Reviews, Interviews, News, Commentaries, Excerpts, My Top 5 Books, Wilson's Bookmarks, Book AwardsTolerance—Or Else: Coercive Attempts to Impose Secular Beliefs
The Intolerance of Tolerance is not a political jeremiad so much as a call for Christians to fight for the value of truth. He shows how Christianity doesn't fit into the world of new tolerance and, when it tries, ends up paying too high a price. The result is a dumbed-down, diluted, and minimized gospel.
While the book is bracing, Carson ends on a hopeful note. He gives Christians 10 suggestions for dealing with intolerant tolerance, from simply exposing its arrogance and internal inconsistencies to speaking truthfully and civilly. He reminds Christians that they should be prepared to suffer in defense of the faith, before ending on a joyful note about trusting in God over government.
Mollie Ziegler Hemingway is a contributing writer at GetReligion.org.
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The Intolerance of Tolerance is available from Christianbook.com and other retailers.
Previous Christianity Today articles on tolerance include:
Proselytizing in a Multi-Faith World | Why mutual respect and tolerance require us to witness for Christ. (March 28, 2011)
The Sin of Tolerance | Billy Graham's 1959 radio address. (October 28, 2008)
This Samaritan Life | How to live in a culture that is vaguely suspicious of the church. (February 7, 2008)
A Fractured and Beautiful Faith
Streaming This Weekend, May 24, 2013
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Daniel Hartshorn
Example of the intolerence of the "tolerant" left: re: the Trayvaon Martin case - liberalTwitter feeds that say, "Kill the judge," or "Kill Zimmeran." Liberals are only tolerant until they gain political power.
Adam Shields
Maybe this is addressed in the book. But most books, articles, blogs posts with this basic idea that I have read want to impose their own set of truths on the rest of the world. Christianity, because it knows that it has access to the truth of Christ, do not need to impose its understanding of truth on others as much as live the truth we know. Imposing is just using the worldly tools that others want to use on us.
Chris Kirk
Looks like an interesting book - I'll definitely read it. I would like to disagree with one of the comments from the article though. It says, "they have the right to control the public sphere because they are right—completely unaware that they are trying to impose their worldview on others who disagree with it." It's extremely naive of us to believe that they are unaware they're imposing their beliefs upon others. I think the exact opposite is true -- they're complete aware, and are waging a coordinated effort, to impose their beliefs upon us. It is, in essence, their religion to convert us to their secular fold but unlike Christianity, in a coercive iron-handed manner.