‘Tolerance’ has become an attitudinal key word in debates about how we can live together in our multi-cultural, multi-faith society. But there is still a struggle to understand what ‘tolerance’ means today. ‘Toleration’ is firmly rooted in the legal-religio-political landscape of the UK. It is based on the principle that the State’s power to suppress a religious tradition is voluntarily suspended, so that legal regulations refrain from labelling certain religious beliefs as unlawful. Toleration in this context means less than ‘freedom’, because the power to suppress remains, even as it is kept in check.
Within Christian theology and practice, toleration has a more dynamic aspect. It implies a readiness to live alongside worldviews and lifestyles which diverge from Christianity, and perhaps even seek to undermine it. The Evangelical Alliance has defined ‘toleration’ in terms of respecting difference and understanding diversity. However, concern is developing among Evangelicals generally that in the legislative sphere, their own position seems decreasingly tolerated. Particularly since the events of September 11th 2001, attitudes towards religion have become noticeably more polarised. In this context, it has become necessary to emphasise the importance of toleration across the spectrum of faith groups if society is to see its various constituencies living side by side whilst simultaneously feeling connected to and having a stake in the overarching political system under which they live. After 9/11, a significant tide of opinion, in the UK and elsewhere, turned against Islam. In some quarters, this hostility carried over into the Judaeo-Christian tradition. Media commentators now commonly portray religion as disruptive, dangerous and even potentially treasonable - a ‘disease’ infecting the body politic. Legal and political officials increasingly voice similar sentiments.
Toleration, then, is an issue of great current importance. Interestingly, however, submissions to the Commission dealing with the subject revealed a degree of ambiguity about the term, and the concept it denotes. While many wished to support the basic idea of toleration as integral to human rights and a free society, they expressed a general unease with the way in which toleration is now being construed in the civic arena. For example, Chisnall supported the idea of toleration, noting that Jesus urged religious people to demonstrate it. CARE argued that Christians should model toleration without conditions. Harte proposed that the law should be even-handed in relation to toleration. But what this might mean in practice was less clear from the submissions. If Christians are tolerant of others in a plural society, should they then not expect tolerance in return? A major concern shared by submissions on this subject was the way ‘tolerance’ is increasingly conflated with ‘inclusiveness’, when the two concepts are neither identical nor interchangeable.
Having said all this, in her submission to the commission Fran Beckett’s salutary reflection was that “Christian intolerance of certain moral positions must be accompanied by equal [in]tolerance of injustice. It is our preoccupation with the former and largely ignoring the latter that has seriously undermined the credibility of our witness”. Even so, it clearly emerges from the material submitted to the Commission that the Church can and should make a serious and valuable contribution to ongoing debates about the nature and function of tolerance in 21st century Britain.
