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What is happening to tolerance?The other week Parliament refused to back down from implementing the Sexual Orientation Regulations in Northern Ireland. They make it illegal for people to let moral or religious objections to homosexual practices govern their conduct in providing goods and services to people, e.g. running a guest house or an adoption agency; and if you even speak openly against homosexual practices, you may be done for ‘harassment’. More recently, the King Fahd Academy (a Moslem school) in Acton got into a lot of trouble with the mainly humanistic media for having anti-Christian and anti-Jewish things in some of its teaching materials. Unacceptable criticismNow it does seem there was something objectionable — and unhelpful in our religiously diverse society — in the way some things were put in these materials; but I would also like to draw attention to the very imperious tone of Jeremy Paxman on BBC2, when interviewing the headteacher: she was given the distinct impression that any criticism of religions other than Islam in a Moslem school was quite unacceptable in our ‘tolerant’ society. Paxman was displaying zero tolerance for a religion that makes any criticism of another one! (I was left wondering: would I rather be referred to as a ‘pig’ in a Moslem school, or be taken to court by Paxman and his friends for criticising another religion? Methinks the former.) Major watershedIt’s a funny old world and it seems to me that our society is crossing some major watershed. 1. We have entered the era of a three-cornered cultural and ideological tussle: Islam, Christianity and secular humanism. And at present the secular humanist establishment is winning. 2. Muslims absolutise the Qur’an; Christians absolutise and worship Jesus Christ; the secular establishment (which thinks it is fair, objective, scientific, and free from presuppositions and certainly free from worshipping anything) actually absolutises tolerance. And wait: this is in fact a very intolerant thing to do. It means they are pushing (harder all the time) a humanistic, anti-religious outlook and value system. For them no religion should make any dogmatic or exclusive claim (but the Bible is full of them), nor should any religious person now disagree with the prevailing secular, humanistic set of moral values (e.g. any sex is OK apart from with children and those unwilling; abortion is OK; capital punishment is not OK, etc…). An alternative theological value system is no longer to be tolerated in the public arena or in one’s dealings with the public. Admitting intolerance?Now it would surely be a step forward if the secular establishment could at least see how intolerant their pushing of their version of ‘tolerance’ is! 3. In fact nearly everyone at the end of the day is a ‘fundamentalist’ in the sense of having some core beliefs or values that they really believe in and push. But the true Christian who believes in the power of the truth of God and the power of the Holy Spirit to open people’s hearts and draw them to faith in Christ can afford to be the most tolerant kind of fundamentalist: we don’t need to threaten people to make them Christians, nor do we need to make unbelief a crime. Instead we can love them, tell them about Christ, and pray for them. That is the way — and maybe even point out to some who think they are being tolerant and that we are the bigots that, well…the boot may just be (cough) on the other foot! Chris Bennett,
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