The Forum Online Event: The Incoherent Notion of “Tolerant” Indifference Applied to Revealed...

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The ForumEngaging Culture for Christ


The Incoherent Notion of “Tolerant”

Indifference Applied to Revealed Religion

Guest Bruce Boeckel with Evidence for Christ

“TOLERANCE”THE INCOHERENT NOTION OF “TOLERANCE” APPLIED TO REVEALED RELIGION

Rev Bruce Boeckel, PhD

Associate Pastor, New Beginnings Community Baptist Church

Founder of Evidence for Christ, A Ministry in Christian Apologetics

“TOLERANCE”: A TROUBLED TERM

• In a serious sense, “tolerance” means tolerating something that meets my profound moral disapproval – not something that is merely irritating.

• The principle of tolerance implies that implies that I am a better moral person (as is the other) when I do not force my moral standard on another by force.

“TOLERANCE”: A TROUBLED TERM

• The other is a better moral person being “tolerated” because he will come to a better moral insight according to his own lights – not being compelled by force.

• A “tolerant” society is a better moral environment because all persons are allowed to explore various viewpoints, coming to their own moral convictions after mature and independent reflection – not being compelled by force.

CONTEMPORARY “TOLERANCE”

• Contemporary Occidental society has inherited this term “tolerance” but seems to have forgotten or abandoned the principles that give it a coherent meaning.

• A quick example is the term “zero tolerance” applied to things like bullying in elementary schools. “We have a ‘zero tolerance’ policy on X . . . ”


• Another indicator is the absence of the term “tolerance” used in any serious discussion in a positive sense – i. e., our need to exercise “tolerance” regarding attitude or situation X that meets our profound moral disapproval.

• Instead, “tolerance” is usually used in a negative sense as a rhetorical weapon against others: “How dare you be so intolerant!”


• In fact, we are left mostly with the word “intolerant” used for intellectual bullying in an effort to coerce others to celebrate what meets their profound moral disapproval.


• This is my thesis in a nutshell: Those who hold to a revealed religion are committed to uncompromising principles. These uncompromising principles are IN THEMSELVES offensive to the contemporary secular mindset, and we see various schemes underway to ostracize or criminalize the holding of uncompromising religious or moral principles.

BACK TO “TOLERANCE”: A TROUBLED TERM


• How is tolerance in this true sense to operate in contemporary postmodern circles? Tolerance requires “profound moral disapproval”, which implies a commitment to objective moral standards.



• How is tolerance in this true sense to operate in contemporary postmodern circles? Tolerance requires a conviction that a person’s moral compass and moral behaviour (universalizing factors) are far more important than skin colour, nationality, socio-economic status, etc. (dividing factors).



• Without this earlier commitment to objective moral standards and a universalizing vision of human beings as accountable moral agents, “tolerance” becomes an empty term, merely a relic from earlier Occidental intellectual history that can be used as a rhetorical club to bludgeon one’s enemies.

RODNEY STARK ON MONOTHEISM AND REVEALED RELIGION

• Rodney Stark is a Christian sociologist who has studied both contemporary religious behaviour (e. g., conversion) and Christian history.

• Stark has recently published several books on the phenomenon of “monotheism” – almost as if monotheism is becoming a lost attitude, a worldview that today’s cultural elite hardly ever encounters and which they do not understand.


• Stark contrasts monotheism (high ethical monotheism) with ancient polytheism and with the present-day “smorgasbord” and consumerist attitude toward religious and moral beliefs.

• Stark argues that high ethical monotheism as seen in (earlier) Judaism, Christianity, and Islam is a unique phenomenon that refutes the approach to “world religions” that one usually finds in elite and academic circles.


• Genuine monotheism (i. e., revealed religion) reveals these crucial characteristics:

1. Conversion – A profound turning away from one way of life and worldview to another, with the understanding that one must make an exclusive and uncompromising choice.

• Conversion in this sense is impossible in a polytheistic culture or in today’s “flaky” secular society.


2. Evangelizing – Telling another about my God – the only God – and urging her to consider this revelation as the ONLY solution to her dilemma, as the only solution to the dilemma of humanity as a whole.

• There is proselytizing in contemporary secular society, but it is not done in relation to a transcendent revelation and does not look to a transcendent source (God) the solution.


3. Congregation – A community of the faithful who are gathered around the “one true God” and around an exclusive religious revelation. For Christians, a community of the redeemed, the “body of Christ”.

• Stark explains that ancient polytheism had no congregations in this sense. A polytheistic ritual was more like a festival or civic event. A Greek or Roman temple was more like a dining club when a group gathered there for a feast.


• It is precisely these characteristic of monotheism to which the contemporary cultural elite objects: people who “convert” to an exclusive religion and condemn their old ways, who form tight-knit groups committed to one true God and one true belief, who then go out “evangelizing” or “colonizing” others to bring them into the fold.

• All of this is considered “intolerant”.

• So what would be a secularist’s “tolerant” attitude toward revealed religion?

QUICK REVIEW• Genuine tolerance is commitment to a principle

that I will “tolerate” what I find morally repugnant because I reject the use of coercion or bullying in matters of belief.

• The secularist mindset of the present-day cultural elite finds monotheism and revealed religion to be morally and ideological repugnant.

• The secularist is then faced with this choice: to “tolerate” monotheism out of high-minded principle or to try to eradicate what he considers to be a cancer on civilized society.

QUICK REVIEW

• Typically, the cultural elite nowaday chooses the second option: to try to eradicate what they consider to be a cancer on civilized society.

• Ironically, these campaigns to eradicate often used such terms as “zero-tolerance policy”.

• Also ironically, these campaigns are also often advertized as “tolerance” because they are campaigns to wipe out “intolerance” (something that is morally repugnant).

QUICK REVIEW• In other words, cultural elites make the easy and

self-serving choice (to wipe out their repugnant enemies) while they celebrate their own intellectual heroism in making the hard choice.

• Secularist claim that they have taken the moral and intellectual high ground in their campaign against intolerance.

• They condemn others as judgemental, self-righteous, and sanctimonious. They do not see that their own campaign is the epitome of self-righteousness.

“TOLERANCE” ON THE STREET

• How would one engage in a discussion/debate with a militant secularist about this issue of “tolerance”?

• Suppose that the issue was abortion. The secularist would probably argue against restricting abortion (a violation of free “choice”), against protests at abortion clinics, against the use of religious arguments (the sanctity of life) in debates on abortion, etc.


• The upshot of all of these arguments is to muzzle the Christian opponent of abortion. If one grants accedes to these arguments, one no longer has a voice in the marketplace of ideas.

• So the first strategy is simply to try to make that plain: “Your real goal is to muzzle me as a Christian, so that I cannot make Christian arguments against something that I find morally repugnant, something that I oppose as a matter of profound, well thought-out principle.”


• The secularist will then respond that Christian arguments against abortion cannot have force in today’s society because such arguments are “intolerant”. Such arguments undermine very principles of an “enlightened”, modern, civilized society.

• One can then point out that this definition of a “civilized society” is one in which a Bible-believing has not place – or, at best, he is a second-class citizen, instructed to sit down and shut up.


• The secularist has defined himself as the “enlighted” one, and the Christian place is to be submissive and let social policy be determined by those who know better, who are fully “modern”. The arrogance of this position should be obvious, at least to bystander, if not to the militant secularist himself.

• One could then ask the secularist why legalized abortion is so important to him, why restricting arguments against abortion is so important.


• On the second question, the answer will be a restatement of all the damage done to modern society by “intolerant” views such as Christian opposition to abortion. The secularist finds such Christian arguments damaging and repugnant.

• Of course, this means that these views are exactly what the secularist SHOULD “tolerate” as a matter of principle, according to the classic and original definition of tolerance.

“TOLERANCE” ON THE STREET• Pressing on this point will reveal that the

secularist does not, in fact, belief in the underlying principles of classic “tolerance”, that society is better off without the use of coercion in matters of principled belief.

• One could then work toward a restatement of the secularist’s position – “In other words, you want to make quick work of Christian arguments against abortion because these are ‘dangerous’, ‘unenlightened’, ‘repugnant’, etc. IN YOUR VIEW?”


• Continued . . . “Of course, as a Christian, I don’t find my own arguments repugnant at all. They are based on the objective truth, in my view. But in your view these arguments are repugnant, and you want to discredit them in one quick stroke?”

• The secularist is now in a difficult position, since his closed-minded attitude towards views other than his own is unveiled for open scrutiny.

“TOLERANCE” ON THE STREET• Continued . . . “In other words, you want me to

stop making arguments against abortion based on my deepest convictions? You want me to swallow down my moral revulsion?”

• “That’s what I need to do to meet your definition of ‘tolerance’?”

• “But what about you? What do you do? You get to campaign for ‘pro-choice’ using all of the central terms of your secularist ideology: ‘enlightenment’, ‘modern’ society, emancipation from religious ‘dogma’, etc.?”

“TOLERANCE” ON THE STREET• Continued . . . “Did I get that straight? Am I

missing something here?”

• “In other words, you want me to be ‘tolerant’ to endure in silence what I find absolutely repugnant, what I believe will ultimately destroy human society – and that really is the case for the following reasons . . . ”

“TOLERANCE” ON THE STREET• “On the other hand, you get to campaign at the

top of your lungs for your pro-choice position, even manoeuvring every way you can so that the anti-abortion viewpoint does not get a public hearing.”

• “Now how is that an even-handed position? How is that a level playing field? Why is it then that you call yourself ‘tolerant’ while you call me ‘intolerant’? Why do you characterize your arguments as objective, while you characterize my arguments

“TOLERANCE” ON THE STREET• Continued . . . “Why do you characterize your

arguments as objective and disciplined, while you characterize my arguments as subjective, undisciplined, and self-indulgent?”

• “The classic choice for ‘tolerance’ in its original sense is either to ‘tolerate’ (with great distaste) what we find genuinely and objectively abhorrent or to try to IMPOSE one’s agenda on those who disagree. Which choice do you make?”


• Continued . . . “Oh, I see. You want ME to make the hard choice and to “tolerate” what I find abhorrent, while you go on campaigning to discredit the Christian arguments against abortion so that they never get a fair public hearing.”

• “That is why YOU and “tolerant” and I am “intolerant”. That is why you have the moral high ground, while I am an self-indulgent sectarian, concerned only to advance my own viewpoint. Am I missing something here?”

FINAL REFLECTIONS

• Rodney Stark may be technically wrong in his suggestion about the disappearance of a mono-theistic worldview in today’s cultural elite.

• The militant secularist that I’ve just sketched is hard-core “monotheist” in the sense that he is committed to an exclusionary ideology and one that demonizes opponents with all the fury of ex cathedra denunciations of heresy.

FINAL REFLECTIONS

• The militant secularist is often a “monotheist” for whom the socio-political state is god and for whom political activists are the elect congrega-tion.

• Political religions are the empowered “monotheisms” in Occidental society today. They enjoy all the advantages of the state religions of earlier times, precisely the abuses of power that the original formulation of “tolerance” was meant to address.

THE INCOHERENT NOTION OF

“TOLERANCE” APPLIED TO

REVEALED RELIVION

“TOLERANCE”

Rev Bruce Boeckel PhD

Associate Pastor,

New Beginnings Community Baptist Church

Fresno, CA

Founder, Evidence for Christ,

A Ministry in Christian Apologetics


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