Tolerance, Religious Freedom and Interfaith Solidarity
Tolerance begins with how we treat people of other faiths. We have gathered passages from the scriptures which urge treating non-believers and believers with equal respect. Religious disputes and doctrinal conflicts are condemnable; they are often motivated by egoism disguised as piety, and by displaying enmity they do not give fitting witness to one’s faith.
By extension, governments are to respect religious freedom and avoid any manner of compulsion in matters of faith. Most people think of religious freedom as a feature of modern democracy, emerging as it did after a long period of religious intolerance marked by wars and cruelty—the Crusades, the Inquisition and the 30- Years’ War. Still, each of the great civilizations has enjoyed periods of religions tolerance: in India under the tolerant Buddhist King Ashoka (3rd century B.C.) and the enlightened Mughal emperor Akbar (16th century), in 10th century al-Andalus (Spain under Muslim rule), and in Song dynasty China (10th-13th century). Nevertheless, it was with democracy that the ideal of religious freedom became firmly established as a global value. Father Moon regards the establishment of religious freedom one of the hard-won victories of divine providence.
Beyond tolerance and beyond religious freedom is the higher vision of cooperation and solidarity among religions. This largely modern ideal was born out of people’s growing familiarity with the world’s religions and the efforts of religious leaders to dialogue with each other in order to resolve disputes and eliminate ancient prejudices.
Religious unity has long been advocated by the Baha’i Faith. Relations between Christians and Jews were transformed after the horrors of the Holocaust led to a widespread re-evaluation of Christian doctrines that had overtones of anti-Semitism. Still, until the late 1990s the predominant opinion was that the trend towards secularism would one day make religion—and hence religious intolerance—a relic of the past.
Today that view is obsolete. Flare-ups of religious extremism and terrorism have made people realize that interfaith cooperation is a necessary condition for world peace. Yet for more than fifty years, without fanfare, Father Moon has worked for the goal of the unity of religions, regarding it as one of the chief goals of God’s contemporary providence.