What tolerance entails

Last updated on: January 4, 2013 at 5:45 am by Gene Veith

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What tolerance entails 2013-01-04T05:45:14-05:00 Gene Veith

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Mollie Hemingway has a piece in the Wall Street Journal about the difficulty of giving away a $20 million piece of property due to a New England town’s hatred of evangelicals:

Unable to maintain its 217-acre campus and 43 buildings, the board of Northfield Mount Hermon [a prep school founded by evangelist Dwight L. Moody but since turned secular] tried to sell the campus for $20 million in 2005. With no takers and prohibitive annual upkeep costs, the school sold the property to the Green family of Oklahoma City, owners of the Hobby Lobby craft stores, for $100,000.

The Greens planned to give the property to the C.S. Lewis Foundation to launch a college with a Great Books curriculum. But the foundation’s fundraising fell short by the end of 2011 and the Greens began soliciting new proposals. The family does insist that whoever ultimately takes over the school promote Christianity in “the tradition of Moody.” That has people in Northfield worried about how well the new neighbors will fit in culturally.

More than 100 interested Christian groups toured the campus this year. When word got out that the contenders included Liberty University, founded by the fundamentalist Rev. Jerry Falwell, some school alumni launched a petition drive arguing that Liberty was a “homophobic and intellectually narrow institution” that would be “fundamentally incompatible” with the prep school’s principles. Some residents of Northfield, home to 128 alumni and 60 employees of the school, held meetings to fight the transfer of the property to Liberty.

After Liberty was ruled out by the Green family, residents continued to worry. In April, at a meeting of the Northfield Campus Collaborative—established by the Northfield Board of Selectmen to improve communication between interested parties—resident Bruce Kahn “brought up the ‘elephant in the room’ which was the concern that an extremist Christian campus might polarize and upset the peace and tranquility of the town,” according to meeting minutes. Resident Ted Thornton said it is a paradox that “we consider ourselves tolerant but we won’t tolerate intolerance.” . . .

By June, Mr. Pattengale narrowed down the finalists to Grand Canyon University and the domestic missions agency of the Southern Baptist Convention. Residents expressed concern about both Southern Baptist doctrines and the impact of the 5,000 students that Grand Canyon proposed to bring to Northfield.

In September, the Green family named Grand Canyon as the recipient of the campus. But five weeks later Grand Canyon walked away from the gift, citing millions in unanticipated infrastructure, environmental and other costs. Mr. Pattengale has said there is another candidate with the means to operate the campus, but “it’s hard to get excited” because the mystery school is as big and conservative as Liberty University.

At another public meeting earlier this year—one that included questions about the contenders’ views on creation and same-sex marriage—a Northfield resident argued that “the religious tradition of the area welcomes people of many faiths, belief or nonbelief. There is potential conflict with those who follow more restrictive teachings.”

Tolerance has to do precisely with how you treat people you disagree with and people you don’t like. If someone has no problem with a particular group, that person is not practicing tolerance, since tolerance is not necessary. It isn’t that liberals are tolerant and conservatives are not. Someone from either side can practice the virtue of tolerance or the vice of intolerance. The good people of Northfield may have valid reasons for not wanting a college in their community, but they shouldn’t at the same time pat themselves on their own backs about how tolerant they are. Evidently, they are not tolerant of creationists or those who don’t believe in same sex marriage. They certainly do not welcome “people of many faiths, belief, or nonbelief,” when they seek to keep out adherents of a particular religion. (Well, “many” is not “all,” but not many religions other than liberal Protestants are fine with gay marriage, if that is one shibboleth being used. Are Roman Catholics allowed in Northfield? How about Muslims? If so, on what grounds are evangelical Christians excluded?) To use the ever-expanding phrase about not discriminating according to “race, color, or creed” and add to that “sexual orientation, gender, national origin, religion, age, marital status, or disability,” these folks are without a doubt discriminating on the basis of “creed.”

HT: Trey

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