Exercising Tolerance
A protection from our deepest fears ?
by Elizabeth Kaeton

Less than two weeks after the attack on the World Trade Center, I found the wherewithal to take the PATH Train from Newark Penn Station into The City. I was in a great rush -- the machine at the turnstile didn't like the dollar bill I kept trying to feed it -- and I made it through the doors of the train as the warning bell shrieked in judgment of my inept fumbling.

As the train lurched forward, I noticed something odd -- even for a train bound to New York City. Many people were standing up and holding onto the pole in the middle of the floor, or the railings at their side and over head, and yet, right in front of me, there was an entire row of empty seats. The occupant of the very last seat was a Muslim woman in full religious garb -- full-length dress with long sleeves, a head scarf and face veil.

I felt my stomach tighten. All at once I was distressed, ashamed and compelled to sit next to her. I was also vaguely aware that I was wearing my clergy collar and that the wooden cross around my neck identified me as a Christian and an Associate of the Order of St. Helena. If the whole truth be told, I was feeling a certain obligation to be a visible witness of Anglican tolerance and Christian inclusion. Little did I know that I was about to discover the limits of both.

Keenly aware that all eyes were upon me, I made my way past the straphangers and took the seat next to her. Her eyes brightened above her veil as she responded with a warm hello to my greeting. With some hesitance I asked, "Umm, how's it going?" She moved her head back and forth as if to say, "So-so." That was enough of an invitation for me to continue the conversation. "I guess this must be a difficult time for you. I mean, it must take a certain amount of courage to be in public in your religious clothes -- in this present, umm ... climate of, ah ... hostility."

"Oh no!" she said, brightly. "I am very pleased to be able to wear my head scarf and veil. It is really a privilege to wear them in public." I smiled warmly at her, silently admiring the fact that she at least had the strength of her religious convictions, something which might shame any Christians on that train -- those who supposedly follow a God of incarnate love -- who might have overheard her.

My smile seemed to give her enough of an invitation to continue. "Actually, my head scarf and veil are a reminder of my place in this world, the special place which Allah created for women." She looked at my arms that, under her glare, suddenly seemed naked, exposed and vulgar. "That's part of the problem with you American women," she continued, her tone mildly chastising, "you don't understand your role in creation and the will that Allah has for you."

I found myself suddenly flooded with stomach-knotting memories of once having been cornered by a Campus Crusader for Christ on a Greyhound Bus from Portland, Me., to Boston, and enduring two hours of listening to how "God has a plan for you."

To my horror, she continued brightly and with conviction, "And I believe that this is why there are so many Muslims in this country, because Allah wants to save this nation and bring it back from the brink of moral destruction and decay. Allah wants to return women to their proper place and not have them fill their heads with wrong ideas. Allah wants to restore the right relationship between men and women, that we may follow His command to be fruitful and multiply. Yes! God wants to bless America, and God's name is Allah. May the Great Name of Allah be praised."

I'm not often at a loss for words, but in that moment and in all the long moments it took to get to East 33rd Street, any words I might have spoken seemed to be caught in a tight, painful tangle in my throat. In that one train ride, this Muslim woman had taken me to the boundaries of my own tolerance and I discovered there a landscape as barren and desolate as any to be found in the images of the countryside of Afghanistan which come into our living rooms on the nightly news.

I've thought a great deal about "tolerance" and "inclusion" since that experience. In the wake of the outbreak of terrorism and, in the midst of the Episcopal Church's bishops' September 26 call to "wage reconciliation," I turned to the Prayer Book to find the word tolerance in a collect or a prayer. I began with the baptismal covenant. Astonished, I couldn't find it anywhere -- not in the collects, or the covenant or in any of the prayers for the newly baptized. Indeed, the verbs in the service of Holy Baptism are pretty strong: Renounce. Accept. Trust. Promise. Believe. Witness. Persevere. Proclaim.

I thought certain I'd find the word in one of the Prayers and Thanksgivings. I checked out, "For All Sorts and Conditions of Men," confident that, were I to write a prayer for this petition, tolerance would figure high on my word list. Nothing. Neither was the word used in prayers for "the human family," or "our enemies," or even, "in times of conflict."

The Old English Dictionary lists the first definition of tolerance as "the action or practice of enduring or sustaining pain or hardship," adding that, as a term in "forestry," it means, "the capacity of a tree to endure the shade."

I've never found the word in Holy Scripture -- Hebrew or Christian. Not once does it pass the lips of Jesus. As I recall, Jesus commanded, "Love one another," not "Tolerate one another."

Tolerance, as a concept of "broad-minded acceptance," is a noble one, I suppose. Except that nobility can be a very slippery slope, jeopardizing even the well-intended into a free-fall from the high cliffs of arrogance. A person's tolerance often leads to that person's willingness to be "inclusive." I once heard a gay Hispanic man's angry but insightful reaction to the word "inclusion" applied to his "out" participation in the church: "Am I not baptized? Then, why do you think YOU are 'including' ME? Whose house do you think this is anyway?"

That has been the unspoken question at the heart of the conversations sponsored by the New Commandment Task Force (NCTF), a grassroots movement of liberal, conservative and moderate Episcopalians who have been seeking to "wage reconciliation" in the midst of this church's own internal, often terrorist, battles over the nature of God's will. I'm a member of the NCTF's eight-member Core Team, the only liberal woman and the only lesbian in what was at first an evenly divided group of four conservatives and four liberals.

There were conservatives and then there were the black-belt, industrial-strength conservatives who drew lines in the sand and proclaimed, "Here I stand. Period. End of discussion." There were liberals and then there were liberals who wanted "peace, peace when there is no peace" and were willing to pay any price for a false peace -- even if that meant sacrificing my own "full inclusion" in the house. Why couldn't I be patient, one liberal male demanded of me? Why couldn't I put my personal (read: selfish) needs on the back burner for the "greater good" of the rest of the church? Why couldn't I be satisfied with what I already have -- a polite, if limited, measure of inclusion and tolerance?

But I don't want mere tolerance and neither do those who oppose my full inclusion in the church, whether for liberal or conservative reasons. We all believe there are limits to tolerance, even if we don't agree about what those might be.

In both church and society, we have gradually become aware that the world-view possessed by one set of people is not necessarily the same world-view that is held by others. Differences that arise from distinctions in culture, ethnicity, race, religious perspective, geographical culture, etc., emerge and begin to come in conflict with the dominant power structure. Oppressive systems utilize difference as justification for oppression. The use of the words "tolerance" and "inclusion" increase in direct proportion to the proliferation of bias and prejudice, and are intended to address, perhaps even correct, the power imbalance. More often than not, however, these same words fall on the ears of the oppressed as camouflaged reinforcement of the dominant power structure.

What we fail to recognize, I believe, is that talk of tolerance is, at heart, a way to distance ourselves from our deepest fears.

To me, the scariest words Jesus ever spoke are those reported as a central part of his final prayers before Gethsemane. They are the deepest prayers of his heart -- so much so that he repeats it: " ... so that they may be one, as we are one." (John 17:11b, and 22-23) The reconciliation of our differences, the unity of our lives with each other and God, is Jesus' most fervent prayer. Indeed, it is central to our understanding of our ministry as Christians. And, it scares us to death!

The dilemma of the human enterprise is that without separate and distinct identities we feel vulnerable and defenseless. "Inclusion" sounds like reconciliation, but in fact creates a fantasy that masks the sense of ownership and entitlement of those who offer it. "Tolerance" sounds like a step in the direction of unity, but fiercely protects the illusion that we are all different. My encounter with the Muslim woman on that PATH train last September was a painful lesson in this regard. I was willing to include and tolerate her with the expectation that she would be grateful. But her sense of identity was as strong and intractable as my own.

Who is my neighbor? Who is my enemy? To whose house do I belong? To whose world? Is God's name Allah or Jehovah? And who has the inheritance of Abraham's blessing, Ishmael, firstborn son of the surrogate mother and slave girl Hagar, or Isaac, firstborn son of the "legitimate" marriage with Sarah?

I suspect these questions will be our constant companions in the months and years ahead in a way that has a great deal more immediacy and importance than internal church warfare or threats of schism. It may be good to take some of the better parts of tolerance -- patience, forbearance, and charity -- along with us. There is no doubt that, before it is all over, this war on terrorism will have taught us a great deal more about what "waging reconciliation" might really mean, becoming, in the process, the answer to Jesus' prayer.

Elizabeth Kaeton is Canon Missioner to The Oasis in the Diocese of Newark, a ministry with and to lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender people. She is also the newly appointed Co-chair of the New Commandment Task Force II.