Religious Tolerance and Exclusive Truth Claims

I think it’s interesting that religious tolerance often is weakest in those who demand it for themselves the most vocally. They cry out for tolerance and acceptance, but they turn around and stereotype others - condemning them to Hell without really understanding their beliefs. The “tolerance of condescension” still is better than the “intolerance of competing conviction”. Given the stereotyped attitudes of the irreligious liberal and the evangelical conservative, I’ll take the irreligious liberal any day - and, ironically, twice on Sunday. 


We walk a fine line between the type of tolerance Joseph Smith preached so passionately (allow all men everywhere the same privilege, let them worship how, when or what they may) and the claims of truth he made simultaneously (the only true and living church upon the face of the whole earth). Unfortunately, it is far too easy to cross that line and allow the claims to temper our tolerance.