Guest Bruce Boeckel with Evidence for Christ The demand for “tolerance” in today’s society is an item in an ideological programme rather than an actual commitment to accept or at least consider new and different ideas. In addition, the demand for “tolerance” makes little sense when that demand is made of a monotheistic religion committed to the truth of an exclusive divine revelation. In other words, for historic and orthodox Christians, the demand that we be “tolerant” reveals that those making the demand either understand nothing about Christianity or that they do understand and demand that we stop being Bible-believing Christians. This is the incoherence of contemporary “tolerance”: I demand that you stop believing what you believe, that you stop acting according to your beliefs, then I congratulate myself on how “tolerant” I am of those whose beliefs differ from mine. We will look at this incoherent demand for “tolerance” both in present-day academia (including religious studies) and in the European Enlightenment of the 18th century, the period in which demands for “tolerance” first emerged in Western society and when “ideology” first appeared as a word and as a socio-political programme. As a result of this presentation, you will know more about the history and dynamics of “tolerance” than do 95% of those who throw the word around — most of whom know nothing of this history and haven’t spent a single minute thinking critically about a concept that they pretend to understand.

1. ©2 0 1 4 T h i r d Co lumn Min i s t r i e s
The Forum
Engaging Culture for Christ
The session will begin shortly.
Open/close Chat
Mute / unmute
Share Video
See attendees
Share/view
presentation
You may need an microphone plugged in to
join the Lync call

2. ©2 0 1 4 T h i r d Co lumn Min i s t r i e s
The Forum
Engaging Culture for Christ

3. The Incoherent Notion of
©2 0 1 4 T h i r d Co lumn Min i s t r i e s
“Tolerant”
Indifference Applied to Revealed Religion
Guest Bruce Boeckel with Evidence for Christ

4. “TOLERANCE”
THE INCOHERENT NOTION OF “TOLERANCE” APPLIED TO REVEALED RELIGION
Rev Bruce Boeckel, PhD
Associate Pastor, New Beginnings Community Baptist Church
Founder of Evidence for Christ, A Ministry in Christian Apologetics

5. “TOLERANCE”: A TROUBLED TERM
• In a serious sense, “tolerance” means tolerating
something that meets my profound moral
disapproval – not something that is merely
irritating.
• The principle of tolerance implies that implies
that I am a better moral person (as is the other)
when I do not force my moral standard on
another by force.

6. “TOLERANCE”: A TROUBLED TERM
• The other is a better moral person being
“tolerated” because he will come to a better
moral insight according to his own lights – not
being compelled by force.
• A “tolerant” society is a better moral environment
because all persons are allowed to explore various
viewpoints, coming to their own moral
convictions after mature and independent
reflection – not being compelled by force.

7. CONTEMPORARY “TOLERANCE”
• Contemporary Occidental society has inherited
this term “tolerance” but seems to have forgotten
or abandoned the principles that give it a
coherent meaning.
• A quick example is the term “zero tolerance”
applied to things like bullying in elementary
schools. “We have a ‘zero tolerance’ policy on X .
. . ”

8. CONTEMPORARY “TOLERANCE”
• Another indicator is the absence of the term
“tolerance” used in any serious discussion in a
positive sense – i. e., our need to exercise
“tolerance” regarding attitude or situation X that
meets our profound moral disapproval.
• Instead, “tolerance” is usually used in a negative
sense as a rhetorical weapon against others:
“How dare you be so intolerant!”

9. CONTEMPORARY “TOLERANCE”
• In fact, we are left mostly with the
word “intolerant” used for
intellectual bullying in an effort to
coerce others to celebrate what
meets their profound moral
disapproval.

10. CONTEMPORARY “TOLERANCE”
• This is my thesis in a nutshell:
Those who hold to a revealed religion are
committed to uncompromising principles.
These uncompromising principles are IN
THEMSELVES offensive to the
contemporary secular mindset, and we see
various schemes underway to ostracize or
criminalize the holding of uncompromising
religious or moral principles.

11. BACK TO “TOLERANCE”: A TROUBLED TERM
• In a serious sense, “tolerance” means tolerating
something that meets my profound moral
disapproval – not something that is merely
irritating.
• How is tolerance in this true sense to operate in
contemporary postmodern circles? Tolerance
requires “profound moral disapproval”, which
implies a commitment to objective moral
standards.

12. BACK TO “TOLERANCE”: A TROUBLED TERM
• In a serious sense, “tolerance” means tolerating
something that meets my profound moral
disapproval – not something that is merely
irritating.
• How is tolerance in this true sense to operate in
contemporary postmodern circles? Tolerance
requires a conviction that a person’s moral
compass and moral behaviour (universalizing
factors) are far more important than skin colour,
nationality, socio-economic status, etc. (dividing
factors).

13. BACK TO “TOLERANCE”: A TROUBLED TERM
• In a serious sense, “tolerance” means tolerating
something that meets my profound moral
disapproval – not something that is merely
irritating.
• Without this earlier commitment to objective
moral standards and a universalizing vision of
human beings as accountable moral agents,
“tolerance” becomes an empty term, merely a
relic from earlier Occidental intellectual history
that can be used as a rhetorical club to bludgeon
one’s enemies.

14. RODNEY STARK ON MONOTHEISM AND REVEALED RELIGION
• Rodney Stark is a Christian sociologist who has
studied both contemporary religious behaviour (e.
g., conversion) and Christian history.
• Stark has recently published several books on the
phenomenon of “monotheism” – almost as if
monotheism is becoming a lost attitude, a
worldview that today’s cultural elite hardly ever
encounters and which they do not understand.

15. RODNEY STARK ON MONOTHEISM AND REVEALED RELIGION
• Stark contrasts monotheism (high ethical
monotheism) with ancient polytheism and with
the present-day “smorgasbord” and consumerist
attitude toward religious and moral beliefs.
• Stark argues that high ethical monotheism as seen
in (earlier) Judaism, Christianity, and Islam is a
unique phenomenon that refutes the approach to
“world religions” that one usually finds in elite
and academic circles.

16. RODNEY STARK ON MONOTHEISM AND REVEALED RELIGION
• Genuine monotheism (i. e., revealed religion)
reveals these crucial characteristics:
1. Conversion – A profound turning away
from one way of life and worldview to
another, with the understanding that one
must make an exclusive and
uncompromising choice.
• Conversion in this sense is impossible in a
polytheistic culture or in today’s “flaky” secular
society.

17. RODNEY STARK ON MONOTHEISM AND REVEALED RELIGION
2. Evangelizing – Telling another about my
God – the only God – and urging her to
consider this revelation as the ONLY
solution to her dilemma, as the only
solution to the dilemma of humanity as a
whole.
• There is proselytizing in contemporary secular
society, but it is not done in relation to a
transcendent revelation and does not look to a
transcendent source (God) the solution.

18. RODNEY STARK ON MONOTHEISM AND REVEALED RELIGION
3. Congregation – A community of the faithful
who are gathered around the “one true
God” and around an exclusive religious
revelation. For Christians, a community of
the redeemed, the “body of Christ”.
• Stark explains that ancient polytheism had no
congregations in this sense. A polytheistic ritual
was more like a festival or civic event. A Greek or
Roman temple was more like a dining club when a
group gathered there for a feast.

19. RODNEY STARK ON MONOTHEISM AND REVEALED RELIGION
• It is precisely these characteristic of monotheism
to which the contemporary cultural elite objects:
people who “convert” to an exclusive religion and
condemn their old ways, who form tight-knit
groups committed to one true God and one true
belief, who then go out “evangelizing” or
“colonizing” others to bring them into the fold.
• All of this is considered “intolerant”.
• So what would be a secularist’s “tolerant”
attitude toward revealed religion?

20. QUICK REVIEW
• Genuine tolerance is commitment to a principle
that I will “tolerate” what I find morally repugnant
because I reject the use of coercion or bullying in
matters of belief.
• The secularist mindset of the present-day cultural
elite finds monotheism and revealed religion to
be morally and ideological repugnant.
• The secularist is then faced with this choice: to
“tolerate” monotheism out of high-minded
principle or to try to eradicate what he considers
to be a cancer on civilized society.

21. QUICK REVIEW
• Typically, the cultural elite nowaday chooses the
second option: to try to eradicate what they
consider to be a cancer on civilized society.
• Ironically, these campaigns to eradicate often
used such terms as “zero-tolerance policy”.
• Also ironically, these campaigns are also often
advertized as “tolerance” because they are
campaigns to wipe out “intolerance” (something
that is morally repugnant).

22. QUICK REVIEW
• In other words, cultural elites make the easy and
self-serving choice (to wipe out their repugnant
enemies) while they celebrate their own
intellectual heroism in making the hard choice.
• Secularist claim that they have taken the moral
and intellectual high ground in their campaign
against intolerance.
• They condemn others as judgemental, self-righteous,
and sanctimonious. They do not see
that their own campaign is the epitome of self-righteousness.

23. “TOLERANCE” ON THE STREET
• How would one engage in a discussion/debate
with a militant secularist about this issue of
“tolerance”?
• Suppose that the issue was abortion. The
secularist would probably argue against restricting
abortion (a violation of free “choice”), against
protests at abortion clinics, against the use of
religious arguments (the sanctity of life) in
debates on abortion, etc.

24. “TOLERANCE” ON THE STREET
• The upshot of all of these arguments is to muzzle
the Christian opponent of abortion. If one grants
accedes to these arguments, one no longer has a
voice in the marketplace of ideas.
• So the first strategy is simply to try to make that
plain: “Your real goal is to muzzle me as a
Christian, so that I cannot make Christian
arguments against something that I find morally
repugnant, something that I oppose as a matter of
profound, well thought-out principle.”

25. “TOLERANCE” ON THE STREET
• The secularist will then respond that Christian
arguments against abortion cannot have force in
today’s society because such arguments are
“intolerant”. Such arguments undermine very
principles of an “enlightened”, modern, civilized
society.
• One can then point out that this definition of a
“civilized society” is one in which a Bible-believing
has not place – or, at best, he is a second-class
citizen, instructed to sit down and shut up.

26. “TOLERANCE” ON THE STREET
• The secularist has defined himself as the
“enlighted” one, and the Christian place is to be
submissive and let social policy be determined by
those who know better, who are fully “modern”.
The arrogance of this position should be obvious,
at least to bystander, if not to the militant
secularist himself.
• One could then ask the secularist why legalized
abortion is so important to him, why restricting
arguments against abortion is so important.

27. “TOLERANCE” ON THE STREET
• On the second question, the answer will be a
restatement of all the damage done to modern
society by “intolerant” views such as Christian
opposition to abortion. The secularist finds such
Christian arguments damaging and repugnant.
• Of course, this means that these views are exactly
what the secularist SHOULD “tolerate” as a matter
of principle, according to the classic and original
definition of tolerance.

28. “TOLERANCE” ON THE STREET
• Pressing on this point will reveal that the
secularist does not, in fact, belief in the
underlying principles of classic “tolerance”, that
society is better off without the use of coercion in
matters of principled belief.
• One could then work toward a restatement of the
secularist’s position – “In other words, you want
to make quick work of Christian arguments
against abortion because these are ‘dangerous’,
‘unenlightened’, ‘repugnant’, etc. IN YOUR VIEW?”

29. “TOLERANCE” ON THE STREET
• Continued . . . “Of course, as a Christian, I don’t
find my own arguments repugnant at all. They
are based on the objective truth, in my view. But
in your view these arguments are repugnant, and
you want to discredit them in one quick stroke?”
• The secularist is now in a difficult position, since
his closed-minded attitude towards views other
than his own is unveiled for open scrutiny.

30. “TOLERANCE” ON THE STREET
• Continued . . . “In other words, you want me to
stop making arguments against abortion based on
my deepest convictions? You want me to swallow
down my moral revulsion?”
• “That’s what I need to do to meet your definition
of ‘tolerance’?”
• “But what about you? What do you do? You get
to campaign for ‘pro-choice’ using all of the
central terms of your secularist ideology:
‘enlightenment’, ‘modern’ society, emancipation
from religious ‘dogma’, etc.?”

31. “TOLERANCE” ON THE STREET
• Continued . . . “Did I get that straight? Am I
missing something here?”
• “In other words, you want me to be ‘tolerant’ to
endure in silence what I find absolutely
repugnant, what I believe will ultimately destroy
human society – and that really is the case for the
following reasons . . . ”

32. “TOLERANCE” ON THE STREET
• “On the other hand, you get to campaign at the
top of your lungs for your pro-choice position,
even manoeuvring every way you can so that the
anti-abortion viewpoint does not get a public
hearing.”
• “Now how is that an even-handed position? How
is that a level playing field? Why is it then that
you call yourself ‘tolerant’ while you call me
‘intolerant’? Why do you characterize your
arguments as objective, while you characterize my
arguments

33. “TOLERANCE” ON THE STREET
• Continued . . . “Why do you characterize your
arguments as objective and disciplined, while you
characterize my arguments as subjective,
undisciplined, and self-indulgent?”
• “The classic choice for ‘tolerance’ in its original
sense is either to ‘tolerate’ (with great distaste)
what we find genuinely and objectively abhorrent
or to try to IMPOSE one’s agenda on those who
disagree. Which choice do you make?”

34. “TOLERANCE” ON THE STREET
• Continued . . . “Oh, I see. You want ME to make
the hard choice and to “tolerate” what I find
abhorrent, while you go on campaigning to
discredit the Christian arguments against abortion
so that they never get a fair public hearing.”
• “That is why YOU and “tolerant” and I am
“intolerant”. That is why you have the moral high
ground, while I am an self-indulgent sectarian,
concerned only to advance my own viewpoint.
Am I missing something here?”

35. FINAL REFLECTIONS
• Rodney Stark may be technically wrong in his
suggestion about the disappearance of a mono-theistic
worldview in today’s cultural elite.
• The militant secularist that I’ve just sketched is
hard-core “monotheist” in the sense that he is
committed to an exclusionary ideology and one
that demonizes opponents with all the fury of ex
cathedra denunciations of heresy.

36. FINAL REFLECTIONS
• The militant secularist is often a “monotheist” for
whom the socio-political state is god and for
whom political activists are the elect congrega-tion.
• Political religions are the empowered
“monotheisms” in Occidental society today. They
enjoy all the advantages of the state religions of
earlier times, precisely the abuses of power that
the original formulation of “tolerance” was meant
to address.

37. “TOLERANCE”
THE INCOHERENT NOTION OF
“TOLERANCE” APPLIED TO
REVEALED RELIVION
Rev Bruce Boeckel PhD
Associate Pastor,
New Beginnings Community Baptist Church
Fresno, CA
Founder, Evidence for Christ,
A Ministry in Christian Apologetics

38. Thank you for participating!
• Register for future sessions
• Suggest future topics
• Be a guest speaker
www.thirdcolumnministries.org/the-forum
©2 0 1 4 T h i r d Co lumn Min i s t r i e s
Next Month
Strategies for Integrating Apologetics Into Your
Local Church
Guest: Carey Waldie
Date and Time: TBD