Giving Tolerance a Bad Name

I watched part of Buck Owens’ funeral on TV on Sunday. It was broadcast on all of our local channels. There were wonderful tributes from family members and several country music stars performed songs that were moving and perfect for the occasion. Then, along came the sermon.

The funeral was held in a Baptist mega-church and the sermon was given by the senior pastor. Back in the early 90s one of my kids started attending that church, which under normal circumstances would not be a big deal. But when a Mormon kid starts attending a Baptist church it’s a very big deal, in both churches. This pastor decided that he needed to visit me, ostensibly to ask if it was okay for my son to be attending his church. I was already well into my extraction from Mormonism so it was fine with me. It quickly became clear, however, that he was really visiting me to determine if my departure from this “cult”, as Baptist leaders love to call the LDS Church, was real. I recall his stern demeanor as the cross-examination unfolded. There was a dark cloud of skepticism hanging over him. He may have been trying to determine the depth of my son’s commitment to Jesus Christ by testing the depth of his father’s remaining commitment to Joseph Smith. I’m not sure. The point is that it wasn’t all that pleasant. Well, it wasn’t all that pleasant listening to him again on Sunday.

After making one reference to Buck, the pastor launched into a standard Baptist salvation message – the one about how there is no path from spiritual death to eternal life in the presence of God other than through accepting Jesus as one’s personal savior. It’s pretty hard for a Baptist preacher to pass up an opportunity to deliver that message to a large gathering, so it wasn’t unexpected. Unfortunately, it didn’t stop there. It quickly morphed into a critical commentary on modern culture and our ill-advised embrace of tolerance. That’s not your everyday sermon at a funeral.

One gets the impression that Buck Owens was a fairly tolerant man. He seems to have embraced a very diverse group of people in his life and there’s not much evidence that he was inclined to pass moral judgment on others. He didn’t exactly live his own life along the straight and narrow path. Nonetheless, the pastor used Buck’s funeral as an occasion to criticize anyone inclined to walk the crooked and wide path of tolerance.

His premise was as follows: at one time, tolerance meant that we treated those with whom we disagree with respect and dignity; but, now, tolerance means that every opinion is equally valued and true.

Let me start by saying that I apparently haven’t bought into the watered down version of tolerance that this pastor decries because I don’t value his opinion, nor do I regard it as true. I’m not that tolerant.

Second, I would probably shut up on this subject if I saw this man and others like him actually adhere to the old-fashioned version of tolerance that he seems to hold up as a model value. If only they did treat those with whom they disagree with respect and dignity then we would live in a better world. But they don’t. People of this ilk heap disrespect, indignity and moral judgment on those with whom they disagree. Please, someone show me a meaningful example of respect shown to Latter-day Saints by this man and I will call him tolerant under his own definition. Branding another group as a satanic cult from which people must be saved is just a little short of the tolerance mark he espouses.

Someone show me the respect and dignity that this man and others like him have extended to Mormons, Muslims, homosexuals, most Democrats, liberals of any affiliation, women who get abortions, the makers of R-rated movies, the Pope and the Catholic Church, not to mention Teletubbies and Sponge Bob. The men behind the bully pulpits of the Religious Right pass out their special form of intolerance, however defined, almost every Sunday, even at a funeral service.

This pastor declared that in this day we have reduced sin to pedophilia and terrorism. I haven’t. I still include taking the name of the Lord in vain as a sin and when I hear a man profess to speak in the name of the Lord as he passes ultimate judgment on others then I know that the odds are high that sin is in the air.

My hope is that everyone within the sound of a voice like the one I heard on Sunday will, indeed, reject the temptation to adhere to the modern-day version of tolerance he defines. My hope is that they will listen to his opinion and find it to be untrue and of no value.

But, I’m being intolerant; so that probably puts my opinion about the man behind the pulpit on Sunday in the same bucket as his opinion about so many others, which only proves, once again, that we’re all more alike than we are different.