My previous post seems to have generated some interest. A couple of matters are worth exploring further. In particular, I am interested in exploring the limits of toleration and what implications we can draw for equalities legislation. Specifically, I shall contend (a) that I do not seek or require toleration of everything, but, instead, a broad-church tolerant society akin to the Anglican Church; (b) the key problem before us is that some people have come to believe that the requirement for private citizens to treat everyone equally is a primary matter, when in fact it is not and cannot be in any liberal society.
First, in case there is any doubt on the point (though I have written about it before many times, e.g. here - whence it also should be quite clear that I do not contend that religious belief should grant one any particular exemptions in terms of legal treatment. Equality before the law is very important.) - in case there is any doubt, I do not claim that everything should be tolerated, whether genuine religious conscience matter or not. I have no doubt that many people have in the past had (and probably still have today) sincere and devout religious beliefs concerning the merits of widow-burning, female circumcision, child sacrifice, the unacceptability of taking an order from a woman even if she is a legal official, and on many other matters where I offer no toleration.
We cannot and should not tolerate everything. Instead, what we seek is a society in which we can agree over certain primary matters but then leave things indifferent to be debated, for sure, but not imposed. The choice of primary matters is not, in my view, a matter of doing it once and for all - we can continue to debate what should be the primary matters, later. This is especially true because the choice of primary matters is not straightforward and the appropriate scope of primary matters may change over time.
A classic example of this concept is broad church Anglicanism, which is indeed the ideological driver of liberalism across Britain history since its inception. Early Anglicanism excluded the Papist and the Puritan alike, but was broad nonetheless. Still today, broad church Anglicans strive for a highest common denominator ecumenism, wherein one can find sufficient common ground with Methodists, Baptists, certain Catholics, perhaps even sometimes house church types, that we can pray together and worship together, often being preached to together, perhaps even sharing some liturgy. (In contrast, many of us distance ourselves from what we regard as the lowest common denominator ecumenism of inter-faith services and the like.) Highest common denominator ecumenism is achieved by identifying core matters upon which we can agree - creation, the unique saving work of Christ, salvation by grace through faith, the instructive value of the Bible, and so on.
For us to get anywhere as a society, for us to have confidence in our rulers and be content to sit under their authority and flourish therefrom, we must, like the highest common denominator Anglican ecumenist, find core matters upon which the vast majority of us can agree, and then we must demand quiet compliance (albeit combined with occasional dissent and debate) from anyone else that wishes to dwell with us.
I thus don't ask that you tolerate everything. I ask that you tolerate me. And I put it to you that your finding it at all difficult to tolerate me may indicate that something has gone wrong. Now, one of the things that has clearly gone wrong here is that those in charge - the Establishment - have ceased to see my religion as useful. In time, that will give you a problem, and I suggest that if you don't wish to employ my religion any more, then you try something else, like a tamed Islam - but that's another story.
A more pertinent thing that has gone wrong here, I think, is that some of you have come to think that the requirement for private citizens to treat each other equally is a primary matter, a core doctrine of any decent society, whilst I deny that it is an option at all. Suppose, for example, you came across a woman whose child was starving to death, and she defended herself saying that she gave her child no more food than she gave to everyone else but unfortunately her meagre resources did not permit her to feed everyone adequately. Would you consider her a noble servant of the goddess Equality?
Or suppose you came across someone attending his son's funeral, his having died in a fire from which the father could have saved him but instead saved another person who happened to be equi-distant at the time the father made the call. Would you admire him for his equal treatment of all people?
Of course you would not. We do not expect people to treat their family and their friends equally to everyone else. Suppose that a Conservative you did not know asked you to help her canvass at the next General Election and a Labour candidate you did not know also approached you. Would you be torn which one to help? No. For as well as friends and family, we have allies and we treat our allies differently from others.
There is no general principle of equal treatment at all. We date pretty, clever, interesting girls if we can get them. We use competent accountants if we can afford them. We patronise bakers that make soft warm crusty bread if we can find them.
We find that we naturally prefer to work with certain people and find others more difficult. We find that some of those that are more fun to work with distract us whilst some of those that are more awkward drive us to succeed.
In none of these matters do we treat people equally at all - and it would be absurd to suggest that we should.
What, then, is the legitimate function of equalities legislation, if any? I believe it is twofold. First, there may be situations in which society has developed habits and practices that make it difficult to absorb certain new or newly socially included groups. A classic example might be new immigrants, especially if they were of a different race from the indigenous people. If it were proving difficult for newcomers to become established - to have their own businesses or to have businesses that engaged with the economic life of the indigenous people - it could potentially be useful to have, as a transitional measure to be removed once it had done its work, legislation requiring indigenous people, even in their private dealings, to treat members of the immigrant community as they would treat fellow indigenous citizens - to break society out of its stifling habits.
A second value to equalities legislation is more permanent. If there are situations in which, if one were not treated equally with others, one would become excluded (there were no additional options one might seek out) then we might legitimately insist that, in such a situation (but only then) equal treatment is required. An extreme concrete example might be if one lived in a town with only one food shop. If the proprietor refused to serve you you would starve or be driven to steal. So it would seem legitimate to me to require the proprietor to treat every customer equally for as long as that lack of choice persisted.
But there is no general virtue in requiring equality of treatment by private citizens of other private citizens.
In particular, Christians wish to deal with other Christians in establishing Christian organisations. They certainly wish to have Christian schools and Christian bookshops staffed by Christians. They would probably like to have other sorts of Christian business also, if the law would permit it - Christian law firms, Christian builders, and so on. Perhaps they would pray together or read their Bibles before they started work. Perhaps they would not work on Sundays. Perhaps they would admonish each other concerning swearing in the office.
Why should this be forbidden? Only because we have made a fetish of equality. Would it really threaten society if Christians that wanted to had their own businesses, or Muslims did so? Why would it matter if women had women-only businesses or Chelsea supporters wanted to work together?
The answer is that it wouldn't matter at all - it would probably be healthy. But it would repudiate the charter of the egalitarian, blaspheme against his goddess. So the idea is denounced as inspired by secret racism or a secret desire to hurt someone or other - Jews, homosexuals, scientologists, whoever happens to be the trendy group to protect this week.
Unlike equal treatment by the state (equal treatment before the law), the requirement for private citizens to treat each other equally is impossible, absurd, and intrinsically incompatible with any form of broad church liberalism that would tolerate Christianity. So I come back to this central point: if you insist upon equality, you are refusing to tolerate me. So which is going to give?
