The company I work for recently dropped its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) commitments. This goes against my morals, but I’m not in a financial position to leave. Is it wrong to stay?
—Concerned Worker
You may unsubscribe from any of our newsletters at any time.
Dear Concerned Worker,
You’re navigating a moral tension between convictions and context that many are traversing, given similar restrictions and removals at various institutions. So you’re not alone with your concerns.
To stay in an institution whose values have changed can feel like complicity. But institutions are not static; they are principalities — living, shifting creatures to be shaped by those who inhabit them (and not the other way around). Institutions, therefore, require members to continue shaping their becoming. Your institution, like any principality, must be reminded of its purpose to serve Creation through the lives and practices of its people.
Consider this: your remaining might not be a compromise but a conscience, so to speak. While at work, you can faithfully embody the commitments your company has abandoned. Such faithfulness will issue both rebuke and invitation, like the moment someone is gently called back after failing — where instead of rejection, there’s a renewed invitation to walk the path of love, even through pain and betrayal. Your staying might allow for this to occur.
But — and this matters — you may also choose to leave. Staying in a caustic environment is not inherently virtuous. German theologian Dorothee Sölle, who died in 2003, cautioned against theologies that treat the endurance of injustice as faithfulness rather than what it is: harm.
More on Broadview:
- I worry that United Church’s 2SLGBTQIA+ apology is only a gesture
- Is eating meat wrong?
- Why we need to talk to people with opposing viewsÂ
Sometimes faithfulness means walking away from damage. Yet leaving one company for another may also mean trading one form of institutional failure for another, discovering new limitations dressed in different languages and encountering other betrayals in new spaces.
Should you decide to stay given your current financial constraints, show your colleagues what DEI looks like when it’s not a slogan but a way of being: relate rightly, seek the good of others and honour difference. Let your actions be a parable of justice in the flesh. Do this while you nurture connections, gather strength and look outward even as you work within. The possibility of another place of work need not cancel your faithfulness in this one.
So, simply put: it is neither wrong to stay nor to leave. There is a time for everything (Ecclesiastes 3). Principalities are neither redeemed by presence alone nor escaped by departure alone. Anywhere you work, you will encounter yet another creaturely institution in need of faithful witness and caretaking.
***
Ashley Moyse is a Canadian ethicist, theologian and associate professor of bioethics at Baylor University in Texas.
Thanks for reading
Independent journalism rooted
in faith and justice is under threat
Broadview is the only media organization in Canada offering thoughtful, values-driven journalism from an inclusive, progressive Christian perspective. But our work depends on your support. If you value what you've just read, please act now.
A gift today helps keep this journalism alive tomorrow.
With gratitude,
