Adopted May 2008

In seeking to reflect the Kingdom of God, Trinity School encourages diversity in its student body, staff, faculty and community. The vision of diversity at Trinity is uniquely Christian and flows out of our mission. The image of a diverse Trinity community is scripturally based and is already implicit in each of the five core distinctives, mentioned below and in the Expanded Mission Statement.

The Framework of Christian Faith

Diversity in the Trinity community enhances Christian faith and conviction in crucial ways. Exposure to diverse students, teachers, and leaders can demonstrate to children that people can have a perspective that is thoroughly Christian and transcends differences. Diversity in the body of Christ is also essential for the cultivation of Christian character. Exposure to those who are different in race, ethnicity, physical ability, socioeconomic status, religious traditions, talents, and learning style serves to enhance the teaching of habits of fairness, humility, truthfulness, courage, compassion, and interdependence.

Truth, Goodness, and Beauty

Trinity strives to prepare students for benevolent engagement with the culture at large. Exposure to various cultures, life experiences, and perspectives serves to train young people to see goodness in the variety of God’s human creation and virtue in every culture, despite our universal fallenness. Such a perspective leads to a deeper and richer appreciation for beauty, an appreciation that honors the full spectrum of color and is not monochromatic.

Classical Tools of Learning

Trinity’s philosophy is not focused on memorizing content, but rather on teaching students how to learn for themselves. Through the classical tools of learning, Trinity strives to encourage children to ask questions, discuss ideas, and analyze concepts. All of these tasks require exposure to various points of view. A diverse student body brings a variety of thought and experience that stimulates students to think more critically. In this way Trinity prepares students for benevolent engagement with today’s increasingly globalized society.

A Rich and Unhurried Education

Our culture often embraces diversity in a superficial sense, promoting a vision of tolerance among autonomous individuals rather than reconciliation between people in communities. In contrast, the educational mission at Trinity emphasizes going deep rather than going broad. We take time to appreciate the richness of God’s gifts. We encourage relationships with ideas and deep discourse as opposed to the larger culture’s consumption of superficial experiences without meaning. In this same way, embracing diversity at Trinity is in alignment with our principles of dipping profoundly into a story and drinking of the greater meaning. We encourage going deeply into the narratives of various groups not merely for tolerance, but for true understanding and reconciliation and insight into how these stories fit into The Great Story.

At Trinity, diversity has a distinctly Christian underpinning. We believe that embracing a diverse student body flows out of the framework of Christian faith and conviction. Living harmoniously within the body of Christ alongside those that are of diverse backgrounds is implicit in the Christian mission and enhances the distinctives of our school.

The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free—and we are all given the one Spirit to drink.

–1 Corinthians 12:12-13