadership. But, “that trend is changing significantly.” His new book, Diversity-Oriented Churches: A Comprehensive Guide to Leading Ministries of Reconciliation (Rowman & Littlefield, May 2025) traces the growth of churches that identify as multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-racial, and open and affirming. “There’s a lot of evidence that these diversity-oriented churches would be the fastest growing churches in the United States and Canada.”

Leander clarifies the difference in meaning between the terms multi-cultural (representational) and intercultural (relational), the latter implying the intentional sharing of values, cultures, and ideas. He says that helps to explain why institutions of Christian higher education are addressing intercultural competency within their M.Div. programs. BST is distinctive, he says, in that it recognizes“that intercultural competencies don’t have to be bundled within [an M.Div.]. It could be a core competency that runs throughout all of our theological education.”

The school offers a certificate in Leading Intercultural Ministries to equip those who go into churches and other places of ministry – for-profit and not-for-profit. It is one stepping stone toward its goal of becoming “more than a seminary, but a thought leader in the wider culture.”

 

There’s a lot of evidence that these diversity-oriented churches would be the fastest growing churches.

 

Tyndale Seminary

In Toronto, Ontario, the Tyndale Intercultural Ministries (TIM) Centre at Tyndale University has been facilitating learning for leaders working in intercultural spaces. If you are a leader in Canada, now home to some 450 ethnic groups, you are by definition leading in intercultural spaces, according to Dorothy Pang, director of the TIM Centre.

Pang says the word “intercultural” is purposeful, implying that people are interacting to co-create a space together that does not belong to any one group. “We recognize this is everybody’s table. Everybody is welcome, and your input shapes this table. You’re not just a guest.”

Pang says the TIM Centre is an “outward-facing division that trains working practitioners, pastors and leaders, and also does inside work.” The university’s student body includes over 60 ethnic people groups, and Interim Academic Dean of Tyndale Michael Krause, D.Min., notes “the majority of the diversity is in the seminary.” About 35 to 40 percent of seminary students are ethnically East Asian. Not all are international or visa students; some would have been born in Canada and approximately 35% are Caucasian. The school labels itself “big tent evangelical,” and the seminary currently educates students from more than 70 different denominations.

Krause says the TIM Centre also has served as a pipeline for the seminary, channeling a handful of its diploma students into graduate studies and providing intercultural competency training to the seminary’s faculty and students. Every seminary student is required to take a leadership development course, which features one class run by the TIM Centre on different communications styles and increasing intercultural competence. Master’s students have the option (and doctoral students are required) to take an elective course on intercultural competency.

Five years ago, Tyndale formed its Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Council (DIAC) to ensure the institution offers welcome and belonging to every individual within its community – students, faculty, staff, and board members.

Council Chair Sharon Chuah says DIAC’s mandate is to apprise the president and cabinet of important developments and then “decide as a group on an institutional response.”

NAIITS – An Indigenous Learning Community

As an Indigenous-designed, -developed, -delivered, and -governed institution of theological education, NAIITS: An Indigenous Learning Community is uncommonly diverse. There are 27 different nations represented among the faculty and elders board alone. And while the school began in North America, it has never held its own bricks and mortar. Today it has a “global expression,” according to Shari Russell, director of NAIITS. Factor in the student body, and the diversity of nations and cultures represented extends well beyond the Indigenous umbrella. NAIITS aims to retain a majority of Indigenous students in a place where they are not marginalized, Russell explains; they also have welcomed Korean, African, African American, Latino students, and others into their programs.

Russell emphasizes that diversity without relationship is tokenism, and that relationship has always been a guiding principle for the school. The welcome they extend, she says, is not merely “‘Come into our space.’ Over time, there’s an invitation to walk deeper in relationship.”

The goal is not to make everyone look the same, nor is it to make them compete. “There is a freedom to be whoever you are,” explains Russell, “without having to assimilate or melt into what you think we expect you to be.”

 

“God’s creation is all about diversity. Most ecosystems are that way. They’re also more resilient when diverse.”

 

Pacific School of Religion

At Pacific School of Religion (PSR) in Berkeley, California, strength through diversity is a core value. As the president of a progressive Christian seminary and graduate school and a hub for a network of leadership resources, the Rev. David Vásquez-Levy, D.Min., says everything they do “is strengthened by a wide range of perspectives. God’s creation is all about diversity,” he adds. “Most ecosystems are that way. They’re also more resilient when diverse.” Vásquez-Levy is, however, pursuing something different: “a DEI 2.0 that moves beyond that representational diversity.” He cites the school’s $60 million endowment, of which 41 percent is managed by women and people of color. “That’s compared to the national average, which is 1.4 percent, and our endowment has outperformed our benchmarks since we increased the diversity of managers.”

With 31 denominations represented among the student body, about 12 percent of community members identify as Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, or from non-religious backgrounds.

But PSR has pursued diversity in even more creative ways in recent years, opening its campus to what Vásquez-Levy describes as “mission-aligned partners,” leasing underutilized space to a middle school and a graduate leadership program for engineering. “We were seeking educational institutions committed to social change,” he explains. PSR also has partnered in program offerings with the other two institutions.

Now, PSR is reaching beyond its traditional market of progressive Christian congregational and not-for-profit leaders, expanding the definition of what progressive leadership looks like. Searching out those potential markets also has led to the development of a Lilly Phase III project to create a stackable curriculum (see “Choose Your Path,” In Trust, Winter 2025).

Vásquez-Levy concedes there’s still a way to go, and says that after years of declining enrollments, the graduate program has grown consistently over the past five years, and diversified “hugely” across faculty, staff, students and board in expertise, religious affiliation, and ethnicity. “It’s worked, and there’s a lot more to do.”

What the Church has understood

The Online Etymology Dictionary states that the concept of diversity as a national virtue arose with democracies in the 1790s, “where it kept one faction from arrogating all power.” But the Church’s appreciation for humanity in all its variety can be traced further back. Even before the writer of Revelation recorded his vision of a “great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb” (Rev. 7:9), the Church understood that the gospel is for all, that everyone is our neighbor.

That understanding continues to be interpreted and worked out in theological schools across North America today.

How a progressive Christian school (PSR) or a mainline Christian school (BST) in the United States embraces and expresses diversity differs from how an evangelical school (Tyndale) in Canada or a globally oriented Indigenous school (NAIITS) does the same thing.

But all four schools share the conviction that diversity is important, that it is a Christian value to be pursued, and that the Church has something to offer to society at large as it wrestles with how and to what extent diversity ought to be engaged in meaningful ways. And so, the work continues.