How Much Tolerance Do We Tolerate?
Sermon by Steve Edington
February 15, 2009
Ever since I could speak and read I've been fascinated with language, especially with how the meanings or connotations of words can change over time; and how they can sometimes go from a positive to negative shade of meaning. The word "enable" or "enabler" is a case in point. As I first understood the term you enabled someone by supporting them or by giving them the tools to accomplish something on their own so that someone else didn't have to do it for them. Suppose you wanted to build a birdhouse, and I knew how to do that, and you asked for my help. Instead of building your birdhouse for you I would teach you how to build one and perhaps give you the boards and the tools and the equipment you would need. And then you'd be on your own. I would be an "enabler" for you to build a birdhouse. That would be a good thing.
However, as the language of the Recovery Movement, with its Twelve Step process for overcoming addictions to alcohol, or drugs, or excessive eating (to name a few) has gained increased currency and use, being an "enabler" has become a not-so-good thing. Now an enabler is the person who helps or allows someone to perpetuate a harmful or destructive addiction, or who fails to confront someone else's destructive behavior. An enabler, in its more present usage, is someone who allows a person that they are supposed to love and care about to keep doing harm to him or her self. This is a bad thing. I don't decry this shift so much as I see it as one more example of what a fluid thing language is, and that it's not static at all.
A similar kind of thing has happened with the word "tolerance" or "tolerate." To be tolerant of opinions or points of view or of ways of looking at the world that are different from you own, in its best sense means to show respect for those opinions and viewpoints and be open to learning more about them while still bringing your own views and opinions to the table. All well and good. But we seem to have had a shift in our cultural lexicon so that tolerate now means to barely put up with. We've come to use the term to point to our limits rather than our openness, as in "This is as much out of you as I'm willing to tolerate."
Tolerance, then, has become what the late - and still, by me, lamented - George Carlin liked to call a "two-way word." Now Carlin's two-way words, as those of you who followed his career and liked his stuff well know, were usually those that were regarded as perfectly acceptable in one context, but were considered crude, rude, or even obscene in another context - same word both times. That's not exactly the case with the word tolerance, but in a larger sense a similar kind of thing goes on with it - positive in one kind of use and negative in another. So what I want to explore with you for a time this morning is the notion of tolerance as a two-way word. And I especially want to look at how appeals to tolerance, in some cases, are really masks or shields for perpetuating certain forms of intolerance.
We'll start with the positive since I'm an accentuate-the-positive kind of guy, by briefly dipping into our Unitarian Universalist history. It was a spirit and an affirmation of tolerance that first allowed what we now call Unitarian Universalism to get a foothold in the religious landscape of 16th century Europe. Actually, it was an act of ultimate intolerance on the part of John Calvin that gave us our first Unitarian martyr in the person of Michael Servetus. Mr. Servetus, as many of you know, was burned at the stake in 1553 in the streets of Geneva, Switzerland, at Mr. Calvin's behest, for questioning the doctrine of the Trinity. Geneva was supposed to be a stronghold and a symbol of the new light of the Protestant Reformation, but it didn't show a whole lot of enlightenment or tolerance towards poor Mr. Servetus.
In the wake of Servetus' execution, however, a "positive backlash," I guess you could call it, to such severe kinds of religious persecution began to take place in certain parts of Europe, most notably in the Kingdom of Transylvania, which covered parts of today's Hungary and Romania.
Eight years after the death of Servetus in 1561 a young Prince of Transylvania named John Sigismund became King. He was the first and only Unitarian King in history having been greatly influenced by his Court Preacher, a one Francis David, who was of Unitarian persuasion. But rather than make 16th century Unitarianism the law of his land, the King issued instead in 1568 the first Edict of Religious Toleration in western history. It said in part, "The preachers should everywhere preach the gospel, according to his own belief and the community might accept it or not. Nobody should compel it as this would not ease anybody's soul but the community shall have the right to keep such a preacher whose teaching it likes...Nobody is allowed to threaten anybody with prison or with expelling him from his place of teaching."
That may sound rather quaint now, but in its day it was a truly radical document. In that day the religion of the Monarch was almost always regarded as the official religion of the land, and those at variance with it were often subject to persecution and sometimes death. During the reign of John Sigismund, Transylvania was a "religious free zone" where a variety of faiths could be freely observed and practiced.
Some of the Unitarian Churches that were established in the wake of the Edit of Toleration are still in existence and still in operation in certain villages in Hungary and Romania. It is a tribute to their amazing resilience that they've lasted over 400 years; and especially that they survived nearly 50 years of communist domination in those countries from the end of the Second World War until the early 1990s. While the theology of these Hungarian and Romanian Unitarian Churches is more theistic, and more Christian based, than what you find in most American UU churches, they represent the earliest stages in the history of our liberal faith, and in the tradition of religious toleration.
It was this principle of religious tolerance that went a long way, then, in giving birth to the liberal religious faith we practice right here today. It is a principle that holds that absolute truth cannot be fully known by human beings, that there is always more truth to be revealed and discovered, and therefore no religion can rightly lay claim to being the one and only absolutely right and true one. This same principle is basic to modern science as well - namely that we act on what we know with the understanding that there will always be more truth to be discovered.
Of course, we as individuals, and as member or friends of a congregation like this one, need to be always seeking and living out with passion and conviction the truths we come to. But we do not insist that those truths are once-and-for-all final; nor do we categorically exclude the truths that others have found. That's what religious toleration, at its best, is. So we should not be dismissive of tolerance, since it made us what we are today as a liberal religious body.
That is my positive take on tolerance. The place, however, where this matter of tolerance and intolerance gets tricky are those times, as I mentioned earlier, when appeals to tolerance are really masks or shields for certain kinds on intolerance. And many of those places are at that bedeviling intersection where the working of religion and the workings of the state or of government intersect.
They're any number of examples I could use to expand upon this, but I'll limit it to two. It nearly slipped off my radar screen that this past Thursday, February 12th was not only 200th anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln, but also the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin. I don't know if there's any kind of Karmic significance to the fact that Abe Lincoln and Charles Darwin were born on the same day. You're each entitled to your own truth on that one. A number of my UU ministerial colleagues are doing Darwin/Evolution sermons today, so I figure I should at least give the man and his theory a nod while examining the question of what constitutes tolerance and intolerance.
Mr. Darwin may have been born two centuries ago, but his theory or principle of evolution - human and otherwise - still elicits calls to arms from certain quarters of the religious right. The argument from these quarters is that unless, in state supported schools, some form of creationism is offered as an alternative to Darwin's theory of evolution as it is understood today, then the government is being intolerant of and discriminatory towards those religious conservatives who reject Darwinism. The latest variation on what had been called "scientific creationism" is now referred to as "Intelligent Design." Unless, so this argument goes, the principle of Intelligent Design is offered in science text books as an alternative explanation as to how and why we have the life forms that populate the earth at this time, then school boards are guilty of intolerance.
Okay, I'll take my shot at untangling this one. Intelligent Design, to boil it down, is the idea that there had to be, and still is, some form or force or principle or Being of deliberate intelligence behind the creation and the workings of the universe in order for it to operate according to the laws by which it operates - or the laws we human beings have been able to figure out anyway. Now, personally I don't buy that any more than I buy the idea that there's some sort of cosmic significance about Lincoln and Darwin being born on the same day. Their parents conceived them and their mothers had them, and that was that. The meanings of their lives were not the date of their birth, but what they did with their lives once they were born.
To get back to the point before I lose it, as a philosophical or a theological question I think the idea of Intelligent Design is one worthy of study and debate - in other words, tolerable in the good sense. It is worthy of study and debate, that is to say, in a philosophy or a religious studies class. After all, I've made a career out of exploring religious and philosophical ideas and beliefs and deciding which ones resonate with me and which ones do not, and all in a spirit of tolerance; so fine, let's discuss the idea of Intelligent Design in a academic setting. It's where you discuss it in an academic setting, however, that is the crux of the matter for me.
My resistance to the teaching of Intelligent Design, or Creationism or whatever other term might be used - and if some folks wish to call this intolerance on my part then I can't stop them--comes when Evolution and Intelligent Design are asked or mandated to be presented as either/or alternatives in a science class or textbook, as though it has to be one or the other. That route very quickly gets you back to the notion that there's only one kind of truth, and I find that to be, well....rather intolerant.
In the world in which I live, and I feel this holds for most of us, both within and beyond this congregation, there are many truths; or many types of truths. There's the truth of science, the truth of art, the truth of poetry, the truth of philosophy, the truth of religion. All of these truths, and more, inform and enhance the meanings of our lives. Intolerance, as I see it, is the insistence that the truth of any one of these realms automatically trumps or negates all the others; and I cannot tolerate that kind of approach or attitude.
I'll move now to my second example about tolerance and intolerance. In addition to being in the wake of Darwin's 200th birthday, this week has been designated as National Freedom to Marry Week by a coalition of liberal religious organizations - including our UUA - which together constitute a National Freedom to Marry Coalition. More details of this effort are on or UUA website.
Last November 4th, even as they handily gave Barack Obama its electoral votes for President, the voters in the State of California also approved a ballot initiative called Proposition Eight. Proposition Eight overturned a ruling by the California Supreme Court that granted marriage rights to same sex couples, and held that marriage in California can only be between a man and a woman. The Constitutionality of the referendum itself has now become yet another legal matter with the final outcome still to be determined.
The driving force behind the 'yes' votes for this initiative came from the Mormon Church in the next-door State of Utah, as well as in California; and from a strong evangelical population within the State - including Rev. Rick Warren's 20,000 member Saddleback mega-church in Los Angeles. One of the arguments put forth by these folk, and by Rev. Warren in particular, was that they were really the ones who were victims of intolerance and bigotry because they were being "forced" to accept a mode of marriage that ran counter to their religious beliefs. This is why I was less than enthusiastic about Rev. Warren giving the Invocation at the Presidential Inaugural. But in the spirit of tolerance I've let it go.
Okay, it's sort-out time again. The kind of argument that Rev. Warren and others have put forward is one for which the term "disingenuous" was coined. It's also a variation on the very same argument I heard put forth more than 40 years ago during the civil rights movement when legislation to desegregate public facilities like restaurants, swimming pools, motels and the like was being proposed. There were some white folks then who said that it was really their rights that were being violated because they didn't want to he "forced" to be near black people in public places. What I hear now from those who resist the civil right to marry by gay and lesbian people is really one more verse of the same old song.
The extending of certain rights to a group that has previously been denied them doesn't take anything away from anybody when it comes to the workings of civil law. Back to the issue at hand, any religious body that feels two adults of the same sex should not marry is perfectly free to take that position with its members and counsel them against such marriages or unions. I tolerate and respect their right to do that even if I do not accept their position. And I fully agree that no member of the clergy - myself included---should have to officiate a marriage that he or she feels they cannot in good faith and conscience perform. That's always been the case, by the way. No State has ever required a minister to officiate a wedding he or she does not wish to do. The argument sometimes put forth by opponents of same-sex marriage or civil unions that ministers would be forced to officiate them is a complete red herring.
So I turn the argument that Rev. Warren and others of his persuasion are making on same-sex marriage around, and this is my reply to them: What you are really saying is that in order for your position or belief as what constitutes a valid marriage to be upheld, as a matter of civil law, then the rights of same sex-couples to enter into marriage has to be denied by the State. And that is a position which I cannot tolerate.
Moving beyond these two examples, and moving now to a close, here's the distinction I make: To be respectful and tolerant of a wide range of beliefs, opinions and attitudes - as I believe one should be - is not always, and not necessarily, the same as being tolerant of all the actions and outcomes that might flow from those beliefs and opinions.
To cite what is probably the most obvious example, I can respect and tolerate the religious beliefs, and the beliefs in God - however conceived - of practically anyone. But that certainly doesn't extend to tolerating acts of terrorism in the name of God, or in the name of a particular religious faith. It is the point at which a set of beliefs or opinions become harmful or detrimental to the public good, to the common good, that my tolerance runs out. One need not be moral philosopher to figure that out, really, I think it's a pretty self-evident truth.
I can show a true spirit of tolerance for a sincerely held belief and opinion that a person or a religious community holds as the basis for how they conduct their personal life or the life of their religious community. But I cast a very cautious eye when those beliefs and opinions are put forth as public policy that is binding on a larger population.
Finally, I am pleased to represent a faith tradition that was born out of a spirit of religious toleration. A full embrace of this tradition also includes standing up to many forms of intolerance, whatever name or rationale may be used for it. We are a community that practices respect and tolerance; and we are also a justice-loving and a justice seeking community. How we hold these two very worthy principles in balance is one of the many positive challenges we face as we continue on in the life of our congregation.
Stephen Edington
February 15, 2009
