The Enforcement of Toleration

Abstract

The nature of our discussions of toleration has changed. How about the essential problem? John Locke’s 1689 Letter Concerning Toleration famously advanced the proposition that “the care of souls cannot belong to the civil magistrate, because his power consists only in outward force; but true and saving religion consists in the inward persuasion of the mind, without which nothing can be acceptable to God. And such is the nature of the understanding that it cannot be compelled to the belief of anything by outward force.”¹ In this last remark, Locke was addressing state enforcement of an affirmative belief, of an approved religion. Now that the western democratic state has abandoned that enterprise, the danger appears to lie elsewhere. With some extraordinary exceptions, concern in the West has largely focused on private, rather than governmental, intolerance. If the care of souls cannot belong to the civil magistrate, what can the state do to advance civility among conflicting visions? What are we to conclude about the powers of the magistrate to enforce or encourage toleration itself?