Does "trusted network" mean alumni clubs? Church groups? Gym friends? What would be an un-biased trusted network to filter candidates with?
Networks and referral are the way many folks find jobs and they're especially important for candidates who have educational pedigrees and career trajectories that are different enough to cause HR drones to reject them in less than 2 seconds.
Now you have a defacto "If you're not in the boss's religion or congregation you can just piss right off" thing going on which is toxic for the workplace. Even if you were, say the same Christian denomination as him, are you willing to drive to the boss's wealthy suburb to go to the wealthy suburban church every Sunday solely for your career?
Nothing says the organization doesn't care about merit or diversity than church hiring.