Religious Tolerance and Christianity

I recently came upon an old blog post by a Christian homeschooling father. In the post he described being at an Institute for Basic Life Life Principles (IBLP) conference in 2007. What I found really interesting was his description of a sermon he heard there about Islam—and religious tolerance.

Bill Federer shared a powerful message on the history of Islam. We sat in rapt attention as he wove story after story together to give a startling but accurate assessment of Mohammed’s life and teachings and how it affects us today.

One point that really resonated with me was in regard to the modern movement for “religious tolerance”. These people would readily say that everyone is created equal. In fact, this is fundamental to their worldview. But where do they get that idea? It doesn’t come from the Islamic Koran, which commands the killing of infidels (non-muslims) and the inferiority of women. It definitely doesn’t come from the Hindu cast system or the idea of reincarnation. And it certainly doesn’t come from atheistic communism, where one’s worth depends on how much they contribute to the state.

The idea that everyone is created equal is a Judeo-Christian teaching. Yet it is the foundation for the “religious tolerance” movement that tries to tolerate all religions but Christianity. It will probably take a major crisis before people realize that “religious tolerance” is knocking the very legs out from under the table on which their belief system is based.

First of all, I’m incredibly amused by someone involved in IBLP criticizing Islam for rejecting the idea that everyone is created equal by teaching the inferiority of women. I don’t know much about Islam, but I know quite about about Bill Gothard and IBLP, and they definitely teach that wives are to submit to their husbands, and that women are to be homemakers rather than having careers or working outside of the home.

But there’s much more than that here. The basic argument here seems to be that religious tolerance flows naturally from Christianity, because Christianity naturally teaches that everyone is equal. Except that a quick look at history makes it obvious that neither of these things is true.

Anyone who thinks religious tolerance flows naturally from Christianity has never heard of the Spanish Inquisition, under which Jews and Muslims were required to either convert to Christianity or leave Spain, under pain of death. Thousands were executed. And then there were the European Wars of Religion, when Catholics and Protestants killed each other across Europe. Millions died. Even in the Massachusetts Bay Colony and others, the authorities prosecuted and executed heretics. There is nothing about religious tolerance that is intrinsic to Christianity in the slightest.

The United States Constitution enshrines freedom of religion, it is true. But this was mainly because there were so many sects of Christianity across the colonies that making any single one of them the official religion of the new United States made little sense. Still, the Constitution did not bar any individual state from having an official religion, and Massachusetts had an official religion until 1833. In Europe, it is generally thought that religious tolerance developed in reaction to the huge death tolls of the European Wars of Religion.

Further, anyone who thinks that the idea that all people are equal flows naturally from Christianity has never heard of  “the Curse of Ham.” For centuries Christians believed that Africans were descendants of Noah’s son Ham, and that they were bound by his curse, which relegated them to lives of servitude. In fact, the Curse of Ham was used to justify slavery. In other words, these Christians believed that inequality flowed naturally from their Christian beliefs.

I’m really tired of the argument of everything that is good and beautiful in our world flows from Christianity. I grew up hearing these very arguments. Freedom of religion, racial equality, even democratic government—all of these things, I was told, flow from Christianity, and without Christianity we would have none of them. Except that, as I’ve pointed out, this is not true. Am I saying that there are no messages in Christianity that can be used to support equality? Certainly not. Christianity is an extremely varied religious tradition that lends itself to multiple interpretations and reinterpretations.

Now, I’ve also heard the argument that these things flowed from the Enlightenment, or the “Age of Reason,” a European intellectual movement. While this argument makes some sense on certain points, science and racism, and secularism and totalitarianism, are in fact compatible—or so scientific racism and Stalin’s Great Purge suggest. In other words, it’s not that simple. Things are rarely that simple. The histories of both religious tolerance and equality are complex and fascinating, and not something any one group alone can claim.

I want to finish by touching on the suggestion that religious tolerance tolerates all religions but Christianity. This, too, is an argument I remember hearing growing up. The problem, I think, generally comes down to whether intolerance should be tolerated. For all their claims that religious tolerance and the equality of all people stem from Christianity, evangelicals tend to be rather intolerant in practice, especially when it comes to other religions or sexual orientations other than straight.

But then, religious tolerance does not mean agreeing with every religion or refraining from criticizing any religion. Evangelical Christians are free to practice their religious beliefs, but they are not free to infringe on another’s rights as they do so. Evangelical Christians are free to practice their beliefs, but other individuals are not required to like those beliefs. This is the point where religious tolerance can be complicated and hard—it means affirming both pluralism and disagreement. And yes, that applies to Christians too.

Mostly I’m just annoyed with the depth of revisionism practiced in the evangelical Christian circles I grew up in. When you combine that with homeschooling—a central component of Gothard’s teachings—you end up with a generation of evangelical children who know little outside of this revisionist account of the past. And I find that extremely sad.