“…no judgments can be drawn according to the rules of the “new tolerance.” That’s because the “new tolerance” requires the abandonment of convictions. It demands indifference to evil.”  (Reagan, 2000, pp. 163).

What is the “New Tolerance”?

“Tolerance” is a pivotal concept in our society. In its original usage, it meant something like “putting up with ideas or practices that you disagree with”, or “valuing other people without necessarily accepting their beliefs or behavior”. Today, the meaning of “tolerance” has subtly changed. Now, it means something more like: “accepting logically incompatible belief systems as being equally true, without analysis”.

In its original usage, “tolerance” was a valuable concept, necessary for preserving our society and intellectual freedoms. In its current usage it is simply illogical. Tragically, the second usage, the New Tolerance, is becoming central in our society. Many people are being subtly pressured to accept this idea, without a real understanding of what it means or how it is impacting society. The New Tolerance, acting under the guise of “freedom”, is actually threatening our freedoms of speech and religion.

Other names for the New Tolerance include “relativism” and “postmodernism”. These three similar concepts are often used to imply that there is no such thing as objective religious or moral truth.

 Where Did These Ideas Come From?

The Bible says that we can know truth: John 8:32: “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." The New Tolerance says that there is no absolute truth, or that we can’t know what it is. The New Tolerance/relativism/postmodernism are in direct opposition to the Bible. Related trends and concepts include:

Ecumenism: the promotion of worldwide unity among religions; New Age: a popular mixture of many religious, philosophical, and occultic ideas; Spirituality (as opposed to “religion”): refers to religion minus standard or set beliefs; Deconstructionism: unwillingness to accept a standard or obvious meaning in a text (i.e., the Bible).

Unfortunately, the New Tolerance is not usually presented as one possible view of the world (and a very illogical one, at that); it is usually misrepresented as the only educated, fair-minded, and intelligent view.

Problems with the “New Tolerance”

If we insist that logically inconsistent religious/spiritual/moral beliefs are equally true, we immediately imply two things: 1) There is no way for us to logically prove which one is really true, and 2) We must accept that they are all opinion. To see how this works, try being tolerant (the New Tolerance) about how to add, or balance your checkbook, or build an airplane that can fly. Would you be willing to fly in an airplane designed by someone with no background in engineering, to show tolerance for his aeronautical diversity? Obviously, the New Tolerance can only be logically applied to things that are a matter of opinion. If you accept the New Tolerance, you automatically accept that the Bible is not objectively true. Not only that, if you accept the New Tolerance, you automatically accept the idea that there are no religious or moral beliefs that are objectively true.

Well, have the purveyors of the New Tolerance reached this conclusion through careful study and analysis of the facts? No. The New Tolerance rejects rational logic, analysis, and a careful study of the facts in these areas and insists that you do too.

How to Be Indoctrinated into the New Tolerance, Without Ever Knowing What it Really Is

A multicultural training manual that is currently being used to train public school employees in school districts across America is titled “Cultural Proficiency: A Manual for School Leaders”. This book’s stated goal is to guide its users on a continuum, with the final point, “cultural proficiency”, being defined as:  “See the differences and respond positively and affirmingly.” (p.6).

This goal would be an admirable one, except that the authors redefined the word “culture”, changing its meaning from the usual one (race and ethnicity), to include any difference in human behavior:

 “In this book, we define culture as everything you believe and everything you do that enables you to identify with people who are like you and that distinguishes you from people who differ from you. Culture is about groupness. A culture is a group of people identified by their shared history, values, and patterns of behavior.” (p.41)

By changing the meaning of the word “culture” to include actions and beliefs, the stated goal of this book is for its users to “respond positively and affirmingly” to all sets of beliefs and patterns of behavior.

Take a moment to think very carefully about that. Do you really want to affirm all sets of beliefs and patterns of behavior? Do you affirm the behaviors of child molesters? How about mass murders? Can you respond positively to homicide bombers who kill innocent bystanders? What about rapists? People who torture animals for fun? …It looks like we could come up with a pretty long list of “cultures” (by their definition) that we can’t “respond positively and affirmingly” to. Tiny oversight on the part of the authors.

Now, for a moment, picture a large room full of public employees (some of whom might be teaching your children), who are being taught this as required training for their jobs. Does it ever occur to them that the book’s convoluted statements are basically saying that there are no objective moral truths, no such thing as real right and wrong? As you picture this room full of public school teachers soaking up this information, imagine what effect it could have if passed on to the next generation of public school children.

Let’s back up for just a moment, because on page 88, the authors do seem to be disagreeing with some beliefs:

“The next point on the continuum [cultural incapacity] describes organizational practices or individual behaviors that show extreme bias, belief in the superiority of a dominant group, or belief in the inferiority of subordinate groups. One example of cultural incapacity is believing that it is inherently better to be heterosexual than homosexual. Organizations or individuals exemplifying cultural incapacity are often characterized by ignorance as well as either a dislike or unrealistic fear of people who differ from the dominant group.”

The authors didn’t specifically mention conservative Christians or the Bible in the above quote, but as they are self-professed experts in culture, we can pretty confidently assume that the authors are aware of which groups are involved in this debate.

In the above quote, the authors demonstrate just how impossible it is to “embrace and esteem”  incompatible belief systems. Through very misleading and biased language, the authors make it clear that they embrace and esteem homosexuality; but not conservative Christianity and the Bible. It is well known that the Bible advocates against homosexual conduct, and in the above quote the authors refer to this belief as “ignorant”, as well as unloving and/or fearful. The language used by the authors would appear to be an example of “individual behaviors that show extreme bias”, but in this case their bias was against the Bible. So, by their own definition, the authors exhibited “cultural incapacity” in their views about conservative Christianity and the Bible. Did the authors’ views stem from “ignorance as well as either a dislike or unrealistic fear” of the Bible? Maybe. In any case, it appears that they don’t embrace or “respond positively and affirmingly” to the beliefs of conservative Christians.

The authors did an excellent job for us of demonstrating that it is impossible to “embrace” logically incompatible belief systems. If we embrace one side of an issue we cannot also embrace its logical opposite.

This book does a great job of highlighting some of the problems with the “multicultural” movement:

• It often subtly portrays itself as a “moral authority” with the right to dictate to you what your religious and moral beliefs should be (or shouldn’t be, because the one thing it insists on is that you can’t believe that anything is really true, except that there is no truth).

• In its denial of moral truth, its greatest enemies appear to be anyone who thinks that something is really true.

• It appears to demonize disagreement itself - somehow equating disagreement with hatred (i.e. “hate speech”) as if the freedom to think and reason for yourself -enough to disagree with someone else- somehow makes you a violent, dangerous, or hateful person.

The authors of “Cultural Proficiency” failed to make some very important distinctions:

Even though we are not likely to embrace the actions or beliefs of all individuals we meet and work with ( in some cases because we consider those actions or beliefs to be harmful to the individuals themselves or to society), it is nevertheless possible to embrace and esteem the individuals themselves and value every person by respecting each person’s individual and human rights.

In other words, contrary to what the New Tolerance is pressuring you to believe, valuing all individuals is not the same thing as agreeing with their actions or beliefs, and disagreement is not the same thing as hate.

How Indoctrination into the New Tolerance is Destroying our Freedoms

As a society, the New Tolerance is teaching us that disagreement in the areas of religion and morals is wrong. Contrast this with how it used to be. We prized and encouraged freedom of thought and freedom of speech (within reasonable limits), but created necessary legal boundaries in the area of action. It used to be acceptable to disagree with people as long as you didn’t physically harm them or intrude upon their rights and freedoms in any way.  Now, by making it a “right” to never have to hear anything that you could disagree with, we are destroying freedom of speech. And, let’s be honest, if we destroy freedom of speech, we automatically destroy freedom of religion. To have true freedom of religion, it is necessary to have a free flow of information and opportunities for debate in order for people to be aware of and truly understand what is out there.