TOLERANCE, TRUTH AND RELIGION, AND WHERE THEY FIT IN HISTORY RELIGION
By Terry Mattingly

Scripps News, DC
June 13 2007

When it comes to religion and politics, many skeptics are convinced
that strong faith leads to judgmentalism, which leads to intolerance,
which leads to oppression and, ultimately, theocracy.

Many people disagree, saying that it’s impossible to defend basic
human rights without a religious or at philosophical commitment to
moral absolutes.

It’s easy to tell who is who when they speak out.

Consider this voice: "Freedom on the one hand is for the sake of
truth and on the other hand it cannot be perfected except by means
of truth. …

There is no freedom without truth."

That was the young Polish bishop who would become Pope John Paul II,
arguing for a tight connection between truth and freedom at Vatican II.

Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins disagrees, to put it mildly:
"To fill a world with religion, or religions of the Abrahamic kind,
is like littering the streets with loaded guns. Don’t be surprised
if they are used."

While it’s easy to find examples of religion being used to justify
great evils, Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson finds it hard to
grasp how Dawkins and company can study history and say things like
that. It’s no surprise that Gerson feels this way, since he is best
known as the White House scribe who wove faith-based images into so
many speeches for President George W. Bush.

"This anti-religious viewpoint claims too much. Do its advocates really
intend to lump the Grand Inquisitor with the Amish? To say there is
no difference between radical Salafists and Sufis?", asked Gerson,
speaking at a global conference titled "Fact vs. Rumor: Journalism
in the 21st Century." This gathering in Istanbul was organized by my
colleagues at the Oxford Centre for Religion and Public Life.

"Surely the content of religion makes some difference," added Gerson.

"But the central problem with this anti-religious attitude is this:
It would remove the main source of reform — the main source of
passion for justice and change — in American history."

If it’s hard to maintain a demilitarized zone between religion and
politics in America, it’s even harder to do so in a land like Turkey,
where many politicians insist that they have created a "secular
Muslim state."

Many other Turks have severe doubts about the success of that project,
especially those in the nation’s shrinking Orthodox, Protestant,
Catholic and Jewish minorities. Ask the Armenians if trying to separate
"truth" from "rumor" raises tolerance issues in modern Turkey.

While Gerson discussed a wide range of issues in an off-the-record
dialogue session, including the Iraq war, his keynote address
focused on the big picture — his conviction that in "every culture,
standing for truth against lies and conspiracy theories is essential
to tolerance."

At the very least, he stressed, tolerance requires a belief in at
least one absolute truth, a belief in human dignity. And without some
kind of doctrine of human equality — that, for example, all men are
created equal and in God’s image — it is hard to defend universal
standards of human rights and social justice.

In American history, said Gerson, the source of that moral truth has
often been found in the prophetic voices of religious believers.

Thus, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., wrote these words in his
"Letter from the Birmingham Jail."

A truly "just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law
or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony
with the moral law."

Moral relativism, on the other hand, forces leaders to root their
decisions in power and power alone, said Gerson. The result is "the
rule of the strong — the rule of those who can seek their wants and
impose their will most effectively."

Thus, as a contrast to King, consider this voice from the bloody
20th Century.

"Everything I have said and done in these last years is relativism
by intuition — if relativism signifies contempt for fixed categories
and men who claim to be bearers of an objective, immortal truth. …

>From the fact that all ideologies are of equal value, that all
ideologies are mere fictions, the modern relativist infers that
everybody has the right to create for himself his own ideology and
to attempt to enforce it with all the energy of which he is capable."

The speaker? That would be Italian fascist Benito Mussolini.

(Terry Mattingly () directs the Washington Journalism
Center at the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities)