Settled Issues and Neglected Questions: How Is Religion to Be Studied?

Intolerance and American Religious History

“…Tolerance, in their view, is ‘an improvement over hate’ (p. 45), but remains too small and inadequate a goal as exclusion and hatred continue to flourish in ‘tolerant’ societies. In addition, the term’s Western Enlightenment genealogy makes it difficult to employ in contexts outside the United States, where religious tolerance could be seen as a foreign and threatening construct (Thistlethwaite 1994). While the term tolerance may be insufficient, theologian Dorothee Soelle (1984, p. 63) wonders if religious intolerance is almost inescapable when she asks: ‘Is not intolerance inherent in the nature of any faith that claims it is the only path to salvation?’ Similarly, in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion , Susan Thistlethwaite (1994, p. 1,043) writes, ‘I believe that all religions have a resident intolerance to other religions because of the tendency to be totalizing.’ Given these challenging questions and difficult issues, it is not surprising that scholars of American religion have avoided this tricky definitional terrain and so it remains a topic that demands further study.…”

“…Tolerance, in their view, is 'an improvement over hate' (p. 45), but remains too small and inadequate a goal as exclusion and hatred continue to flourish in 'tolerant' societies. In addition, the term's Western Enlightenment genealogy makes it difficult to employ in contexts outside the United States, where religious tolerance could be seen as a foreign and threatening construct (Thistlethwaite 1994). While the term tolerance may be insufficient, theologian Dorothee Soelle (1984, p. 63) wonders if religious intolerance is almost inescapable when she asks: 'Is not intolerance inherent in the nature of any faith that claims it is the only path to salvation?'…”