COMMENTARY: The Achievement of Toleration

c. 2003 Religion News Service (David P. Gushee is the Graves Professor of Moral Philosophy at Union University in Jackson, Tenn.) (UNDATED) In the past, I argued that some beliefs are worth dying for. I cautioned, however, that the New Testament teaches that by no means are we to kill for our faith. Now, I […]

c. 2003 Religion News Service

(David P. Gushee is the Graves Professor of Moral Philosophy at Union University in Jackson, Tenn.)

(UNDATED) In the past, I argued that some beliefs are worth dying for. I cautioned, however, that the New Testament teaches that by no means are we to kill for our faith. Now, I want to reflect on the critical difference between dying for a belief and killing for it, and about how to create religious and political communities that respect that difference.


The men who flew airplanes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were Muslims who believed they had a faith worth dying for. Tragically, however, they also believed theirs was a faith worth killing for. And so they murdered 3,000 innocents.

It is all too easy for Christians simply to declare Islam a terrorist religion and applaud how much better we are. This attitude, however, wrongly treats a relatively recent and rare achievement as if it were a description of the practice of Christianity in all times and places.

In its earliest days Christianity was a persecuted and marginalized religion. Many thousands of believers died as martyrs, but nowhere did Christians in the first centuries of the church’s life kill for their faith. They understood this to be absolutely ruled out by the example and teachings of Jesus himself.

However, when the church became the official religion of the Roman Empire, it soon succumbed to employing the violence of the state for the advance of the gospel. For centuries, church and state together used the sword to deter and punish heretics and schismatics, to persecute Jews and to fight Muslims. The Crusades and the Inquisitions were ultimate examples of killing in the name of Jesus.

After the Reformation, more than a century of war followed as various Christian groups battled for dominance while other sects simply tried to survive in a “Christendom” that would not tolerate their existence.

Absolutely certain of the truthfulness of their beliefs and outraged that anyone could believe anything different, these Christians who slaughtered one another _ and others _ in God’s name did much to discredit the church and prepare the way for the secularization of Western culture.

In America the story took a different turn. While many of our own nation’s founders were deeply committed Christians, they were determined to prevent any importing of religious bloodshed. They wrestled with a challenge that still faces every society: how can we simultaneously permit the free expression of a diverse range of heartfelt religious convictions while preventing this diversity from fragmenting our nation beyond repair?


The founders’ solution was ingenious, and has never been bettered. The federal government would do nothing either to retard or advance any particular sect. It would create an environment in which diverse religious beliefs (including atheism) could be freely practiced and would prevent anyone from suppressing those of different beliefs. The result over two centuries has been a more vibrant religiosity than any other Western nation _ and better government as well.

This was certainly a political solution to an important political problem, but it also reflects and continues to advance a certain way of being religious as well. It requires the ability to hold firmly to one’s own convictions without lashing out in angry violence against those who believe very different things. The disciplining of ardent religious conviction in this way is one of the distinctive marks of American society.

I once saw a disturbing Christian T-shirt with the message “Intolerance is a beautiful thing.” Clearly the shirt was a protest against the stifling pressures of political correctness. But as one who has studied what religious intolerance has wrought in human history, I was not amused.

Toleration is the act of permitting the existence of people and the practice of activities that you personally find repugnant, offensive or simply wrong. A tolerant society is not one in which people do not believe things anymore, but instead a community where even the most passionate religious believers learn to live together with people who most passionately believe something very different.

In this sense, toleration is a great human achievement. It is one of the best things about our nation, and one of our gifts to the world. It is fully in keeping with the teachings of Jesus, who told his disciples that the wheat and the tares must grow up together in this life, and that we must wait patiently for God to do the sorting out in the end.

For Christians, we are left with a faith that declares: I will die for Christ, and I will die for you in service to Christ, but I will never harm you in the name of Christ.


AMB END GUSHEE

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