Religious Tolerance vs. Religious Respect

Rev. Amy Russell - 2008-02-03

When I was in my early twenties and newly married, my husband and I were practicing Buddhists. We were living in Boston in Jamaica Plain, a working class neighborhood at the end of the Green Line subway. We were renting the first floor of a house from a nice Italian woman who lived upstairs. We were actively practicing Buddhism, in fact, it had become the central focus in our lives. The practice involved getting up early every morning and chanting aloud parts of the Lotus Sutra in front of an altar that contained a scroll. The scroll was written in Sanscript and was very foreign and strange looking. We had our altar in a little sunroom full of windows that faced a small side yard next to the street. Sometimes when we were chanting either in the morning or again when we did our evening prayer, we would hear little noises in the bushes, outside the windows. Rustling and maybe some giggling. We figured it was the neighborhood kids and paid it no mind. We were not attentive to the fact that we were practicing a “heathen” religion in a mostly Catholic neighborhood of people who probably didn’t like us anyway, since we were part of the invading college educated crowd. One morning, I went to the door to pick up the morning paper and as I opened the door I saw lying splayed on our welcome mat a feathery, bloody dead bird. It was a rooster, a dead rooster, lying on our doorstep. I looked quickly around and saw nothing, but then saw some kids running quickly up the street. There was a note lying folded next to the bird. I picked it up and read with some horror the words in bold letters - DEVIL-WORSHIPPERS - GO HOME.

I can’t tell you how that made me feel. I felt anger and shame all at the same time. Anger at the obvious prejudice and hate that had spawned this trick even if it were just young kids. And shame at who they thought I was. How could they think of my spiritual practice as a practice of the devil? I was shaken and never really understood what kind of thinking would generate such a trick.

Was this religious intolerance? Or was it just a harmless trick played by some kids? Have you had an experience like this that made you feel anger and even shame for not being a part of the mainstream religious movement?

As Unitarian Universalists, we have a religious heritage that began with religious persecution and intolerance. On October 27, 1553, Miguel Servetus, a Spaniard nobleman, who had written a book questioning the relationship between God, Christ and the Holy Spirit, was burned at the stake with his book under his arm. The instigator of this horrendous action was John Calvin, a man at the forefront of the Protestant Reformation, who had gathered his power around him in Geneva by questioning the faith of other reformers who according to Calvin pushed “too far” this new questioning of the Catholic Church.

In the years after Servetus’ execution, a tract appeared entitled “Concerning Heretics, Whether They are to be Persecuted” by an unknown author. The tract discussed the nature of heresy as being a relative not an absolute concept. It said, “We are all heretics in the eyes of those who do not share our views. Let us be tolerant towards one another, and let no one condemn another’s belief.” The article included a condemnation for the execution of Servetus. Calvin guessed correctly the true author of this article was Sebastian Castellio, a professor of Greek that Calvin actually hired to come to the University of Basel several years earlier. But Calvin and Castellio had already experienced conflict as Castellio had begun to share some of his more unorthodox theological views. Castellio’s article denouncing the practice of religious persecution made a strong impression on Christians in the Swiss churches especially with refugees who had fled other countries for fear of persecution.

Castellio outlined the terrible outrage that Calvin had wrought in having Servetus killed. “To kill a man is not to protect a doctrine, but it is to kill a man. When the Genevans killed Servetus, they did not defend a doctrine, but they killed a man.” Calvin hounded Castellio with persecution for the rest of both of their lives. But this conflict did much to highlight the issue of religious tolerance and intolerance. It meant that a large part of Miguel Servetus’ legacy was the growth of religious toleration.

A surprising development in religious tolerance came later in the country of Transylvania. A man by the name of Frances David became an influential church leader in the Calvinist movement. He started to raise questions around the trinity doctrine and clashed with another church leader Peter Melius. King John Sigmund, king of Transylvania at the time, wanting to end the hot religious controversy that was tearing apart his country convened a diet at Torda in 1568 which affirmed the principle of religious toleration whereby “no one shall be reviled for his religion by any one.”

After many religious debates on the trinity, David and other Unitarian leaders persuaded the king to formally recognize Unitarianism as the country’s received religion. This became King Sigmund’s last public act before he died. David continued to discuss and preach about new religious ideas he had about prayer not being directed to Christ but to God. Biandrata, an influential prince’s advisor had David tried, convicted, and sentenced by the prince to life imprisonment. David’s health had been weak throughout the trial and he died in prison, soon after. Many Unitarians were forced to profess more traditional beliefs rather than be persecuted. The Ruling of Torda which allowed for some religious toleration in the country was now completely dead.

Another figure who wrote about religious toleration and was persecuted for this view was Voltaire. Having been banned from Paris for his heretical ideas, Voltaire went to England where he wrote an important work, Letters Concerning the English Nation describing the religious freedom available in England in 1733. He wrote that the economic system of free enterprise found in England at the time encouraged religious toleration because merchants respected each other, at least for the purposes of doing business together. This created a culture of acceptance of different religious backgrounds.

Although England was not legally or historically a particularly religiously tolerant place, it did not have the overwhelming social class structure that prevented economic mobility as France did. The open economic arena established a level playing field where people dealt with each other on a more or less equal level.

Voltaire argued that freedom, especially economic freedom, became a culture within which religious toleration flourished. This flew in the face of conventional societal wisdom which held that if people in society did not hold the same values, that society would fall apart. Voltaire insisted that the opposite was true. That imposing religious and moral values on people led to conflict and war. He argued that a society in which citizens were not encouraged to question and dissent created stagnation and corruption. He said that a peaceful prosperous society was created through diversity of opinion and values.

Voltaire wrote, “If there were only one religion in England, there would be tyranny; if there were two, they would cut each other’s throats; but there are thirty, and they live happily together in peace.”

This theme of the encouragement of religious diversity through tolerance is one that our tradition has made a significant part of our faith. Our Unitarian and Universalist ancestors had many differing beliefs but many of them stood in unity on this issue, that the freedom to define one’s own belief system is a fundamental right and responsibility of each person individually.

What does religious intolerance look like today? We’ve just seen how the religious persecution of our forbears has created for us a deeply held value for religious freedom and tolerance. But we still see religious intolerance demonstrated throughout the world.

We see it in Kosovo where Serbian Orthodox Christians have killed, tortured, raped and forced the exodus of ethnic Albanians who are mostly Muslims.

We see it in Sudan where the majority Muslim religion has engaged in killing and violence toward Christians, Aboriginal religions, and minority Muslim groups.

We see religious intolerance in Northern Ireland between Protestants and Catholics, in Sri Lanka between Hindus and Buddhists, and between Christians, Jews, and Muslims in the Middle East.

September 11 is a devastating example of religious hatred and violence. One that many of us will never begin to understand.

Do we see religious intolerance here in our country? Certainly.

The Dayton Daily News reported on January 10, that the Sugarcreek Township Zoning Council of Appeals voted unanimously to deny a building permit to an Islamic American organization seeking to build an Islamic Center in Sugarcreek. This decision has been defended by the council as being based solely on waste management and traffic considerations. However, when you read some of the letters to the editor, you can see that religious intolerance is alive and well in that area. One letter said, “Re the proposed mosque site in Sugarcreek Twp.: Apparently the Muslims didn't understand that, freedom of religion means the freedom to practice any Christian religion.” It’s hard to imagine how intolerant some Americans are, especially considering that our country was founded with the value of religious freedom.

The leaders of some faiths are not recognized as clergy during prison visitation.

Some faith groups are not allowed to perform marriages. Followers of certain faiths such as Wiccans or pagans are only able to celebrate their rituals safely in certain areas of North America. They experience persecution by some who misunderstand their religious traditions.

These examples show us how religious intolerance is still very close to home. But do we see religious intolerance within our own religious tradition?

Many would say no. That Unitarian Universalists are committed to upholding and supporting the right of every individual to practice their particular religion. In our seven sources, we refer to a practice of seeking truth from all the world’s religions. Our churches have become the haven for many faith traditions who could not find a home elsewhere in this country such as pagan groups, Buddhist groups, Native American based faiths, and a variety of other spiritual traditions. We pride ourselves on being open-minded and encouraging diversity in our churches. For many of us, this is what we love about our UU communities—that they are places where we can learn about and practice a variety of spiritual traditions without fear of prejudice.

At one time, I asked a group of UUs whether they saw their faith community as being religiously tolerant and I got a variety of responses:

Some said that their faith community was very tolerant of all faiths and welcomed people of all beliefs into their fold.

One person said, “We might be tolerant, but we aren’t very respectful.” I asked him what he meant. And he said that we are very disrespectful particularly of Christianity because so many of us were “come-outers” from Christian backgrounds. I asked the group if this were true, why UUs were disrespectful of Christianity. One person said, “Because of our past experience with Christians who showed no respect for other faiths and kept trying to convert us.”

Another person said, “Often people are intolerant when they are threatened by something. What do you think we’re afraid of?” Maybe of the rejection we’ve experienced. Some said that they still had anger about the kind of treatment they had received at the hands of certain Christians who preached love but practiced hate.

I think many of us have witnessed the kind of disrespect that UUs and other liberal religions can show particularly to Christianity. One woman told me that when she was first visiting a UU church and was participating in a discussion group she told the group that she had graduated from a Southern Baptist seminary. Someone in the group made a face and said, “Why would anyone want to go there?” This woman felt embarrassed and ashamed of her background at the time. But now she feels angry that as a new member her faith background was treated with such disrespect.

In Diana Eck’s book, Encountering God, she talks about three different ways that people view other faiths. She describes exclusivists who can only see the truth within their own faith and see all others as false. She describes the inclusivists who try to see the commonalities in many religions but who see theirs as the culmination or umbrella of all religions. These people tend to view the world through their own faith’s frame but try to fit other’s faiths into that frame. Then there are the pluralists. Pluralists openly try to learn and dialogue about faith with people from different backgrounds. They have their own belief system but they don’t use it to color the view of other’s faith but instead try to learn what they can gather from other faith traditions.

Eck describes pluralism as a “radical openness to Truth...that seeks to enlarge understanding through dialogue.” She says pluralism is not being so open to everything that one is left with no particular faith at all.

Diana Eck speaks of UU’s and B’hai’s as spiritual communities who try to include all faiths into a spiritual smorgasbord without having a particular belief system. She seems to think that we believe “everything”. She sees the value of our inclusion of different traditions from the world’s religions but she thinks we do this because we lack faith of our own. I think, once again, we have been misunderstood.

The value for me of our openness to other faith traditions is the dialogue we can be in to learn and grow spiritually from many sources. This is not a lack of belief system because I know that most UU’s have their own individual belief systems. We are on an on-going spiritual journey where we grow and learn from life and from others.

But along the way, we sometimes belittle faith traditions that we see as simplistic. I think we belittle other faith traditions when we see people doing what we see as accepting faith without questioning. Because we tend to be intellectual and questioning, we often don’t understand people who don’t question.

I have to say that my experience during my seminary training as a chaplain at a Baptist hospital helped me to grow and change in my understanding of people who might appear at first as simplistic in faith.

As a chaplain, I went into patients’ rooms and part of my job was to discuss with patients their spiritual practice and how it helped them. I was amazed and in awe of several Christians I met whose faith was sustaining them through the difficult journey of illness and death. There are no good answers to the questions that many of us have when we are faced with our own death. But many faithful Christians tell me that they have no fear of death. They feel they are returning home to be with God. And while this may sound simplistic to many, it shows a depth of faith that I admire.

One day, at the hospital, I met a man who was experiencing great difficulty in his life. He had suffered great losses recently losing his mother and other family members in death and also losing his job. He was suffering great emotional pain at these losses as well as physical pain from his illness. And he had asked to see a chaplain. After we had talked about his difficulties, he told me a little about his own faith based on his study of the Bible. Then he asked me whether I believed in evolution. I was stunned into silence realizing that this question might divide us and that if he found out about my liberal religious views, he might not want to talk to me anymore. But I went ahead and told him that I was an evolutionist but that didn’t mean to me that God wasn’t involved. He told me he believed that God had created humans as they were. He continued to ask me about my views and shared how his faith helped him get through many of his difficulties. At the end of our conversation he thanked me for sharing my faith with him. He treated me with such respect, I felt affirmed. He thanked me before I left for listening to him talk about his problems. I thanked him for listening to me talk about my beliefs. We both treated each other with respect and care and we realized I think that even though our beliefs were very different that we both used our faith in significant ways. To make meaning out of life.

That to me is at the heart of religious respect. To listen, ask questions, to honestly see how another person’s faith offers them a way to make meaning out of life and to take something from that interchange. To seek to learn something from every religion that can offer us the gift of meaning.

On the internet site, Religious Tolerance.org, which is a website created by a Wiccan organization, I found an interesting article about religious tolerance. The author outlined several steps on a continuum from religious tolerance to religious celebration. The steps went like this: tolerate, acknowledge, examine, respect, learn, value, and celebrate.

There is a lot more we can do than just tolerate others’ religions. We can learn from them. We can modify our own belief systems in some ways by learning how others use their faith. And we can celebrate this religious spectrum. For that is what our faith asks us to do. To respect the worth and dignity of each individual—and their religion. To receive sustenance and meaning from all the world’s religions.

I hope that part of our heritage of being UUs in today’s world is that we will model for other faith groups what it means to be religiously respectful. So that when other faith groups come to visit us they will feel that they are not only welcome but they are a part of us already, accepted and asked to participate. I am proud of our welcoming congregations, welcoming all kinds of different people into our churches. But as someone at GA said, sometimes our churches forget to welcome God. And people who speak God-talk.

These are not things that we can change overnight. Diana Eck points out that the views of exclusivism, inclusivism, and pluralism may sound like views of completely different groups, while they may be “part of the ongoing dialogue within ourselves.” These attitudes and ways of thinking are more of a continuum that all of us continually visit when we’re not attentive to our viewpoint.

I constantly find myself at odds with this practice of religious respect of others. And I have to remind myself over and over that I do not have all my spiritual answers and maybe someone else might have a little piece of my answer that I might miss if I’m not listening to their faith experience.

We are reminded of our call to religious respect by the words of Francis David, who said, “We need not think alike, to love alike.”

Bibliography

Eck, Diana, Encountering God, Beacon Press, Boston, 1993.

Howe, Charles A, For Faith and Freedom, Skinner House Books, Boston, 1997.

McElroy, Wendy, “The Origin of Religious Tolerance: Voltaire”, from the website, Religious tolerance essential to America.

Web-site: religioustolerance.org

Dayton Daily News, Jan.10th