Steve Jamar wrote on 08/04/2005 10:04:08 AM:
> On Aug 4, 2005, at 10:46 AM, Rick Duncan wrote:
>
> > The doctrine of salvation by grace through faith in Christ is a
> > doctrine of love and forgiveness. It is not an intolerant doctrine.
> > It is open to everyone.
>
> When people say that theirs is the only way and all others are
> damned to hell, that is not exactly my idea of tolerance.
> When a group says we are the only chosen ones, similar problem,
> though less in-your-face.
> When a group says this is the one true religion and we have the last
> word from god and others are infidels, similar problem again.
What you are suggesting here, though, is a very slippery slope that could easily have extraordinarily chilling effect on religious freedom. There are alreday those who would advocate stripping away constitutional guarantees of free speech to anything deemed "hate speech". When we here some of the racial epithets or similarly vile rants that are far too common in our culture, it's easy to say (as some have), "Sure, we should stoof that. I mean, who wouldn't oppose that kind of stuff?" How long, though, will it take before Rick's _expression_ above is called "hate speech" because it was deemed intolerant?
The other problem with this is that it misunderstands the motivation that is described intolerance. I'll use an evangelical Christian as an example, since I am one myself. If I express the belief that some people are damned to hell if they reject Christ, I'm no more choosing who will or won't be damned than the weatherman who predicts rainfall is choosing who will or won't get rain. I'm looking at the sources I believe to be authoritative and assessing what they say. I have people dear to me that, as I understand what God has said, are headed to hell. If the choosing was up to me, I'd choose to save them every time. But I'm not God and I don't get to set the criteria. All I can do is try to understand what that criteria is. At the risk of seeming redundant, how long before declaring this to be "intolerance" leads to a deterioration in religious freedom. A concete example would be Buonanno v. AT&T Broadband (313 F. Supp. 2d 1069, if I'm reading the decision on Lexis Nexis correctly). Fortunately, the judge ruled in defense of his supposedly guaranteed religious freedom. One can only wonder, though, if AT&T had reached the same result but done more to explore the issue first, would religious freedom still have prevailed? (And is anybody else surprise that this case received little or not press coverage?)
Brad Pardee
_______________________________________________ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw
Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
