Tolerance isn’t enough – we need to come together to heal our divided society

In his election victory speech, Boris Johnson promised to “heal” Britain – but he’d won by splitting it apart.

Intolerance is a card rulers have always played. Uniting your people against an outsider – be they religious, ethnic or sexual – has proven one of the most effective ways to build popular support, especially when your own rule is shaky and you need to someone to blame for your dominion’s woes.

While good liberals might fear that intolerance is being played once more, they would be mistaken in thinking that tolerance is what we should be fighting for. For tolerance is not the opposite of intolerance, but a polite, restrained form of dislike. To tolerate someone is to say “I don’t like you, your views or your behaviour but, out of the goodness of my heart, I will put up with you.” Tolerance is based on an implicit disdain and sense of superiority and in this sense, is not the opposite of intolerance, but simply a less extreme version of it.

Jeremy Corbyn may have fatally misjudged the mood of the country, but on this thing he was absolutely right. “I don’t like the word tolerance,’’ he tweeted recently. “I don’t tolerate somebody. I respect somebody, I work with somebody, I love somebody.” Or as Goethe put it, “To tolerate is to insult.”

Intolerance – namely of Jews – has long been part of Christianity. According to the gospels of Matthew and John, Jews were Christ-killers (by contrast, the Quran pronounces that “They [the Jews] did not kill him [Jesus], nor did they crucify him”). It was the message preached from every pulpit in medieval Christendom, the image on every church wall. Martin Luther, one of the fathers of the Protestant Reformation, was also one of the fathers of Christian antisemitism; his pamphlet On the Jews and Their Lies was displayed at Nazi rallies. Antisemitism and Christianity have gone hand in hand for centuries, a fact the church has dragged its heels in acknowledging.

Only in 1965 did the Catholic Church declare that “what happened in His [Christ’s] passion cannot be charged against all the Jews”. Not until 1998 was the Vatican prepared to consider the question of “whether the Nazi persecution of the Jews was not made easier by the anti-Jewish prejudices embodied in some Christian minds and hearts.” It was but a few weeks ago that the Church of England published a report which conceded that “Too often in history the Church has been responsible for and colluded in antisemitism”. These concessions, while welcome, are incomplete: the fourth-century Early Church Father John Chrysostom has still yet to be stripped of his sainthood despite his diatribes forming the backbone of Christian antisemitism.

While the Muslim world has done its fair share of persecution, if you were a Jew, you would, at almost any time in history, have infinitely preferred to live in the Muslim world than in Christendom. Nonetheless, its tolerance of religious minorities is not what we should be seeking to emulate. Take the so-called “Pact of Umar”, the arrangement between the Arab tribesmen who founded the Islamic Empire and the Jews and Christians they conquered. The pact guaranteed Jews and Christians their lives and property and allowed them to practise their faith, but placed certain conditions on their freedom: they had to pay a tax, rise to their feet when a Muslim entered a room, never build a house higher than a Muslim’s, nor be employed as a superior to a Muslim.

Of course, this treatment was far preferable than being expelled (as Jews were from England in the 13th century, or Jews and Muslims were from Spain in the 15th century), stoned (as Jews were in medieval Europe during Easter week, urged on by their parish priest as revenge for Jews stoning Jesus) or burned to death (as thousands of Europe’s Jews, blamed for causing the Plague, were in the 14th century). It was not, however, ideal.

The west has tied itself in knots when it comes to religious minorities. On the one hand, we consider tolerance the hallmark of western civilisation. Yet on the other hand, we want to ensure that minorities live in accordance with western values. A good example of this conflict is the debate that’s been generated by the High Court’s recent decision to ban conservative religious parents in Birmingham from protesting against their children’s school’s teaching about LGBT+ lifestyles. Shouldn’t we allow parents to express their belief that homosexuality is morally wrong, however unpalatable that belief is? How tolerant are we willing to be of intolerance?

This, I would argue, is the wrong question. Instead, we should ask ourselves: should we really be tolerating mere tolerance? Despite the tenacity with which we liberals cling to it, tolerance is a recipe for an unstable and divided society. It says: “You take the low road, and I’ll take the high road”. As Corbyn says, “respect is a much better way”.

Instead of extending the begrudging hand of tolerance, I believe we should proclaim our belief in dignity, equality and freedom for all. In so doing, we will not only respect others, but unite with them in a joint vision of social progress. This is what we should be fighting for in this divided country. This should be our new year’s resolution.

Selina O’Grady is the author of ‘In the Name of God: A History of Christian & Muslim Intolerance’ and ‘And Man Created God: Kings, Cults and Conquests at the Time of Jesus’