Mistaking “Respect” for “Tolerate”

I was listening to Sunday Sequence last week and there was a very interesting sequence on a recent speech given by the  ArchBishop of Canterbury entitled “When evangelism becomes bullying” There was a representative of the frothing ultra convservative unionist Caleb Foundation present who soundly denounced the ArchBish for being an “enemy of Christ” the other participants not wanting (it seemed) to be associated with this rather rabid denounciation pussy footed around the whole issue in a most unsatisfatory way or so it seemed to me.

This piece did make me think, when I was younger grim men in black, ensconced in a pulpit, 6 feet above contradiction told me I was a worthless sinner and undeserving of salvation. We sang (usualy with great gusto) hymns with lines like “What worthless worms are we!. While this is obviously not physical bullying I remember it leaving me feeling ..well.. worthless ..It was a bad taste in the mouth then and it still is now.  I didn’t make a fuss at the time because I was young,  I knew my place and my place was to show respect regardless of worthiness.

The sad thing is although most bullies know in their hearts they are bullies, the evangelical bully does not, in fact they usually hold fast to the principal  that their religion is owed more respect than any other. This is patently nonsense, for that to be a principal that holds any water at all religions would have to be owed the same respect and understanding.

Respect assumes defference, defference assmues worth and worth assumes an agreement.

Since religious doctrines conflict with one another,  it is hard to see how respect can be extended to all of them at once. Respect would have to be equally given not only to the conflicting Christian doctrines of Trinitarianism and Unitarianism, but also to the Jewish,  Muslim, Buddhist and Flying Spagetti Monsterism not to mention the atheist denial of these doctrines. To ascribe worth to them all at once opens up a world of contradiction that would be impossible to resolve.

What they should expect is Toleration and that is what I try to do. I tolerate, but that is seldom good enough for the God Bothers.

But why is tolerance often downplayed in favour of respect by the religious? In a free and open society tolerance is in fact much more important than respect and can go along quite happly with lack of respect, and even disrespect. This was strikingly expressed by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk,  founder of the secular Turkish Republic:

“I have no religion; and at times I wish all religions at the bottom of the sea …’.

Clearly this shows religion no respect , he continues:

‘Let [the people] worship as they will; every man can follow his own conscience, provided that it does not interfere with sane reason or bid him act against the liberty of his fellow man” [1].

Also it is apparant that having no respect for religion is quite consistent with having respect for a quite different sort of “object”, for example the rights or liberties of people to indulge in religion if they wish.

Salman Rushie expressed the strange “new” respect very well …

‘respect’ is one of those ideas no one is against … everybody wants some of that. … But what we used to mean by respect … a mixture of good-hearted consideration and serious attention … has little to do with the new ideological usage of the word. … Religious extremists, these days, demand respect for their attitudes with growing stridency. Very few people would object to the idea that people’s rights to religious belief must be respected …. But now we are asked to agree that to dissent from those beliefs – to hold that they are suspect, or antiquated or wrong, that in fact that they are arguable – is incompatible with the idea of respect. When criticism is placed off limits as ‘disrespectful’ and therefore offensive, something strange is happening to the concept of respect’.[2]

Something strange indeed!

Tolerance requires one “to put up with”  that to which one objects.  One has to put up with the objectionable if one is powerless to do otherwise.  Being powerless is not an intrinsic component of tolerance.  One has to be in a position to act against the objectionable either because one already has sufficient power to so act,  or if not so,  one can act politically to obtain such power in the long run. Tolerance requires is that one refrain from either exercising successfully one’s powers or acting to obtain them. Tolerance is in essence a matter of not interfering with or  letting something be, when one could interfere.

Evangelicals and any person that supports any form of prostylisation is not deffering to my atheism and by trying to convert me they are not  tolerating it either.  I have a feeling my disrespect will continue to be a pain in their collective arses and of that I am glad.  Hopefully some day we can all learn the differnce between tolerate and respect. We can then give respect where it is due and not where it is blindly expected.

[1]  Andrew Mango, Atatürk, (Woodstock NY, Overlook Press, 2002): 463.

[2] Salman Rushdie, Step Across this Line (London, Vintage, 2003.): 145-6.