Vince Phillips
In recent years, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives and secular Humanism have gained immense influence in government, schools, workplaces, and courts. Both seemingly began with valid aims, addressing real inequities and promoting reason-based ethics, but have evolved in ways that demand scrutiny. They now function like religions, with orthodox beliefs, moral enforcement, and community rituals, yet they receive legal exemptions unavailable to traditional faiths. This double standard violates the First Amendment’s promise of equal treatment for all beliefs.
To be fair, DEI has highlighted genuine barriers for underrepresented groups, and secular Humanism has provided non-believers with an ethical framework, community, and scientific focus. Einstein exemplified a tolerant humanism rooted in cosmic awe, without seeking to suppress other faiths. These ideas retain value when voluntary and open to debate.
Yet modern DEI and Humanism increasingly operate as de facto religions. DEI promotes “systemic privilege” and “equity over equality,” enforced through mandatory trainings, bias confessions, affinity groups, and cancellation for dissent, echoing religious orthodoxy, original sin, and excommunication. Secular Humanism, via organizations like the American Humanist Association and Freedom from Religion Foundation, treats manifestos as sacred texts, features humanist “clergy” for life events, and pursues activism with missionary zeal. Both fill the moral and existential void once held by faith.
The hypocrisy is clear: these secular systems evade the constitutional limits imposed on traditional religions. Courts have recognized secular humanism as a “religion” under the First Amendment (Torcaso v. Watkins, 1961), yet its self-labeling as non-religious shields it from Establishment Clause scrutiny.
It permeates public schools and government, through DEI curricula on race and gender, and humanist pushes for strict secularism, while traditional religions face restrictions on prayer, crosses, or Ten Commandments displays. Humanist-led lawsuits disproportionately target Christian symbols and practices (e.g., recent challenges to Ten Commandments laws in Louisiana, Texas, and Arkansas), rarely pursuing minority faiths with equal vigor. This pattern of litigation, “neutrality” claims, and institutional power mirrors the marginalization once attributed to religion.
The Constitution does not permit this imbalance. The First Amendment bars laws “respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” “Separation of church and state” appears nowhere in our founding documents; it stems from Jefferson’s 1802 private letter to the Danbury Baptists, assuring no national church or interference with free exercise. The Founders aimed to protect religion from government control and allow all beliefs (or none) to participate in the public square, not to sterilize it for secular ideologies alone.
This imbalance is most evident(and painful) in public schools. Parents(and everyone else) are compelled to fund education through taxes, yet see children exposed to ideas many families reject: racial essentialism, unquestioned gender fluidity, or portrayals of traditional faith as oppressive. This resembles historical missionary overwriting of indigenous beliefs, but now taxpayer-funded and aimed at families’ own values. Recent Supreme Court rulings, such as Mahmoud v. Taylor (2025), affirm religious opt-outs from conflicting curricula, yet many schools resist transparency or choice, denying parents their right to guide children’s moral formation.
States like Colorado exemplify how DEI, once largely advisory or voluntary, has gained the force of law as its proponents amassed power, effectively establishing elements of a state-enforced ideology. Executive Order 2020-175 mandates equity, diversity, and inclusion across state government, requiring strategic EDI plans, anti-discriminatory cultures, and inclusive hiring/retention practices. Senate Bill 24-200 enforces DEI training in child welfare systems to reduce disparities. The Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act’s expansions (e.g., HB25-1312 in 2025) protect “gender expression” to include chosen names and how individuals “choose to be addressed,” allowing refusal to serve as evidence of discrimination in workplaces, housing, and public accommodations, with potential civil fines up to $5,000. Just a few years ago, mandatory pronoun usage was virtually non-existent; suddenly, non-compliance risks investigation, mediation, re-education, or penalties.
These shifts transform once-optional practices into binding requirements, compelling ideological conformity under threat of sanction.
Christianity, as the historic majority faith, bears the brunt, framed as the “oppressor” in DEI frameworks and targeted by humanist lawsuits against crosses, prayers, and symbols. Minority religions (Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, etc.) often receive protection or a pass under DEI as “diverse.” This is not neutrality; it is selective enforcement that alienates millions and erodes cohesion.
DEI and secular Humanism have emerged as comprehensive worldviews demanding religious-level deference and conformity while claiming secular immunity from constitutional limits, effectively positioning themselves as the new oppressors. Whether unaware or through deliberate intent, they hide behind an “absence of belief”, that has itself evolved into a rigid belief system. Our laws must treat all such systems equally under the First Amendment, restore parental rights in education, and adhere to the Constitution’s text, protecting free exercise for all, without privileging the non-religious. True equality, as Martin Luther King Jr. envisioned, judges character over identity or ideology. We must reclaim a public square where faith and reason coexist, free from government-imposed dominance by any one worldview.
Although DEI presents itself as opposing fundamentalist religion, its true aim is to replace one form of fundamentalism with another: its own.
Supporting Quotations
- “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
— U.S. Constitution, First Amendment (1791) - “Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God… thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.”
— Thomas Jefferson, Letter to the Danbury Baptist Association, January 1, 1802 - “Among religions in this country which do not teach what would generally be considered a belief in the existence of God are… Secular Humanism and others.”
— Justice Hugo Black, Torcaso v. Watkins, 367 U.S. 488 (1961), footnote 11 - “I maintain that the cosmic religious feeling is the strongest and noblest motive for scientific research.”
— Albert Einstein, The World As I See It, 1934 - “Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind.”
— Albert Einstein, “Science and Religion,” 1941 - “A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate… it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense… I am a deeply religious man.”
— Albert Einstein, “What I Believe,” 1930 - “The fundamental theory of liberty upon which all governments in this Union repose excludes any general power of the State to standardize its children by forcing them to accept instruction from public teachers only. The child is not the mere creature of the State; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations.”
— U.S. Supreme Court, Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U.S. 510 (1925)
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