Quotes

Quotations supporting religious intolerance

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Note:

The phrase "religious tolerance" has two distinct meanings:

1. Conservative Protestants often interpret the phrase as meaning that, to be tolerant, one must accept all religions as equal and true.  This is a religious concept called "pluralism." One implication is that, because diverse beliefs are all true, that absolute truth does not exist. This they generally find unacceptable.
2. Among other individuals and groups, "religious tolerance" generally means to avoid oppressing or discriminating against persons whose religious beliefs happen to be different from yours. It is a statement of fundamental human rights.

We use the second definition. However, we are continually criticized because some of our visitors assume that we use the first meaning.

Introduction:

An excellent definition of "religious tolerance" is published on "Apologetics Index," an Evangelical Christian counter-cult web site. Webmaster Anton Hein defines it as:

"Acknowledging and supporting that individuals have the right and freedom to their own beliefs and related legitimate practices, without necessarily validating those beliefs or practices." ₁

Note that a person can be religiously tolerant while still rejecting the accuracy of other religions' beliefs and practices. We use this definition throughout this web site.

However, some conservative Christians define "religious tolerance" entirely differently. Josh McDowell, for example, asserts that a person first has to accept all other religious beliefs as equally valid as their own in order to be tolerant. He regards religious toleration as a major threat which is sabotaging the foundations of conservative Christianity. ₂

The followers of most religions (and of no organized religion) feel that their beliefs are true and that the beliefs of other groups are, at least to some degree, false. By itself, this stance is not dangerous to public order. However, profound evil can result when they also oppress other religious groups, discriminate against them, or disseminate hatred against them.

If they go to the next step and believe that followers of other faith groups are sub-human, then all the prerequisites are in place for mass crimes against humanity, genocide, and still another Holocaust. We have seen such criminal acts in recent decades in Northern Ireland, Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Cyprus, Nigeria, Sudan, Middle East, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, India, Sri Lanka, Philippines, etc.

Some quotations which are religiously intolerant, or which discuss religious intolerance, are listed below.

Anon: A Washington Post op-ed piece 1997-APR-19 called "Cult or Religion?:"

"Every religion is 'bizarre' for those who do not accept its tenants."

Anon: From an Email sent by a conservative Christian visitor to this website:

"There is no such thing as 'religious tolerance' as far as God and Heaven is concerned. We are either 'in' Christ or not."

Anon: Bumper sticker by Harbor House Gifts of Fullerton CA.

"Truth, not tolerance."  The bumper sticker also shows a clenched fist on the left side and a Christian cross on the right. 

Sheik Abdel-Aziz Ibn Baaz, Supreme religious authority, Saudi Arabia and author of a Muslim religious edict, 1993:

"The earth is flat, and anyone who disputes this claim is an atheist who deserves to be punished."

George H.W. Bush, (R) as Presidential Nominee for the Republican party; 1987-AUG-27:

"No, I don't know that Atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God."

Most Rev. George Carey, Archbishop of Canterbury, at the General Convention of the Episcopal Church, 1997:

"We have lobbed verses of Scripture, like hand grenades, into the camps of others, convinced we only have truth."

Bob Chell, University Lutheran Center. South Dakota State University, 1996-OCT-10:

"In the Bible, the ones who were most certain about what they were doing were the ones who stoned the prophets."

G.K. Chesterton, ILN, 1906-JAN-13

"There are those who hate Christianity and call their hatred an all-embracing love for all religions."  ILN, 1906-JAN-13

"These are the days when the Christian is expected to praise every creed except his own." - ILN, 1928-AUG-11

Hillary Clinton:

"In every religion, there are those who would drape themselves in the mantle of belief and faith only to distort it’s most sacred teachings -- preaching intolerance and resorting to violence"

Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881), "Known as a dandy, a novelist, a brilliant debater and England's first and only Jewish prime minister:" ₃

"The Jews are a nervous people. Nineteen centuries of Christian love have taken a toll."

Will Durant, writing in The Age of Faith:

"In Constantinople, more Christians were slaughtered by Christians in the years 342-343 than by all the persecutions by pagans in the history of Rome." [We wonder about the accuracy of this quote. It is true that an army in the Fourth Crusade, authorized by the Pope in Rome, did sack Constantinople and kill a massive number of fellow Christians. However, this was in 1203/1204.]

Hagar, in the Hagar comic strip for 1999-MAR-3:

"My son, always respect and honor the other fellow's point of view. Unless it's different from yours, of course."

John Jay, the first Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court:

"Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers, and it is the duty of our Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers."

Bob Jones Jr., of Bob Jones University, referring to the Roman Catholic Church:

"Romanism is a pagan counterfeit of the Christian religion, ancient paganism and idolatry, claiming to be the church which Christ founded...The Roman Church is not another Christian denomination. It is a satanic counterfeit, an ecclesiastic tyranny over the souls of men, not to bring them to salvation but to hold them bound in sin and to hurl them into eternal damnation. It is the old harlot of the book of the Revelation--'the Mother of Harlots.'...Threats and fear have been her weapons. Her wealth has dazzled, her ceremonies blinded the eyes of her devotees to the blackness of her purpose and the rottenness of her heart." ₆

Federico Mayor, Director-general of UNESCO (1987-1999)

"It is intolerable that the world's religions -- founded on the values of love and compassion -- should provide a pretext for the expression of hatred and violence."

Josh McDowell, at a Youth for Christ rally in 1994:

"Tolerance is the worst roar of all, including tolerance for homosexuals, feminists, and religions that don't follow Christ."

Harvey Milk, at a 1978 Gay Freedom Day Rally. (Harvey Milk was killed later that year by a fanatic).

"The fact is that more people have been slaughtered in the name of religion than for any other single reason. That, THAT my friends, is true perversion."

Richard D. Mohr, "A More Perfect Union:"

"Religious belief is a fine guide around which a person might organize his own life, but an awful instrument around which to organize someone else's life."

Blaise Paschal: Often attributed to Sam J. Ervin, Jr., in "Protecting the Constitution" (1984).

"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction." 

Pope John Paul II. Stated at a mass rally in Mexico City on 1999-JAN-25:

"Only faith in Christ gives rise to a culture contrary to egotism and death."

Rabbi Ya'acov Perin

"One million Arabs are not worth a Jewish fingernail." ₁₁

Robert E. Regier & Timothy J. Dailey

"Our founders expected that Christianity -- and no other religion -- would receive support from the government as long as that support did not violate people's consciences and their right to worship. They would have found utterly incredible the idea that all religions, including paganism, be treated with equal deference. ₇

Ronald Reagan

"Without God, there is no virtue, because there's no prompting of the conscience. Without God, we're mired in the material, that flat world that tells us only what the senses perceive. Without God, there is a coarsening of the society. And without God, democracy will not and cannot long endure. If we ever forget that we're one nation under God, then we will be a nation gone under." ₁₃

"I find tolerance based on the intolerance of intolerance intolerable."  

Pat Robertson, New York Magazine, 1986-AUG-18:

"It is interesting, that termites don't build things, and the great builders of our nation almost to a man have been Christians, because Christians have the desire to build something. He is motivated by love of man and God, so he builds. The people who have come into (our) institutions (today) are primarily termites. They are into destroying institutions that have been built by Christians, whether it is universities, governments, our own traditions, that we have.... The termites are in charge now, and that is not the way it ought to be, and the time has arrived for a godly fumigation." ₈

Pat Robertson, Fundamentalist Christian minister, on The 700 Club, 1991-JAN-14:

Pat Robertson, quoted in M. Schwartz & K. J. Cooper, "Equal Rights Initiative in Iowa Attacked," Washington Post, 1992-AUG-23, Page A15:

"The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians."

Adrian Rodgers prominent Evangelical teleminister:

"Never, never, never join a movement that persecutes people because of their faith."

A Serbian student in Australia: ₄

"If you are a Serb, you go to church, and a person who doesn't go to church is by definition not a Serb. They are a Moslem, or one of those American sensitive new-age faggot types, or some other form of low life."

Andrew Sandlin, writing for the Chalcedon Foundation, calls for Christian believers to pray to God to exterminate those who think differently from themselves: 

"God extends his grace to his people (and mankind in general) when he destroys the wicked, because in destroying the wicked, he is averting their evil works that so plague God's children and mankind in general. When he maims and kills cultists and theological liberals, he prevents the spread of heretical doctrine that damns souls...God's judgment -- not his favor -- leads the world to righteousness. We should petition God's judgment on the wicked because judgment is a form of grace." ₅

John Shattuck, Assistant Secretary of the U.S. State Department for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. Stated at a press conference concerning the Department's 1997 Country Report on Human Rights on 1998-JAN-30:

"Ethnic and religious conflict remain the most intractable and dangerous problems in the world today."

Randall Terry, Founder of Operation Rescue. Reported by the News-Sentinel, Fort Wayne, IN, 1993-AUG-16:

"I want you to just let a wave of intolerance wash over you. I want you to let a wave of hatred wash over you. Yes, hate is good...Our goal is a Christian nation. We have a Biblical duty, we are called by God, to conquer this country. We don't want equal time. We don't want pluralism." ₉

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, speaking at  Ebenezer Baptist Church, to participants in the annual meeting of the U.S. Conference for the World Council of Churches in 2000-JAN. (In the same speech, he reminded his audience that the racist apartheid policy in his native South Africa was also created by Christians, not Pagans.)  

"It was Christians, you know, not Pagans, who were responsible for the Holocaust. It was Christians, not Pagans, who lynched people here in the South, who burned people at the stake, frequently in the name of this Jesus Christ"

Unesco: Management of Social Transformations Programme (MOST) web site:

"As shown by the political impact of religious fundamentalism and ethno-religious movements, religious difference is a main factor of contemporary social conflict on local, national and global level."

References:

1. Anton Hein, "Religious Freedom, Tolerance, and Intolerance," at: http://www.gospelcom.net/
2. Josh McDowell, et. al, "The New Tolerance: How a Cultural Movement Threatens to Destroy You, Your Faith, and Your Children," Tyndale House Pub., (1998). Read reviews or order this book safely from Amazon.com online book store
3. Taken from "Britannia: America's Gateway to the British Isles," at: http://www.britannia.com/bios/disraeli.html
4. "Is Christianity a Confidence Trick?" Australian Union of Students hate web site, at: http://www.students.org.au/Christianity/
5. Andrew Sandlin, "Hatred for God's Enemies," at: http://www.chalcedon.edu/articles/article_as_19.html
6. Bob Jones, Jr., "Romanism and the Charismatic Movement: Because they ignore the Word of God, both papists and charismatics are doing the work of the devil," Faith for the Family, 1981, Bob Jones University, at: http://uspolitics.about.com/gi/dynamic/
7. Robert E. Regier and Timothy J. Dailey criticized a prayer delivered on 2000-SEP-14, by a Hindu priest, Venkatachalapathi Samuldrala of the Shiva Vishnu Hindu Temple in Parma, OH. It opened a session of the U.S. House of Representatives. Criticism of the prayer appeared on 2000-SEP-21 in the Culture Facts section of the Family Research Council's (FRC) web site. It was also Emailed or mailed to the subscribers of Culture Facts, a weekly newsletter. It was later removed from the FRC web site. More details.
8. It is perhaps worthwhile noting that the end result of fumigation is the deaths of large numbers of unwanted, formerly living, animals.
9. The term "pluralism" is ambiguous. Here, it appears to refer to religious diversity in the country. Other times, it refers to the belief that all religions are true.
10. Bush was referring to the Army's decision to treat soldiers of all faith traditions in the same way. Following the requirements of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, they allowed Wiccans to hold religious rituals on an army base in Texas.
11. From his eulogy at the funeral of mass murderer Dr. Baruch Goldstein, who killed about 48 Palestinians in a machine-gun attack at Muslims in prayer in a mosque at the Tomb of Abraham in Hebron, Palestine. The quote was reported in an article by Clyde Haberman in the New York Times, 1994-FEB-28.
12. MOST's section on religious rights is at: http://www.unesco.org/most/rr1.htm
13. Quoted in the Massachusetts Family Institute's E-Alert for 2004-JUL-09.

List copyright © 2002 to 2008 by Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance.
Copyrights for the individual quotations held by their creators.
First published: 2002-FEB-19
Last updated: 2008-MAY-07
Compiled by: B.A. Robinson