Why do people get intolerant about inclusion?

And what's the tried-and-true remedy for our political polarisation?

Have you ever wondered why some who speak out on behalf of groups who’ve suffered discrimination go beyond being indignant and become intolerant themselves? Why do some people who say they respect diversity openly hate, and even try to suppress, opinions that differ from theirs?

It’s a legacy, I’ll argue, of a long history of monotheistic religions. First let me say, though, that the Christians, Jews and Muslims whom I know are decent and tolerant. This is not about them. And the tendency of some people today to try to suppress and de-platform others isn’t necessarily done in the name of religion. But there’s a legacy of monotheistic religions behind it.

Some of the Jews who followed Jesus, notably Paul, had the controversial idea of including gentiles into their cult of a messiah (or anointed king) who, following his execution, had miraculously risen, they said, and would return. The more souls whom they could prepare for the Coming, the better. People called them Christians.

Having one God, Christians refused to honour local deities or bow down to the emperor, for fear of exclusion from their congregations and (worse) eternal damnation. This “defection” from imperial and civic norms by Christians was seen as a threat to local authority and security, and so they were often punished (or “martyred”) by Roman governors. Ironically, though, Christianity grew from a suppressed minority sect to become the official religion of emperors. That shift gained momentum gradually in the fourth century, most famously with the conversion of the emperor Constantine in 312 CE.

One problem for Christians, however, was that Jesus (as recorded posthumously in the Greek language) hadn’t fully explained to his disciples what kind of being he was, especially regarding the relationship between human and divine. So Constantine sponsored a conference of bishops at Nicaea (now İznik, Turkey) in 325 CE to sort the matter out. Hence the Nicene creed.

In the minority at that conference was a priest called Arius. He argued that Jesus wasn’t co-eternal with the Father, but had been created in historical time. Arius wouldn’t give in, so he was banished and sent north, while “Arianism” was rejected. But suppression didn’t make it go away.

A century later, the western Roman empire, including North Africa, was overrun by Goths and Vandals. In another great irony, these new rulers of the post-Roman west were mostly Arian Christians. (NB: this has nothing to do with the idea of an Aryan race which is a separate matter altogether.) In Italy, Catholic churches had to tolerate Arian churches for quite some time. They had no choice. Intuitively, I get why the nomadic “Germanic” peoples would have preferred Arius’s theory, as it was closer to their traditional beliefs.

In the eastern empire, the problems were different. Churches in Egypt and Syria wouldn’t accept the Nicene doctrine about Christ having two “natures” in one person. They upheld the miaphysite view that Jesus was fully human and fully divine in one “nature”. Yes, the difference really mattered!

In the sixth century, the empress Theodora was a miaphysite, but her husband Justinian, the great law reformer, was trying to get rid the doctrine. He banned pagans from teaching philosophy, but he didn’t succeed in banning miaphysitism – which is still preached in the Middle East by Coptics and others.

The religion that had once been suppressed had quietly conquered the empire from within, but then, in their turn, the Christian rulers and patriarchs became the suppressors. They couldn’t tolerate diverse versions of their own religion.

The next big irony came in the seventh century when Arabs invaded the Middle East and brought Islam with them. Their military successes were partly thanks to the miaphysite Christians who found that the Muslims were more tolerant of their faith than the Orthodox Church in Constantinople. There was a small matter of paying a tax, but Muslim caliphs were accepted by many Christians and Jews, and vice versa, and no one was forced to convert. The Prophet Muhammad had insisted on toleration for all the peoples of the Book.

Publicly suppressing ideas doesn’t remove them from people’s minds.

Justinian’s programme to make everyone accept the same beliefs was never successful. That lesson should have been learned way back then.

The popes in Rome and the patriarchs in Constantinople, however, had a centuries-long struggle for supremacy, and they irrevocably split into Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox in the eleventh century.

In the sixteenth century, the Catholic west was rocked by the doctrines of Martin Luther, and hence Protestantism and its diverse sects emerged. Now, one might expect that these offshoots of the faith that were challenging church authority would be the first ones to plead for toleration. And some Protestants very eloquently did.

I wouldn’t sully this page, however, with the things that Luther said about Jews. Meanwhile, the Swiss reformist Huldrych Zwingli persecuted Anabaptists and died in 1531 on the battlefield fighting Catholics.

Thousands of Huguenots (French protestants) were killed in the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of 1572.

(Painting by François Dubois [1529–84], a Huguenot who fled from France to Geneva.)

In 1648, after an estimated eight million deaths, the Thirty Years War concluded with the Peace of Westphalia. The treaties accepted that princes could be either Catholic, Lutheran or Calvinist. If that wasn’t good enough for some of their subjects, then emigration was an option. Many Puritans and Anabaptists went to North America in order to be “free”. Jews would have to take their chances.

One of the great statements on religious freedom is John Locke’s “Letter Concerning Toleration”. Its message was hardly original, but, due to his later influence on the Americans, he gets credit for the idea that, as faith is a private conscientious choice, the state has no business with our after-life. Locke’s toleration was for Protestants only, however. Catholics, Jews and Muslims weren’t included, and he advised people not to trust atheists. Nonetheless, in 1689 that was progress. The English had just deposed a Catholic monarch, James II, and replaced him with a Protestant Dutchman, William of Orange. English discrimination continues as the British monarch must by law be Anglican and can’t be Catholic. New Zealand law falls into line.

By “toleration” we now generally mean that we’ll uphold the right to have rights (basic citizenship) for those with whom we strongly disagree – so long as toleration is mutual. We won’t tie you to a pole and light a fire under you for expressing opinions we find repugnant, nor even make you pay a fine.

It’s not unusual for people to say that others vote for opposing parties only because they’re ignorant and/or misled by the media. They may be “merely” tolerated as such, and they have a right to vote, but they’re not respected. For genuine respect we’d need to recognise that people with opposing views are intelligent and rational, even though we disagree and would persuade them to change their minds if we could. Respect for those with differing opinions means that we debate openly, rather than try to suppress or silence opinions we don’t like, or dismiss opponents as idiots or worse. We seek consensus and compromise.

There’s a historical process in which minorities and majorities switch places, however, and one discriminates against the other, sometimes with disrespect, intolerance and even violence. Mutual toleration, which may sound like the obvious peaceful choice, is actually a hard-won thing.

The modern secular state, which would ideally be impartial, is a compromise that emerges from religious wars. It’s not a historical norm or “default setting”. “Secular” is a term borrowed from churchmen referring to the world outside of their cloisters. And secularism institutionalised toleration by making the many churches fit into the state, rather than have one church at the foundation of the state.

And yet, you can’t get more intolerant than some atheists. Communism was meant to emancipate labourers, but its practical application in the Soviet Union was oppressive and murderous – the “labour camp” being a cruel example. Although they were officially atheistic, it’s amazing how often the Soviet elite used religious terminology, such as prophecy, salvation, faith, confession and, of course, heresy.

Similarly, there’s a quasi-religious zeal in some of those who support the interests of marginalised minorities today. We see a return of something like the intolerance that erupted in the Reformation. To defend a minority, people will sometimes go to extremes, beyond what’s humanely called for, not just to silence opposition, but also to control “allies” who might be guilty of weakness.

People who’ve taken a strong stand expect others to join them by confessing their faith on X, courtesy of Elon, that hero of free speech. Silence is sometimes typified as violence. Heretics will be ostracised, and one way to avoid that fate is to be an enthusiastic online follower of the orthodoxy.

Having read Nelson Mandela’s autobiography, my mind went back to 1981 when he was still in prison on Robben Island. New Zealand was at its most polarised in living memory, due to the visit of a whites-only rugby team, representing the racist apartheid regime. There are things to which we have to say “no”, as they violate basic human rights. Mandela’s bravery in speaking back to his oppressors was truly remarkable. State violence denied him freedom, but he spoke honestly to the judge who sentenced him to life in prison. What was he fighting for? To use his word: freedom.

Toleration has its limits, but there’s no “moral science” about where to draw the line. It’s a choice we make. And the line on that occasion, in 1981, split New Zealand in half. After all, some of us were trying to stop lawful sporting events, while others thought they should go ahead unimpeded. If anyone is still in favour of that Springbok Tour, you’re free to say so. Just be ready for the counter-arguments.

We learn from history that toleration works better, but it can only stretch so far. You can’t be expected to tolerate beliefs and practices that threaten a democratic system itself. An intolerant refusal sometimes has to break through. Mandela, for example, actively refused racism and apartheid because he and others simply had to. It’s better though if we can openly test the limits of our toleration in free dialogue, before anyone gets hurt, and without locking anyone up or ruining careers. Dialogue may even lead to unexpected moments of mutual understanding and respect.

Why, though, did people kill in the name of Jesus Christ? Some were paid to, or were afraid to disobey orders. Many did so because they were more afraid of damnation than death. Short-term pain on the battlefield was not as bad as eternal pain. The Pope promised the Crusaders remission of their sins, and hence permitted them to kill, and to risk being killed.

What started as a benevolent movement to uplift the oppressed (“blessed are the meek”) could paradoxically turn zealous and malevolent when others held alternative doctrines. “If others don’t believe fully in what we believe, then that’s an existential threat to us. They must recant or be eliminated.”

A contemporary form of zealotry has emerged recently on the left, mirrored by paranoid belief-systems such as QAnon and 2020-election denial on the right. Gender has become a choice topic for those who love to issue uncompromising opinions. It’d be a cop-out to blame this all on Russian and/or Chinese info-ops – although they do happen. Christendom, east and west, has its own history to help us understand how this occurs.

A flaw in monotheism is its self-belief as universal. “Everyone’s included” soon turned into “everyone better be included, or else”. If you don’t belong because you don’t believe, or you simply don’t believe in the right fashion, then there must be something wrong with you.

Christ called on the people to care for the downtrodden. But, out of a subsequent universalist belief in eternal redemption, zealotry emerged, and it re-emerges, sometimes leading to violence.

In the interests of peace, though, people who get tired of fighting will choose mutual toleration. The principle of toleration and the freedoms of speech and of faith are imperfect, sometimes mealy-mouthed, and they need to adapt to new circumstances, such as social media. But they evolved out of bitter religious conflicts.

We see new kinds of zealotry, however, motivated by an initially genuine concern for the vulnerable, arising from what’s called “identity politics” – counter-balanced politically by white Christian and national identities. When this goes too far, using a megaphone or an online mob to silence or humiliate a critic or heretic solves nothing. The ideas that we feel most threatened by won’t go away.

Presently, some say the Left tends to harbour more intolerance, although a lot of vile abuse comes from the Right and recent reports of riots in England show how right-wing bigotry is as ghastly as ever.

Most people would say they want all humans to be treated without discrimination and on equal terms – which arguably was originally a Christian ideal, to give some credit, as Roman pagans saw “dignity” as a quality reserved for the few. But people disagree on how to remedy injustice. The Left tends to emphasise past injustices and discrimination and a need for structural solutions; the Right wants to respect individual ability, effort and contribution. The Left aims for equality of outcomes; the Right is satisfied with equality of opportunity.

It’s been argued that the stronger one’s commitment to equality of outcomes (equity, redistribution, affirmative action) the harder it gets to respect those who don’t share one’s values. The logic goes like this: “if you question my version of justice, then you must be an advocate for injustice, and that rules you out of the game”. Equality of opportunity is easier to apply to others, including opponents.

These differing views are so strongly moralised and politicised, that many people can’t even begin to respect the other side’s view or concede anything to it. Hatred and abuse overtake debate and negotiation.

Can we just skip the war of ideas and move straight to the peace settlement? That’s probably asking too much. We learn from history that people learn nothing from history.

Now, I’m liberal, but to a degree
I want ev’rybody to be free
But if you think that I’ll let Barry Goldwater
Move in next door and marry my daughter
You must think I’m crazy!
I wouldn’t let him do it for all the farms in Cuba.

Bob Dylan, “I Shall Be Free No. 10”, 1964.

Photograph by Peter Black.

Dylan expressed the paradox of liberal inclusion 60 years ago.