Evangelical megachurch Pastor Derwin Gray recently accused the Trump administration of "damaging opportunities" for minorities with its attacks on diversity programs.
In an interview with journalist Scott Tong of the NPR program "Here & Now" posted Monday, the 54-year-old former NFL player who founded the multicultural Transformation Church in South Carolina in 2010 was asked his opinion about the federal government's gutting of diversity, equity and inclusion programs under President Donald Trump.
Gray, author of Building a Multiethnic Church: A Gospel Vision of Love, Grace, and Reconciliation in a Divided World, said the recent pushback against DEI programs is "unfortunate." He doesn't believe there is "a lot of thoughtful engagement" on the topic.
"Diversity, equity and inclusion is not saying that people who get positions are less than. It's saying people who normally wouldn't get an opportunity has now gotten an opportunity," the pastor said.
Gray, who also authored How to Heal Our Racial Divide, acknowledged that he does "get the pushback," as proponents of DEI programs often have "a strong secular progressive left agenda" that, for many Evangelicals, was "too much in their face."
"I think what President Trump and his administration is doing, from a populist right perspective, is equally as damaging, because you're damaging opportunities for people who normally would not get a chance," he continued.
"Why did we need the Civil Rights Movement in 1964? That's only seven years before I was born. There was a problem."
Gray spoke of the need for pastors to "challenge political partisanship," but noted that "my job is never to tell our people how to vote, it's to help our people think in a Christ-like way."
"How do you disagree with people who don't vote the way you vote?" he added. "To love your neighbor as you love yourself is not predicated upon the way people vote."
Since taking office in January, Trump has overseen efforts to dismantle DEI programs in government bodies and put pressure on educational institutions that receive public funds to do the same.
In February, for example, the U.S. Department of Education terminated more than $600 million in contracts to teacher preparation programs that advanced "inappropriate and unnecessary topics," such as DEI.
Harvard University sued the Trump administration in April after it was subject to a $2.2 billion funding freeze in multi-year grants and a $60 million funding freeze in multi-year contracts for failing to comply with Trump's demands to abolish DEI programs.
Many academic and corporate entities in the United States have reevaluated their diversity programs and policies since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2023 that policies factoring race in admission decisions at the University of North Carolina and Harvard University were unconstitutional. Several large businesses, including Target and Walmart, have scaled back their DEI policies in the last year.
Supporters of the Trump administration's efforts include Pastor John K. Amanchukwu Sr., an African American who argued in an op-ed published by The Christian Post in February that DEI was politically biased and had long been used against conservatives, including conservatives of color.
"American exceptionalism requires that people who succeed in life are rewarded based on their merit and abilities alone," wrote Amanchukwu. "A system where employees get paid to discriminate against conservative ideas and those who hold them is a system based on bigotry. Pure and simple."
