What is religious tolerance?

Merry meet!

If you type “define religious tolerance” into Google the first result is the following:

“Toleration is "the practice of deliberately allowing or permitting a thing of which one disapproves. One can meaningfully speak of tolerating, i.e. of allowing or permitting, only if one is in a position to disallow". .”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_tolerance

So, by the above definition, religious tolerance means allowing someone to practice a faith other than yours without telling them that their faith is wrong or evil. Even if you don’t approve of them practising their faith. This is a fabulous concept on paper yet how often in life does it REALLY happen?

All through history there have been wars waged sometimes with people’s faith as the cause because a heated argument over whose faith is better gets dangerously out of hand. Or sometimes it’s about money or power but religion is the banner cause held up to the world as if by putting up the banner of religion it makes the slaughtering of innocent people ok.

I have only ever met one Christian who actually observed her bible and the teachings of her priest. She is still a friend of mine and treats me as a normal human being and not just something nasty that is stuck to the bottom of her shoe. Most of the rest, as well as Catholics, and Jehovah’s Witnesses that I have met are quite nice to me until the inevitable question of my faith comes up when they ask if I am interested in hearing about their Lord. On telling them politely the first time that I already have my own faith and that I am in fact a Wiccan I either get a shocked expression and a quick good day or I have the person sit and try to tell me why my faith is wrong and that I should convert to their religion. On other occasions I have also been labelled a devil worshipper, a Satanist and a harpy despite the fact that Wicca has never had anything to do with the devil as known by popular culture because he was a figure created by the Christian and Catholic churches.

This is not religious tolerance and more to the point it is rude, bigoted, arrogant and downright offensive. Regardless of what faith you practise or hide behind for justification that you’re a good person one day out of seven, you don’t tell other people that their faith is wrong.

The most ironic thing about both the Christian and Catholic churches are that they have acted more evilly than any witch, wiccan, heathen or pagan of any other kind will ever do. To convert the local pagans to the new religion, when the temptation of saving their immortal soul didn’t lure them in to plonk their but on a pew, the churches were built on the worship sites of the pagans as they were already going to those anyway the church figured if we build them, they will still come. Iconic images of the pagan religions were also used in the buildings, hence why in England especially, there are quite a few stained glass images of things such as The Green Man (http://www.pantheon.org/articles/g/green_man.html, http://paganwiccan.about.com/od/beltanemayday/p/GreenMan.htm, http://www.greenmanenigma.com/theories.html) and other figures of Goddesses, nymphs, fey and others. 

Still this didn't succeed at converting as many of the Pagans as the church wanted so they then outlawed the old religions of fertility rites to ensure good harvests, worship of the old Gods and Goddesses and healing of the sick. Anyone practicing these things would be called a heretic. And to be called a heretic meant you could, LEGALLY, be tortured until you “confessed” (sometimes this meant lying) that yes you were a witch. You were then executed, generally in public so all the “God fearing folk” could mock you, and if you were really lucky you were hung until dead. If you weren't though… You were burnt alive at a stake. The Church did this because before they really gained popularity, the old ways of the Pagans, was the biggest religion of any kind around at that time and even then there were numerous branches. The religion of the pagan’s was a threat that had to be removed, publicly, mercilessly and quickly.

During the period of the Witch trials which went roughly from the 15^th to 18^th centuries, (a period of 300 hundred years!), a lot of historians have agreed the amount of people murdered for their belief is between 50,000 and 200,000 with millions affected negatively. The site below is merely one of them.

http://departments.kings.edu/womens_history/witch/werror.html#cruelty

“King James I estimated that the ratio of women to men who succumbed to witchcraft was twenty to one. Of those formally persecuted for witchcraft, between 80 to 90 per cent were women.” http://www.thenazareneway.com/dark_side_of_christian_history.htm

What I am trying to say is that if people want to practice a faith then  that’s brilliant that they are finding ways of feeding their soul’s spiritual needs. However when people start to tell other people that their faith is wrong then it causes problems because NO-ONE has the right to tell another person that what they believe is wrong or bullying them by insulting them and labeling them with untrue, negative stereotypes perpetrated by one or more faiths to demonise another. 

Merry part!