Coercive tolerance

Mollie Hemingway, reviewing D.A. Carson's new book, The Intolerance of Tolerance:

...[T]olerance has undergone a change in meaning. What once meant recognizing other people's right to have different beliefs and practices now means accepting the differing views themselves. Vestiges of the old tolerance—conscience protections for medical professionals, religious liberty, and open discussions—are on the way out. ....

"What the new tolerance means," Carson writes, "is that the government must be intolerant of those who do not accept the new definition of tolerance." In this vein, tolerance becomes an absolute good with the power to erode moral and religious distinctives. Or, as the United Nations Declaration of Principles on Tolerance puts it, "Tolerance … involves the rejection of dogmatism and absolutism." Leave it to the U.N. to come up with a dogmatic and absolutist rejection of dogma and absolutism!

Take, for example, the growing phenomenon of campus policies requiring student organizations to allow practicing homosexuals to be leaders. Efforts to enforce inclusion result in excluding groups that, as a matter of conscience, can't submit to the secular doctrine. Complex moral issues can't be discussed when everything is mapped on the tolerant/intolerant axis. ....

Tolerance—Or Else: Coercive Attempts to Impose Secular Beliefs | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction