A religious liberty panel sponsored by the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission agreed that

religious liberty will be the civil rights issue of the next decade

The panel members included Phillip Bethancourt, Samuel Rodriguez, Rick Warren, David Platt and Russell Moore. Rick Warren spoke for many when he advocated for a “free market” of religious belief, not the restriction or imposition of any: 

“I believe in pluralism. I do not believe in relativism. Big difference,” [Rick Warren] added, because “in a free market world, the Gospel’s gonna win.”

Similarly, Moore recalled a story in which he rebutted an accusation of arrogance and disrespect from an audience member, who had claimed he was “dehumanizing” a Muslim woman for not acknowledging the truth claim of her religious beliefs.

The audience member, Moore explained, was insisting that Moore and the Muslim woman hold [the audience member’s] view of religious belief, which is that the religious differences between them do not matter.

“If you don’t fight for the right to be able persuade each other and to have those meaningful differences,” Moore explained, “it means that somebody is imposing some generic, mush religion on top of you. So we have to say we want to fight for everyone’s religious freedom.”

The important moral to that story:

Moore’s story illustrated, Platt noted, that Americans have “a misguided notion of tolerance in our culture” because “to disagree” is “considered intolerant.”

“Tolerance itself implies disagreement,” he explained, because one does not need tolerance for those they agree with…

Warren agreed, adding that the “definition of tolerance has changed” from “I treat you with respect and dignity even when we disagree” to “all ideas are equally valid.”

“That’s nonsense,” he said, “some things are true, some things are not true.”

That is a fascinating articulation of an ongoing misperception both in society and in the microcosm of society in the US military.

Read more.

ADVERTISEMENT