The restaurant was dark.  A couple of candles illuminated the table where six of us were sitting.  Next to me was one of the most famous novelists in America today, John Irving, author of The World According to Garp, A Prayer for Owen Meany, The Cider House Rules, and other books.  He’s the sort of writer filmmakers watch like a hawk.  There are millions to be made turning Irving’s prose into celluloid.

Good friends Joan and Lew Madeira had arranged this dinner party in part because John Irving’s wife is an active member of their church in southern Vermont.  They thought Janet Irving and her eleven-year-old son might be interested in hearing about the FOCUS ministry that I had founded.

While others were talking, I chatted with John Irving about Owen Meany, whom I had found a particularly interesting character, and also about Toronto where some of the action in the novel takes place.  The Irvings keep an apartment in Toronto, where Sandra and I lived for a decade.

The question

We also discussed The Cider House Rules.  The book raises the question of abortion, because it is about an orphanage where a “physician” illegally performs abortions for mothers who decide to end their pregnancies rather than risk having their children brought up in lonely, forgotten orphanages far from the mainstream of society.  Irving sensitively portrays the relationship between this non-certified “doctor” and a teen-aged orphan who helps him and grows up to take his place.

Since the publication of the book and the appearance of the movie, he has become somewhat of a spokesman for the pro-choice movement.  “They wanted to interview me on a network talk show, but I wouldn’t do it,” said Irving, revealing restrained anger just under his surface calm.  “Why the heck did they think that they should put Cardinal Law on for a few minutes after me just to give the other side?  He didn’t write a book on the subject.”

I’m discovering that abortion is a subject about which John Irving is quietly passionate.  “No, I don’t think abortion is necessarily a good thing,” he says.  “But I believe that a woman legally must have the choice to end her pregnancy.  What bothers me most is that religious people think that they can force their views on other people through the courts.  I don’t believe that any person has the right to force their religion on another.”

So the issue is joined, and I quietly pray for something faithful to say.  I had suspected that a conversation with John Irving would end up on the subject of abortion rights, and I am now wishing that I had prepared myself more fully for the inevitable interchange.

I realize that for many the issue of abortion is settled.  It’s legal.  Therefore, it must be right.  Each year, over a million and a half women in American alone choose this way to end their unwanted pregnancies.  If so many women are choosing that path, it can’t be wrong.  This is what I once thought until I read Bernard Nathanson’s Aborting America.

Nathanson performed over 60,000 abortions, was an atheistic Jew, and had been a leading spokesman for abortion rights in the early years of the movement.  But doing pre-natal research convinced him that the fetus was not an impersonal thing, but part of the human life chain.  Reluctantly, but definitively, he changed his views and wrote what became a blockbuster expose of the assumptions and strategies of the pro-choice movement.

I asked John Irving if he knew Nathanson’s book, and he said that he did.  He also knew that Nathanson had been baptized in the mid-1990's.  I shared how reading his book had changed my own thinking, and that, while I was no crusader, I was firmly pro-life. (Nathanson shared the story of his conversion in The Hand of God.)

Irving shoots back

My perspective seemed to bother Irving, and we returned to the topic of how people foist their religious and moral views on others, and how disreputable a man like Cardinal Law was.  “I wouldn’t be in the same room as that man,” said Irving.  I began to wonder if he was about to bolt from the dining table.

“Well, I’m not holding a candle for Cardinal Law,” I said.  “He’s got other issues.  But you know our government restricts people’s rights to marry their sisters, to assist their Aunt Susie to die if they think it’s best, and to take their own lives.  Laws against these actions are based on some people’s religious convictions.”

“So do you believe that Roe v. Wade ought to be repealed?” Irving shot back.  I thought quietly for a few moments and said, “I think Roe v. Wade is morally bankrupt.”

“You don’t mind the thought of thousands of women dying at the hand of back-room abortionists?” asked Irving.  “I don’t think it would come to that for as many as you think,” I replied.  (I found out later that the number of women dying from illegal abortions in 1972 was only 24 – as compared with 25 who died from legal abortions the next year.)

John Irving talked about the terrible sadness of orphanages like the one depicted in The Cider House Rules.  “What kind of a life is that for a child?” he asked me.  I replied that up the road from our house is Verland, a Christian residential center for some of the most physically and mentally handicapped people I have seen.  There they receive love and care throughout their lives.  “I think that their life is better than no life,” I replied.

At that point our hostess caught Irving’s attention, and we were separated.  Later we shook hands and exchanged friendly good-nights.

It is notoriously difficult in American society to have a conversation like this.  Usually tempers flare, accusations fly, and people walk out of the room.  Nothing has so divided the nation as our differences over abortion.  The prospect of confirming a Supreme Court Justice who questions Roe v. Wade sends some lawmakers into paroxysms of emotion.  Many feel that those who doubt a constitutional right to privacy that protects a woman’s choice to end her pregnancy must be redneck members of the Religious Right.

But, epithets aside, this is a burning, unresolved issue in the culture wars that have torn apart our nation.  One must ask if those who are unable to speak for themselves have a fundamental right to life.  One must also weigh the tortuous decision many women have to make when faced with an unplanned, unwanted pregnancy against the impact that a million and a half abortions each year have on a nation’s capacity to reverence life.

Our Creator’s stamp

I have sided with the pro-life side of this argument because of deep convictions about the givenness of all life, the stamp our Creator has put on us who are made in his image (Psalm 139), and the grief many women go through after they have had an abortion.  Whether there should be a law providing for abortions in extreme circumstances (when the pregnancies are the result of rape or incest) is not a subject on which I am prepared to be dogmatic – although I tend to think that two wrongs don’t make a right.  Sincere pro-life people come to differing conclusions about this.

John Irving and I had a civil conversation about this emotional subject.  I obviously didn’t change his mind, but I pray that my willingness to talk with him may have planted a seed that will someday bear fruit.  As Christians, we must find a way to talk to others across this huge ethical divide.

We must find a way to speak of our own convictions without storming out of the room, and as believers we must pray that God will reveal his loving kindness towards all people through the way we live and speak.

Reprinted with permission from Seed and Harvest, a publication of Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry, Ambridge, PA.  Web site: www.tesm.edu.

Thoughts on Truth and Tolerance

By Alan Reynolds

Is there a limit to tolerance?

Reinhold Niebuhr is reputed to have said: “The test of liberalism is the limits of its tolerance.”

When I graduated from Union Theological Seminary in New York City in 1960, liberalism seemed to rule supreme in the theological world.  Conservatives were few and far between, probably hidden away someplace in the deep south of the USA.   One wondered what might be the future of conservatism.[1] 

At that time, Neo-Orthodoxy had reached its limits.  Niebuhr had had two strokes, and though he still taught and still exuded greatness, he was a shadow of the person he had been.  Shuffling down the hall, one hand holding his other paralyzed arm, it was hard to picture the man who had walked the stage with eyes blazing and hair flying.  Wilhelm Pauck, the church historian, showed more than a tinge of cynicism around the edges of his spirit, as though he realized that Neo-Orthodoxy has reached the limits of its intellectual endeavor.  Henry Pit Van Dusen, a Neo-Liberal, was President of Union.  He was a big man and solid, built like a rock, but as one watched him walk down the aisle of James Chapel (he walked with kind of a jolting motion, his body shaking as he placed each foot firmly ahead of the other), one could imagine that the rock of liberalism, which seemed so solid, was beginning to crack.

Through the 1960’s, liberalism, unwilling to acknowledge any limits to its tolerance, allowed itself to replaced by radicalism, and radicalism in turn produced the conservative reaction of the ‘70’s and ‘80’s, including Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.  In religion, the Moral Majority represented popular thinking, and the "television evangelists" were the well-known preachers.  Those of us who belonged to the "mainline" more liberal denominations watched the evangelical and fundamentalist churches grow around us.

The conflict between liberal and conservative is with us still, and according to many prognosticators is becoming more pronounced.  Conservatives tend to emphasize the importance of truth at the risk of being called exclusive.  Liberals tend to emphasize tolerance at the risk of obscuring the truth.

In an article entitled “Truth and Tolerance in an Age of Pluralism,”[2]Paul Chamberlain, an evangelical theologian at Trinity Western University in Langley, B. C., says,

In contemporary North American culture, tolerance has come to be virtually synonymous with agreement.  The way to be tolerant toward an idea or practice is to agree with it….  This view of tolerance becomes evident when people speak out against a certain viewpoint or practice.  They are often labeled intolerant for doing nothing more than voicing their disagreement….

If we reflect briefly, it seems clear that tolerance does not require agreement at all….  As odd as it may sound to us who have been conditioned by this common usage of the term “tolerance,” the very idea of tolerance actually entails disagreement.  If I agree with something, I do not need to tolerate it since I already agree with it.              

He goes on to claim that tolerance is “an attitude which says, `I disagree with something you are saying or doing, … but I still accept your right to carry on as you wish.’”  This does not imply agreement, but quite the opposite.  Truth and tolerance are not in opposition but are complementary.  Without disagreement, the need for tolerance doesn’t arise.  

There seems to be an ethical tension inherent in Christian faith.  To escape this tension, we tend to extremes.  The conservative, so-called “evangelical churches,” stand for truth.  The so-called mainline, “ecumenical churches," strive to project a "liberal" identity, a tolerance, understood as emphasizing inclusiveness rather than identity, relationships as more important than righteousness, and love as more important than law.

This tension is seen in the interpretation of the commandment of Christ "to love one another" (which we call "The Great Commandment," usually with capital letters).  On the conservative side, there is a tendency to emphasis the commandment as law.  On the liberal side, there is a tendency to emphasize the commandment as love, Jesus' desire that we have love (often understood as goodwill) for one another.

The former tendency results in an untenable legalism in which each law has to be interpreted in each situation.  In the Jewish tradition, we see how the Torah requires continual interpretation, the Midrash for instance, and the rabbis of Safel would spend many happy quiet hours discussing whether it is lawful for a woman to throw the dishwater on her garden on the Sabbath.  According to the strict letter of the law, if anyone violates the sexual code, they shall be stoned to death.  Literally, "the letter kills!"

To which those who favour the more liberal tendency would probably add, "while the Spirit gives life!"  (II Corinthians 3:16).  This tendency would favour the spirit of love rather than the letter of the law.  "Love God and do what you please," said Augustine.  The extreme result however is social anarchy with each person doing what s/he thinks is good (and perhaps, in the end, each one doing what s/he pleases and gives self-satisfaction).       

The conservative side will emphasize absolutes and will seek to base its ethical system on "natural law," standards of conduct inbuilt in nature and reason and supported by Scripture, "deontological ethics."  The liberal side will put more emphasis on what we have more recently called "contextual ethics" (derived from Joseph Fletcher and originally termed "situational ethics") and will live more comfortably with relativism.

Conservatives place more emphasis on human sin.  Because we are sinners, we are innately self-centred creatures whose behaviour needs to be strictly regulated for "law and order" and the common good.  (Shades of "capitalism.")     Liberals tend to emphasize the goodness of our humanity.  If people are only given "equal opportunity" they will do what is right and will cooperate for the common good.  Law will become increasingly unnecessary. (Shades of "socialism.")  The former will emphasize "righteousness."  The latter will consider "relationships" more important. 

Identity versus inclusiveness

Conservatives emphasize "Christian identity."  Liberals assert the inclusiveness of divine Love, perhaps to the point that inclusiveness becomes an idol rather than an ideal.

We live in the tension caused by these two tendencies.  When either tendency becomes too extreme, inevitably it provokes a reaction.

If we make an idol of inclusiveness, there will be a reaction which will seek to stress identity.  Without identity, inclusiveness becomes meaningless. But an undue emphasis on identity results in an exclusiveness that becomes more and more narrow and sectarian until it's "you and me and God, -- and I’m not so sure about you!”

If we make relationships all-important, we end in failure because any relationship must involve some measure of justice, must be based more or less consciously upon some degree of principle.  On the other hand, righteousness tends to self-righteousness.  An undue emphasis upon righteousness ends again in a lonely exclusiveness in which I alone am the one who is truly righteous.

Douglas John Hall, in his book Why Christian?, writes,

As Christians become more aware of the plurality of religions, they manifest a tendency to fall into one of two different camps….  In relation to the matter of religious plurality, conservative Christianity, fearing that the centrality of Jesus Christ will be compromised, emphasizes all the more adamantly the indispensability of an explicitly confession of belief in Jesus as Lord and Saviour.  Liberal Christianity rejects this as unwarranted exclusivism, maintaining that it is fundamentally unchristian because of its intolerance of difference….  The more unavoidable the sociological fact of religious pluralism becomes (and in North America city culture it is increasingly conspicuous), the more polarized the internal Christian debate becomes.  All Christians today are under a great deal of pressure to declare themselves, to choose one or the other of these alternatives.[3] 

Hall suggests there may be “another way of thinking about this that avoids both doctrinaire exclusivism and doctrinaire inclusivism, and in the process is also far more faithful to biblical claims.”  He draws attention to the relationship of the “universal” and the “particular.”  Universal concepts, such as love, happiness, or men, women, and children,

… name something larger than the specific examples of it known to us.  Without universal concepts or ideas of this sort, human communication and even human thought as such would not be possible.  We would all live in our own separate language shells, if we had such a thing as language in the first place – which we probably wouldn’t.

And yet all universal concepts (love, childhood, woman, man, sorrow, and so on) acquire whatever concrete meaning they have for us only as we experience particular embodiments or instances of them.[4]

Particulars, he says, “never fully contain the universals that they represent or embody, even though we could never know the universals without them.”  He claims that this  “doesn’t diminish the significance (in fact, we called it the `necessity’) – of the particular person” of Jesus, nor on the other hand does it “pursue the ultraconservative route of limiting everything about the transcendent and mysterious God to what we think about Jesus.”[5]

Applying these thoughts to the question of truth and tolerance, I do believe that there are absolutes --universal truths and laws.  There is, in contradiction to some postmodern thought, the Truth and there are absolutes of right and wrong.    All is not relative.

But our understanding of the truth is relative to our own particular situation.  We have our own experience, our own knowledge, which gives us our particular understanding of truth.  Our understanding, our experience, is partial, not universal or absolute, and never “fully contains” the universals it represents.  No person or institution can profess absolute truth or knowledge.But our knowledge and experience do point to universals.

A creative tension

It is through tolerance that we may gain greater understanding of the universal truths we seek to know, clearer understanding of universal standards of justice and, yes, of personal righteousness and morality.  It's in the creative tension that we may grow.  We can't sit on the fence.  In any situation, we can't simply seek to find a safe middle ground.  But we also know that we cannot accept such extremist positions as we see on both sides.  Truth and tolerance are complementary and both are necessary.  In the article referred to earlier, Paul Chamberlain writes,

The reality is that any person living in a pluralistic society will soon encounter others who are convinced that the things he thinks are true are not true at all and the way he thinks things should be done are not the way others think we should do them.[6] 

But it is exactly in such a situation that we may come to a deeper understanding of truth and better understand how we might act in the world and toward one another.

The limits of our tolerance

But back to where we started (with Reinhold Niebuhr), how do we define or know or acknowledge the limits of our tolerance? There are some practices that no society can tolerate and still endure.  Tribal societies, primitive or modern, may accept theft and murder, for instance, when it comes to others outside the tribe, but no society, tribe or culture, to my knowledge, accepts theft and murder within its own community.  What are the limits of our tolerance of violence?  Are shouting and name calling acceptable while hitting and physical violence are not acceptable?  If some degree of physical violence is acceptable, how hard is the hit before it exceeds the limits of our tolerance?  Are parents ever allowed to spank?  Are abortion or euthanasia ever acceptable?  What limits do we put on sexual relations?  Are homosexual relations that are loving, compassionate and faithful acceptable?  Is faithfulness within marriage necessary?  Are sexual relations between an adult and a child permissible?  And what do we mean by “sexual relations?”  What do we mean even by “adult” and “child?”  What do we mean by “life,” and “death?”

Our present culture is wrestling, reluctantly, with such questions, often with more emotion than reason.  In the last forty years, we have come to accept things that were unthinkable before.  As the grandmother said, watching her granddaughter walk by in a bikini, “It seems that what used to be wrong isn’t wrong anymore!”  If things “as they used to be” were always “right,” then we should simply go back to what “used to be.”  If, on the other hand, things as they used to be were always wrong, we could simply embrace the new.  It’s just not that simple.  And so we find ourselves in our present confusion.

I am suggesting that the only way out, in our present pluralistic culture, is to recognize that truth requires tolerance because our understanding of truth is relative; but tolerance requires openness to and recognition of the truth that is beyond our individual perspective and relative understanding.  And both require a community that is able and willing to talk openly and rationally about these questions, with knowledge and reason, and a desire for mutual understanding.

I believe that Christian faith will not only prosper in such an environment, but will become stronger as a result of being tested.