Karen Swallow Prior has a good article in the Religious News Service lamenting the often hypocritical and dangerously excessive quality of
“tolerance” among evangelical Christians.
Her article is called “Truth, Justice and the Torturing of Tolerance.”
Ms. Prior describes her own acculturation into the norms of lopsided church tolerance — heavily tilted towards favoring men and conservative politics.
My only disagreement is with her description of “some conservatives” being intolerant of others. Sorry, but in my experience intolerance describes “most” conservative evangelicals.
Below is an excerpt:
. . . Conservative evangelicals often call out the hypocrisy of progressives whose tolerance goes only one way. But some conservatives have also made tolerance a one-way street, failing to support the religious and personal freedoms of those who believe differently than we do.
Instead of offering rigorous and compelling arguments in defense of what we understand to be true, some simply take up the other side of the rope in a tug-of-war game of intolerance, making each side no different from the other side.
I have a lot to process and even confess about what I have tolerated in Christian institutions and among fellow believers. A lot of us do. Too many in the church have tolerated too much for too long.
To be sure, situations can be complicated. Motives and actions can be mixed. Facts can be disputed. Perspectives can differ. Pictures can be incomplete.
Nevertheless, some things are clearly and simply wrong. It takes wisdom to discern what should be tolerated and what should not. It also takes wisdom to know when to speak up and when to wait. It takes wisdom to understand when institutions are set up to perpetuate wrong rather than prevent it, to recognize when corruption is a feature, not a bug.
And it takes courage to tolerate no more what is wrong — and to speak up and act for what is right.
You can read the entire article here.
