The Long Truce: How Toleration Made the World Safe for Power and Profit

by A.J. Conyers

Reconsidering one of our central political dogmas, a distinguished theologian argues that the principle of toleration-as reformulated over the last four centuries-is not the bulwark of social harmony that it appears. In a new book from Spence Publishing, A. J. Conyers shows that toleration, by banishing questions of ultimate meaning from public life, has aided the consolidation of power in the state while debasing our politics and undermining social cohesion. It is customary to regard the principle of toleration as the reasonable and humane solution to the religious strife that ravaged Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The real history of toleration, however, is considerably more complicated. Professor Conyers shows that the new nation-states of early modern Europe-comprehensive, jealous, and demanding-propagated a novel version of toleration based on indifference to all values other than political power and material prosperity. By dissolving the loyalties that bound men to their church, their family, and the other intermediate institutions, toleration produced the modern "bi-polar society," in which the isolated citizen confronts the unmediated power of the state. In its modern form, then, toleration is not a virtue but a strategy for the relentless imposition of secularism in the service of power and profit. Professor Conyers attacks the modern superstition that our only choice is between bloody sectarian conflict and the suppression of all transcendent concerns. A more authentic model of toleration is to be found, surprisingly enough, in pre-Reformation Christianity, which preached humility rather than indifference.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

288 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

A. J. Conyers (1946-2004) was Professor of Theology at the George W. Truett Theological Seminary, Baylor University.

Reviews

[Zach · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this book! Really brilliant stuff by Conyers. I would recommend this as a really useful read for any politically mindful Christians. He does an incredible job of differentiating the practice of toleration (in the begining of the modern period) from the doctrine of toleration we have today. The ending of the book is theological (for which Conyers makes no apologies) because, "For however we define toleration, the idea is necessarily a theological one. It concerns whether and how men and women shall proceed to deal with the ultimate questions of the meaning and purpose of human existence when these issues so strongly divide us." Conyers argues that the beginning of the modern period the question was how to deal with the ultimate whereas now the question for modern toleration is wether it is necessary to deal with it. Perhaps one could make the point that Conyers doesn't spend enough time discussing how to persuade someone on the how and wether (of the ultimate meaning of life) question but I would say that he does answer this with the end of the book (which I don't want to spoil). I might reread in the future with a more critical eye but this first time through I could not find any major fault with the book. Loved it.