Christianity And Toleration Essay

TOLERANCE
When we decide to tolerate an action or a practice, we decide to forego an opportunity to interfere in some instance of that activity or practice. Many of the fellows and students at Christ Church college, Oxford, do not like the steady stream of tourists looking though their college grounds—and collectively, at least, they are in a position to stop it. However, they decide not to exercise this power. They decide to put up with or tolerate tourism. In order for their inaction to count as a genuine instance of toleration, however, they must find tourism in the college grounds objectionable. If they did not find it objectionable then their attitude would be one of indifference or approval, and we do not use the terms toleration‘
9 Cohen includes the final clause ‗where the agent believes she has the power to interfere‘ to distinguish toleration from resignation.10 If we believe that we have no power to stop the objectionable practice or activity, then our attitude toward that activity is not one of tolerance but of
Medieval and early modern Europeans were typically not tolerant of deviant religious practices. In fact, Christianity is sometimes seen as the least tolerant of all religions .This tendency towards intolerance may be explained by the salvationist character of much Christian thought, particularly Protestant thought (Mendus 2007, Lecture One). It is hard to justify tolerance of other religions if one sincerely believes that faith in such religions will lead to the denial of salvation and perhaps to eternal damnation. However the connection between salvation-driven arguments for religious intolerance and Protestantism should not be overstated. Mainstream Catholic thought had it that heresy should not be tolerated because of the threat that it poses to salvation. According to