The Limits of Tolerance (Taber-Hamilton)

by the Rev. Nigel Taber-Hamilton

On my refrigerator door I have a cartoon of two people dressed in simple 17th-century garb tied to stakes with wood piled at their feet. At the fringe of the wood pile is a crowd clearly dressed as Puritans carrying burning torches with one (the minister?) reaching forward to set the wood alight. And one victim says to the other: “I’m sure if we just try and engage them in dialogue one last time, we’ll be okay!”

One of the most significant failures of modern progressive Episcopalians is the belief that the application of reason to any given conflict will ultimately prove effective in convincing our opponents of the correctness of our cause.

This is proved false again and again, of course; people are often irrational. But our own innate – sometimes arrogant – belief in the reasonableness of humanity and its susceptibility to what we perceive as rational discourse seems to have the ability to overwhelm the mountains of evidence to the contrary.

This is clearly the case in the current struggle within the Anglican Communion. The majority in the Episcopal Church continues to maintain a tolerant attitude to those within our own province and in Africa who have adopted a stance toward our actions that has profound echoes of the scapegoating and exclusion that the first Puritans practiced.

It should be said that the perception of Episcopalian tolerance by these Puritan heirs is quite different than our own self-understanding. Part of their concern is, I think, that the very beliefs they abhor will be imposed on them, either by canonical action or the pressure of the majority. Calming fears is surely a part of toleration.

Yet those who stand against our vision are driven by a narrow imperial ideology that denies our right simply to exist and seeks to delegitimize our identity as Anglicans. The overall conservative message – certainly presented by the leadership cadre of this group – is “Think as we think, be ‘our sort of Christian,' or we will seek to exclude you from the Anglican community of Christians.”

Such rhetoric is not an empty threat. We continue to see well-planned and organized attempts to bring about the replacement of the Episcopal Church as the U.S. embodiment of Anglicanism by such groups as the American Anglican Council, the Anglican Communion Network, Forward in Faith North America, and, most recently, the “Convocation of Anglicans in North America” (Archbishop of Nigeria Peter Akinola’s extra-territorial “Nigerian” mission to the U.S.A.).

And such a strategy is being pursued elsewhere in the Anglican Communion, most notably in Canada, England, and Australia.

Until now we have not prepared well to face this assault. And so we have been blinded to this narrow totalitarian vision seeping into our nation’s and our faith’s – and even our Communion’s – DNA. It is a vision that threatens to destroy our open North American society and emerging Christian identity.

A refusal to see the threat as threat, disagreements in strategy and direction, and the general progressive malaise of much talk with no consequent organized action have also afflicted our part of the Episcopal Church. As a consequence, the neo-Puritan assaults are tolerated or even dismissed, as if they will have no effect on us or on the view of other Christians within our Communion about us.

The truth is beginning to dawn on us, however: toleration has its limits. Unlimited tolerance will lead to the end of tolerance, for the tolerant will be stamped out, leaving only the extremists. A tolerance that is unlimited in scope and boundary-less in expression represents a fundamental error of judgment on our part.

The canaries in the Anglican coal mine are our gay brothers and lesbian sisters and their supporters, attacked with increasing vehemence by the shrill voice of conservativism. Having spent the last 30 years berating and seeking to marginalize various ethnic minorities and women, conservative rhetoric condemning gays and lesbians has reached an Inquisitional pitch. If we are not alarmed by this trend, the liberating teachings of Christ will succumb to the religious fascism of our age.

If, therefore, we continue to tolerate those who are uninterested in conversation, mutual acceptance, and radical inclusion, then we place our own necks on Mme. Guillotine’s block and hand our opponents the executioner’s cord. These neo-Puritans are focusing intently on the destruction of tolerance’s foundational values. Our demise would result in the success of their narrow and puritanical agenda within the broader Church, and herald a similar victory over the open society of our North American culture.

We cannot allow this to happen. The foundation of any social contract is the preservation of the rights of individuals and communities, including the right to be free from the oppression of religion’s worst excesses – excesses which have contributed to some of the worst crimes in human history.

It is therefore our obligation within a free society and a faithful Church to preserve human rights based on our founding principle that all people are created equal.

It is also incumbent upon us as Christians to speak and act in defense of our expanding vision of Jesus’ inclusive, justice-based faith.

The time has come for us to claim the correct character of tolerance by establishing its limits in order to protect this very value from those who would take advantage of its practice. We can be tolerant of difference but we cannot be tolerant of the theological tyranny which threatens human diversity and dignity with doctrines of domination and conformity.

We must, therefore:

• Keep the faith. We must continue on the pathway of diversity and inclusion begun with the ordination of women and the Book of Common Prayer 1979 in partnership with all of our members.


• Be clear that we will abandon no one, and especially not those minorities who have, historically, been oppressed by the Church.


• Be firm that, while we welcome everyone on this journey, we will not allow bigotry or threat to destroy this emerging vision of Christian faith in light of a God who makes all things new.


• Be vigorous in preserving the institutional integrity of the Episcopal Church, including taking immediate legal action when any attempt is made to alienate the real property of our denomination, encouraging every bishop and Standing Committee to do the same.


• Resist all attempts by some in our Communion to impose an un-Anglican institutional vision upon us and our fellow Anglicans world-wide, including opposing any Anglican “Covenant” or curial instruments, as threats to the faith on which our institutions are based.


• End the prevaricating, and, instead, organize, network, communicate with each other, speak out, and act.

© Nigel Taber-Hamilton 2007 -- Permission granted to reprint with attribution

About the Author: The Rev. Nigel Taber-Hamilton lives on beautiful Whidbey Island, Washington, with his wife, Rachel, and their two collies and two cats. He is rector of St. Augustine's in the Woods Episcopal Church, Freeland, in the Episcopal Diocese of Olympia. He is a deputy to General Convention and has served on, and chaired, committees and commissions of several dioceses and Province V.