Talk:Religious toleration

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[edit] Religious_pluralism

The article on Religious_pluralism, which is closely related to this one, is currently undergoing restructuration and on the list for Wikipedia:Article Improvement Drive. I would propose some collaboration between the teams working on the two articles, and perhaps we'll have to shift material from one article to the other.--Robin.rueth 07:29, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Name of the Article, Expansion tag

Religious tolerance redirects to Freedom of religion. But religious tolerance includes not only state tolerance, but also tolerance among sects. If "religious toleration" is a synonym (or Britishism?) for "religious tolerance", that should be added to this article. Otherwise, Religious tolerance should become an article on the subject. -- Beland 03:06, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I have redirected "religious tolerance" to this article because it is a variation on the same meaning. Religious toleration seems to be more than a Britishism because it has historical significance as well as application to the history of the British legal system with regards to religion. Thanks for pointing out this orphan, I did not know that it existed. As for tolerance among sects/religions, well, that is a tall order since many religions are exclusive by their very nature. In order to survive in a democratic society a face has of late been created to cover over these differences from outside of each sect/religion, while their doctrines often remain unchanged. I suppose if the world's religions could all get together and agree upon a common God and shrug off all theology the world would be a far better place and of course I would be dreaming. It is a pleasant dream though. MPLX/MH 06:42, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Why the expansion tag? I visited the referenced page on the tag and it is blank. It does not make sense. MPLX/MH 06:49, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)
The expansion tag simply refers to the request that follows it, to add information about religious tolerance among sects. I certainly agree it's a big subject. By "Britishism", I mean that I think "religious toleration" is how Brits say the same thing we Americans mean when we say "religious tolerance", and vice versa. -- Beland 03:03, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Actually, "religious tolerance" is the more commonly used phrase nowadays in the UK. Tolerance and toleration have two distinct meaning, with tolerance implying "accept" and toleration implying "put up with" Daduzi 05:00, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Accuracy dispute

After thinking about this some more, I've convinced myself that the distinction being made in the introductions of the two articles between "freedom of religion" and "religious tolerance" or "religious toleration" do not adequately represent how these terms are used in practice.

For example, England has a state religion, but it's perfectly fine to say there is a high degree of "freedom of religion" there. A state religion is an endorsement of a particular ideology. An endorsement law alone doesn't restrict behavior - that is to say, it doesn't restrict freedom. Other laws or non-legal forces might do that, though.

Likewise, it's perfectly fine to say the U.S. government is tolerant of a variety of religious beliefs and activities, even though it is prohibited from establishing an official church.

If you look at the two articles, they are very similar, largely because I think they are talk about two different terms which essentially describe the same thing. I think all of the material having to do with government restrictions (or lack thereof) on religious belief and practice should be consolidated to freedom of religion and freedom of worship. This article should focus on the concept for groups and individuals.

The section on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights also makes certain claims which I find do not ring true. The United States Constitution was written in the late 1700s, and is one of the most important ideological, political, and practical endorsements of the idea of freedom of religion in the fullest sense - there would be no official state religion. The Universal Declaration is also a powerful political statement, but it did not somehow change the goals of the nations or peoples of the world. Nor did it create "the" definition of "freedom of religion". I don't think it even endorses disestablishment. It just says that people need to be free to think and believe and worship as they please, and in plenty of states with official churches, they are. The treatment of this in freedom of religion is somewhat more accurate, but still jumbled and fragmentary.

I think a more accurate article would simply trace government policies toward religious belief and activities through time and around the world. The country profiles on freedom of religion are starting to do that, though of course an overview is necessary. -- Beland 03:58, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

  • I agree with what you say. Much of this article should be (and most of it already is) in freedom of religion. I'm going to try and eliminate the duplicated info from this article. --JW1805 03:04, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

Legal definitions - Religious toleration is a legal expression and it means what it says: a putting up with, a toleration of another religious belief due to the fact that a primary religious belief has already been established by law. Freedom of religion means an absence of an established religion so that the state has no preference by law. Clearly England has by law a state established religion and so does Saudi Arabia. It is only a matter of degree to the extent that other religions are tolerated in those countries. On the other hand by law, the USA has no established religion. Freedom of worship is similar to Religious toleration in that freedom of religion does not require action but freedom of worship does. To the legal extent that a person can express their religion by freedom of worship is the degree to which freedom of worship exists in any given country. The three phrases all have legal interpretations and they all have very distinct meanings and applications under law. From a lay perspective the act of muddling them all up only creates confusion and problems for the persons who do not know the differences. MPLX/MH 17:19, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Freedom of religion does not mean the absence of an established religion, it means what its name implies: the freedom of individuals to choose and/or practice any religion they wish. The UN Declaration of Human rights, for instance, is quite clear on the matter: aricle 18 states that "Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance." The existence or otherwise of a state religion is not mentioned. We're confusing religious freedom with secularism here.
In practice the distinction between religious freedom and religious tolerance in a legal sense is that religious freedom is a right the government protects by not taking action to restrict the religous choice or actions of individuals, whilst religious tolerance is something that the government has to actively legislate for, for instance through anti-hate speech laws. The two terms are, however, very closely connected in that for religious freedom to be ensured religious tolerance should be widespread. In the minds of the ordinary person the two terms are virtually interchangable.
With that in mind I'd recommend either merging both this article and religious intolerance into religious freedom, or incorporating this article into religious freedom and the religious intolerance article into religious persecution, since "freedom" and "persecution" are the more common buzz-words used in discussions on such matters.
Daduzi 04:53, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Vatican II"

"Vatican II", a Council held 1962-1965 under John XXIII (1958-1962) and Paul VI altered Church teaching to enshrine Religious liberty. This has been rejected as apostasy by Traditionalist Catholics and as schism by the party of Marcel Lefebvre (Society of Pope St. Pius X).

The changed teaching has had influence on the larger faction of the Church that accepts Vatican II, and should be reflected in this article.

I believe that the so-called Constantinian shift too is relevant and should be linked to.

WikiSceptic 20:03, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Proposed Merge

This article largely covers the same ground as Freedom of religion, and I am therefore suggesting that it be merged into that article, with a redirect from this title. Historically, "Religious toleration" only has, so far as I am aware, distinct connotations in English history, where it is used to mean connote freedom of worship for different religious groups while the establiched Church was retained. Such a matter can be discussed within the Freedom of religion article. Gabrielthursday 22:29, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] religious tolerance vs religious toleration

I think the article should be moved to "religious tolerance," a term that is a lot more common than "religious toleration." A quick Google search reveals that this is indeed about 4 times more common. -71.107.7.249 22:39, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Religious view of religious tolerance

I think it would be interesting, but I really can't put that into to the article because that would require me to have every single religious book in the world, as a Christian I only have one the Bible, but it would take a long time to find verses to find some that support or reject religious tolerance. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 70.141.202.96 (talk) 02:45, 12 May 2007 (UTC).

A couple of places to start:
  1. Religious tolerance in the Bible
  2. Religious intolerance in the Bible -- Boracay Bill 03:52, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Criticism

This article is about the historical expansion (or contraction) of state toleration for minority religions. The Criticism section is about the atheists who don't "tolerate" religion itself (even though Dawkins, for example, actually does tolerate religious views in others), and simply does not belong here.Silas Maxfield (talk) 00:58, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

The lead sentence in the article says: "Religious toleration is the condition of accepting or permitting others' religious beliefs and practices which disagree with one's own.". I disagree that the article's scope is limited to to (as you put it) "state toleration for minority religions". The article doesn't presently contain much information regarding toleration by individual religions, religious groups, religious persons, or nonreligious persons of philosophies, organizations, groups, or individual persons holding differing views but such information might be within the legitimate scope of an article titled "Religious toleration". "Criticism", though, strikes me as a bad section heading for the information presently contained in that section. -- Boracay Bill (talk) 04:18, 3 January 2008 (UTC)