Pluralism, Secularism, and Tolerance

Introduction

The intolerance of practitioners of various religious groups toward practitioners of other such groups has been well documented. Ancient antagonisms were exacerbated by zealousness for a culture's god. The early Hebrews routed villages devoted to competing gods, destroying women and children alike. Romans, with their cult of Caesar, sought to squash the early Christian church. The institutionalization of Christianity by the Roman Empire set an apparently pacifistic religion on a path of violence. The Crusades sought unsuccessfully but at great human expense to rid the Muslim infidels from the holy land. The atrocities and religious wars of the Reformation, committed by all sides, caused the river Seine to run red with blood. Native Americans have been exploited and destroyed under the banner of God. Christopher Columbus brought the gospel and germs to the new world, taking back slaves and gold. In our own day we have witnessed the excesses of religious fundamentalists around the world who kill in the name of god or in defense of fetuses. In light of considerations such as these, some might be led to conclude that intolerance has been the peculiar vice of the religious.

On the other hand, one might assert that we are indebted to the Enlightenment triumph of reason over revealed religion for laying the foundation for an age of tolerance. One might be led to believe, therefore, that tolerance is the peculiar virtue of the secularist.

We have just painted two pictures with broad strokes. According to the one, intolerance seems to be the peculiar vice of the religious. According to the other, tolerance appears to be the peculiar virtue of the secularist. Both accounts, we believe, are mistaken. That religious people have inflicted some of the greatest atrocities in the history of human civilization cannot be denied. But intolerance and inflicting suffering are not limited to the religious. In our century alone, the atrocities inflicted by deeply committed atheists rival (numerically) all of the atrocities of the previous centuries combined. The Holocaust, ¹ the killing fields, the Soviet pogrom, the rape of Nanking, the revolution in China, and the world wars betray any secular hope that religious people are especially inclined toward intolerance. Human beings as such, it would seem, are not inclined toward tolerance of competing religious, social, political, or moral beliefs and practices. As Anthony Appiah has astutely observed, "we [human beings] are naturally impatient for harmony." ²

The pressures toward intolerance are multiplied in our increasingly diverse society. Our country is not a melting pot where differences are extinguished, but an alphabet soup. It is not unusual to find in one small block--in neighborhoods all across our country--people of African American, Filipino, Jewish, homosexual, fundamentalist Christian, Hispanic, Irish Catholic, Dutch, and Moslem identities. The discrete letters of this soup bump against one another in ways unimagined even a generation ago. And here the rub's the rub. Different people with different beliefs and practices make us feel uncomfortable and threaten our security and sense of certainty. Ridding our neighborhoods, cities, and countries of unwelcome practices and unfamiliar beliefs would help us create a community where all that we do and believe would be enshrined and enforced. If we succeeded at such a task, we would have made our community in our own image, which, while not embracing the other, does foster an expansive affirmation of self and clan.

The purpose of this essay is to analyze the notion of tolerance. We will argue, contrary to the stories with which we opened, that tolerance makes sense only against a backdrop of religious or moral conviction. Judgments of tolerance and intolerance require a conception of the good or the true. Secular relativists who believe that all religions are false and that detached neutrality is the preferred posture to assume on all matters religious and moral cannot coherently be tolerant. ³ Furthermore, tolerance requires a thick conception of the self, a conception of considerable religious...