Evangelical Toleration (The Journal of Politics)

Evangelical TolerationAuthor(s): Teresa M. BejanSource: The Journal of Politics, (-Not available-), p. 000Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Southern Political ScienceAssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/682568 .

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Evangelical Toleration

Teresa M. Bejan, University of Oxford

ition in early modern political thought with important

any political theorists dismiss the prudential arguments

This article recovers “evangelical toleration” as a neglected trad

consequences for contemporary political theory and practice. M

Rather, the

made by “proto-liberal” thinkers like Roger Williams or John Locke in favor of toleration as a necessary precondition for

evangelism and conversion as intolerant, unacceptably instrumental, and inessential to their deeper theories. By contrast,

critics of liberalism treat them as smoking gun evidence for an imperial and civilizing mission underlying liberal toler-

ation. I argue that both sides underestimate evangelical toleration’s genealogical and theoretical importance. Not only

were evangelical considerations essential in shaping the particular institutions associated with toleration in England and

America, the varieties of evangelical toleration represented by Williams and Locke shed significant light on the very

different institutions—and intuitions—governing the expression of religious difference in liberal democracies today.

n 1655, an embassy of Dutch Jews led by Rabbi Menas- as a yes-or-no proposition of principled pluralism.
Isah ben Israel traveled to London to meet with the Com-monwealth’s new Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell. The
heterogeneous “horizontal” social practices and “vertical” in-stitutional arrangements that developed for the peaceful ac-

olitic

informal “Readmission” of Jews—who had been expelled fromEngland by royal edict in 1290—resulting from the Whitehallconference was once hailed as a high point in the historyof toleration. Yet in recent years, scholars have increasinglychallenged the progressive nature of this event, both in itssubstance and its motivation (Kaplan 2007; Katznelson 2010;Walsham 2006). “Toleration” in this case, as in many others,did not entail religious freedom or civic equality; Jews inEngland were granted legal residency and permitted to worshipprivately, but citizenship, public worship, and the printing ofanything that “opposeth the Christian religion” remained offthe cards. As for its motivation, Edward Whalley’s twofoldargumentwas fairly representative: the Jews “will bring inmuchwealth into this Commonwealth: and where wee both pray fortheyre conversion and beleeve it shal be, I knowe not why weeshold deny the means” (Marshall 2006, 381–82).

In challenging traditionalWhig narratives about the “rise oftoleration” in early modern England as the inexorable progressof liberal enlightenment, political theorists and historians haverightly stressed that toleration did not emerge in this period

Teresa M. Bejan ([email protected]) is an associate professor of p
versity of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3UQ, UK.
1. Goldie outlines this more expansive “evangelical toleration” and its impoessay with Richard Popkin (Goldie and Popkin 2006).

The Journal of Politics, volume 77, number 4. Published online August 13, 201q 2015 by the Southern Political Science Association. All rights reserved. 0022-

This content downloaded from 142.150.190.All use subject to JSTOR T

commodation of religious diversity were more often defendedas prudential, second-best or halfway measures for the sakeof greater goods (Williams and Waldron 2008). In the case ofReadmission, these goods were not only politic and economicbut explicitly evangelical: the apocalyptic expectations of En-glish Protestants dictated that the time for the Jews’ conversionwas nigh and carefully circumscribed toleration a necessarymeans to that end.

Such arguments in favor of Jewish Readmission offer aprime example of what I call “evangelical toleration.” By this,I do notmean simply theological (particularly Protestant) ar-guments about the voluntary nature of faith or the irratio-nality of coercion in the cause of conversion. Mark Goldie,fromwhom I take the phrase, uses it in this more general wayto describe a constellation of theological arguments for tol-eration in the seventeenth century.1 Rather, I mean the ar-gument that toleration is a necessary precondition for in-dividuals to preach and propagate the Gospel and so convertothers to it. This is a very old Christian argument, although itis not unique to Christianity, and it achieved new power and

al theory in the Department of Politics and International Relations, Uni-

rtance for early modern tolerationism in the latter half of his coauthored

5. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/6825683816/2015/7704-0016$10.00 000

39 on Tue, 25 Aug 2015 12:45:10 PMerms and Conditions


prominence in the early modern toleration debates to whichpolitical theorists—despite the best efforts of revisionist his-

of civil society in the wilderness, one committed to protect-ing its members’ evangelical liberty, as well as the heated and

000 / Evangelical Toleration Teresa M. Bejan

torians—continue to trace the origins of liberal politicalthought and institutions (e.g., Rawls 1996).

Given this, theorists’ relative disinterest in these evangeli-cal arguments is striking, if not particularly surprising.2 Nodoubt to many readers, “evangelical toleration” will soundlike a contradiction in terms. For those on the receiving end,evangelism can often feel like an inherently intolerant activ-ity and, as a justification for toleration, singularly unper-suasive—more like a veiled threat. On this view, evangelicaltoleration reflects, at best, a conditional commitment to di-versity for the sake of future uniformity; at worst, it reliesupon and perpetuates a form of verbal persecution that isitself a violation of the negative religious freedom of others.Still, other readers will likely have an equally strong reactionin the opposite direction. For them, evangelism will repre-sent a straightforward case of free expression and evangelicalcompetition an example of the sort of robust disagreementand contestation that is the lifeblood of liberal democracy.

The strong and conflicting intuitions that many readers,including many self-professed liberals, have about the place ofevangelism in a tolerant society is itself strong evidence thatevangelical toleration deserves much closer attention than ithas hitherto received. Accordingly, this article will explorethis tradition and the importance of evangelical argumentsand expectations for two seventeenth-century thinkers inparticular. Roger Williams and John Locke are commonlycited as foundational figures in a distinctive, Anglo-Americantradition of liberalism with the principle of religious tolera-tion at its core. Although scholars often gesture toward thevaguely “protestant” assumptions underlying liberal tolera-tion and the separation of church and state and individualrights with which these thinkers are associated (Mahmood2009; Waldron 2012), I will demonstrate that Williams’s andLocke’s projects were shaped specifically by evangelical con-siderations and, moreover, that these considerations also ledtheir projects to diverge in important but neglected ways.

Williams developed his doggedly controversial and oftencombative approach to evangelism in the course of his in-teractions with the American Indians and other Protestantsectarians in New England and Old. In founding Rhode Is-land, he faced the concrete challenge of creating a new kind

2. Despite theorists’ growing interest in the plural practices and prudentialjustifications of early modern toleration over the past two decades, evangeli-cal toleration has been consistently ignored. See, e.g., Forst (2013), Men-dus (1988), Murphy (1997), Sabl (2008), Williams and Waldron (2008), andWalzer (1997).


often highly uncivil wars of words it inspired. In contrast withWilliams’s polemical approach to evangelism, Locke’s wasirenic—that is, oriented toward peace, conciliation, and con-sensus.3 His life-long concerns about the dangers of “ill us-age” and “unreasonable” zeal in evangelical competition left alasting impression on his theory of toleration. Specifically,they informed his positive vision of a tolerant society as onecharacterized by “reasonable” evangelism that would encour-age citizens to cultivate indifference toward their differences,affirm an underlying agreement on the “fundamentals” of faith,and so put an end to religious wars of words entirely.

Given the importance of evangelical toleration for boththinkers, one might wonder why it has not received morescholarly attention. Where these arguments have been ac-knowledged, political theorists often draw attention to themas part and parcel of a historicizing maneuver meant toconsign these early “liberals” to the antiquarian dustbin bydistancing them from the ostensibly secular argumentationof a more enlightened age (e.g., Dunn 1969). On the otherhand, for critics of liberal toleration they represent a smok-ing gun—undeniable evidence of a fundamental, disqualifyingintolerance and civilizational imperialism at the heart of theliberal project (Brown 2008; Mahmood 2009; Scherer 2013).The favored alternative among commentators concerned todefend liberal toleration and the continued salience of figureslike Locke and Williams seems to be to hold their noses anddismiss these arguments as inessential to the deeper theories,as so much lip service to Christian principles when the realmotivating principles or interests (of state, self, etc.) layelsewhere (Forst 2013; Nussbaum 2008a).

Underlying all of these responses seems to be an unspo-ken agreement with Rousseau, that “it is impossible to livein peace with people one believes to be damned” ([1762] 1997,151). Yet this article will challenge this assumption and dem-onstrate that the differences between the theories of evan-gelical toleration covered here have unappreciated historicaland normative significance. Far frombeing antiquarian, whenit comes to understanding the often very different institu-tions and intuitions governing the expression of religiousdifference in modern liberal democracies—including press-ing questions about the place of blasphemy and religiousinsult in tolerant societies—the rival traditions of evangelicaltoleration developed by Locke and Williams speak volumes.

3. Both terms derive from ancient Greek: “irenic” from the Greek forpeace and “polemic” for war.



Indeed, the conclusion will argue that, beyond its genealogicalsignificance, Williams’s “paradoxical” form of polemical yet

Word of God, was a sin of pride through which one sacrificedanother, body and soul, to one’s own self-love.

Volume 77 Number 4 October 2015 / 000

inclusive evangelical toleration presents an attractive alter-native to Locke’s irenic but exclusionary reasonableness as anapproach to difference and disagreement today—not only forreligious citizens, but for everyone.

EVANGELISM AND TOLERATION
Before turning to the varieties of evangelical toleration found
5. The extent to which pastoral punishments—and what kind—could

inWilliams and Locke and their potential for the present, it isnecessary to say a bit more about the origins of this traditionin early modern political thought, as well as its two key terms—evangelism and toleration—both of which may give modernreaders pause.

Political theorists often treat evangelism as synonymouswith proselytism, a term that carries pronounced pejorativeconnotations (Robeck 1996). Both words derive from Greekand describe practices forged in the early days of Chris-tianity. Evangelism—from euangelion meaning “good mes-sage”—describes the act of preaching or promulgating thegood news of the Gospel, while proselytism—from the Greekfor “come toward”—describes the practice of making or at-tempting to make converts, that is “newcomers” to God.4 To-day, the latter often implies coercion, whether through threats,force, or material rewards, but for early Christians, an embat-tled minority lacking access to the levers of state power, therewas no meaningful distinction. The Apostles, the originalevangelists, spread the “good news” of the Gospel throughoutthe Hellenic world and beyond by preaching alone. With theconversion of Constantine, however, Christians gained ac-cess to institutional sources of coercion previously unavail-able and began to deploy them for pastoral ends.

Saint Augustine pioneered and perfected the rationale forapplying nonlethal coercion in the “correction” of hereticsand apostates as part of the duty of religious and politicalelites to ensure the social conditions most conducive to saluspopuli, including their salvation (Goldie 1991). Yet while thisAugustinian defense of pastoral persecution was highly influ-ential formore than amillennium, it was also controversial. Forits critics—especially early modern protestant dissenters whosaw themselves as the inheritors of primitive Christianity—evangelism was an essential duty belonging to all Christians, asa demonstration of one’s love for one’s neighbor in seeking hissalvation. But proselytism, the practice of making of convertswith the aid of coercion beyond the persuasive power of the

4. OED, “Evangelism, N.”; “Proselytism, N.” (2015). I am grateful tothe anonymous reviewers for helping me to clarify this distinction.


This distinction is often lost today, but for these earlymodern “evangelicals”—as formanymodern believers—it wasparamount (Fisher forthcoming). Nevertheless, as their criticspointed out, the words they employed in propagating theWord could be forceful, and these would-be evangelists oftenapproached the line of verbal violence. Martin Luther hadinstructed his followers that theGreek evangel could alsomean“a shout” (Szabari 2006, 127), and many of the enthusiasticsects that later emerged followed his example. Still, for them,the noncoerciveness of evangelism in its reliance on words notswords was essential. True conversion was linked inextri-cably with “Christian liberty” or the liberty of conscience,which meant not the modern notion of a blanket freedomeven for erroneous opinions but rather the liberty of an in-dividual, through evangelism and the gift of God’s grace, toassent voluntarily to religious truth and convert—literally,“turn”—toward God. Thus, in the sixteenth and seventeenthcenturies neither principle—persuasive conversion or libertyof conscience—entailed toleration. Defenders of persecutionfollowed Augustine in arguing that “benevolent harshness”could be an essential pastoral support by ensuring evangelistsan audience and making errant consciences shut up andlisten (Goldie 1991). Although force could not compel belief,it could pressure heretics and apostates to come to church,hear the sermon, and take communion in the hope that thisfeigned conformity might, in time, become sincere faith.5

For figures like Sebastian Castellio, however, one of theearliest protestant defenders of toleration, such argumentsfor pastoral persecution seemed clearly counterproductiveand self-defeating. Castellio is often heralded as a harbinger ofenlightened humanism and skeptical modernity, but he wasalso a pioneer in the tradition of evangelical toleration. In hismost famous work, Concerning Heretics ([1554] 1965), he la-mented that Christians were not more “mindful of our office,”that is, their evangelical duty of charity to save the souls of theirfellow men. A truly mindful evangelist would not dedicatehimself to condemning others as “heretics” and “infidels” butto convincing them of the superiormoral truth of Christianity:

“Let not the Jews or Turks condemn the Christians,nor let the Christians condemn the Jews or Turks, butrather teach and win them by true religion, and let us,who are Christians, not condemn one another. . . .

be used would become a sticking point in Locke’s debates with Proast inthe later Letters on Toleration.



Even though in some matters we disagree, yet shouldwe consent together and forebear one another in love,

not be tolerated but either persecuted or fully included in civiland spiritual life.7

7. Of course, the distinction between insiders and outsiders was oftensubject to careful negotiation. For instance, the 1689 Act of Tolerationexcluded Catholics and Unitarians while affording Trinitarian Protestantsa limited degree of “insider” status by suspending the penalties for non-attendance at an Anglican church. However, they were still excluded fromholding office and enrolling at the Universities. I thank one of the anony-


which is the bond of peace, until we arrive at the unityof faith. But now, when we strive with hate and per-secutions we go from bad to worse . . . since we arewholly taken up with condemnation, and the Gospelbecause of us is made a reproach unto the heathen.”(Castellio [1554] 1965, 132–33)

His disappointment with his fellow Christians was palpable:“We rather degenerate into Turks and Jews than convert theminto Christians” (133).

Modern readers inclined to view evangelical toleration asan oxymoron will note that the instrumental justification fortoleration as a precondition for persuasive conversion offeredby Castellio and later taken up by evangelical Protestants inthe case of Readmission is a far cry from the positive affir-mation of diversity withwhich tolerance is often linked today.Yet as a form of forbearance in the face of an acknowledgedevil, this evangelical toleration is “tolerant” in a more tradi-tional sense. In the Middle Ages, Catholic casuists defendedtolerantia as a policy of limited permission appropriate tolesser evils, including non-Christian minorities, for the sakeof avoiding greater ones (Bejczy 1997). The differential treat-ment of religious “outsiders” like Muslims and Jews, whocould be tolerated, and deviant “insiders”—Christian hereticsand schismatics—who could not, was key.6 The former werefew and were more likely to be brought to Christianity withhoney than gall. But the latter, as corrupt members of thebody of Christ, carried with them a more intimate threat ofspiritual pollution and hence must be “cut off ” or reformed.

Being tolerated was thus fundamentally an outsiderstatus, and one can see this medieval dynamic of inclu-sion and exclusion at work in Castellio’s argument. His wasan evangelical toleration in which evangelism went one wayonly—from the true Christian to the false—while denyingthe tolerated any reciprocal liberty. Similarly, in the debatesabout Jewish Readmission at Whitehall, this condition of non-evangelism was made explicit in the caveat that Jews not printanything that “opposeth” Christianity. Proponents argued thatthe evil of religious diversity in the Commonwealth should beendured for the sake of the greatest good, the salvation of bothtolerator and tolerated. Yet toleration remained a provisional,inferior status granted to Jews as dependents and outsiders anddistinguishing them from the recalcitrant religious insiders—in this case, Catholics and Protestant sectarians—who would

6. For a good example of this distinction, see Aquinas (2002, 267–78).


Here one might be tempted to conclude that “evangelicaltoleration” is not an oxymoron at all but a naked declara-tion of religious hatred, exclusion, and destruction deferred.In keeping with its medieval origins, to “tolerate” something—or someone—still carries an unmistakable whiff of contemptand exclusion at odds with the respect and “atmosphere ofinclusiveness” that many view as the sine qua non of tolerantsociety (Waldron 2012). Should the prudential calculus evershift, the tolerated can never be certain that the toleratorwould not prefer to eliminate the tolerated evil entirely. Thediscomfort palpable in recent historical treatments of JewishReadmission reflects a similar intuition. As for political theo-rists, many share Stephen Carter’s anxiety that, if the idea that“Christians should tolerate Jews developed hand-in-glove withthe notion that [they] should try to persuade them to come toChrist” and so “wipe them off the face of the earth throughconversion,” it would be better to dispense with the conceptentirely (1993, 93–94).

Evangelical toleration would thus seem only to exacerbatethe problems of instrumentalism and implicit intoleranceidentified by Rousseau and which political theorists attributeto other “merely” prudential arguments for toleration (Men-dus et al. 1988). Like them, it seems too unstable and ethicallyminimal to meet the challenges of cooperation and coexistenceunder conditions of deep diversity while at the same time in-troducing a source of creeping intolerance (evangelism) de-termined to undermine that diversity from within. Given this,the fact that evangelical toleration has been routinely ignoredby theorists, even those determined to push back against the“moralizing tendency” of recent work on toleration and recoverits plural practices and motivations, is not at all surprising(Zuolo 2013, 219). From the standpoint of modern politicalphilosophy, the traditional evangelical arguments developedby Castellio and deployed by other protestant authors in thesixteenth and seventeenth centuries are not only unsavory andunedifying but philosophically uninteresting and, when itcomes to howwe should think about toleration today, entirelybeside the point.

mous reviewers for suggesting this example.



Underlying this rejection one can detect, once again,an unspoken agreement with Rousseau. Had the tradition of

Indeed, in his many toleration writings Williams adoptedthe same prudential reasoning employed by Castellio and


evangelical toleration been limited to the prudential justifi-cations and asymmetrical conditions offered at Whitehall,these suspicions might be well founded. Yet in drawing onthe evangelical arguments pioneered by Castellio, seventeenth-century thinkers like Williams and Locke also radically trans-formed them, from something “mere” into something more:an evangelical liberty that was not the exclusive privilege oftrue Christians to make converts but a universal right of all.The following sections will recover their sophisticated andcompeting conceptions of evangelical toleration as a con-stellation of ethical and institutional arrangements by whichthose convinced of one another’s damnation might never-theless live together, compete for converts, and flourish.

ROGER WILLIAMS AND EVANGELICAL LIBERTYRogerWilliams (ca. 1603–1683), the founder of Rhode Island,has been enjoying something of a renaissance of late amongpolitical theorists who see him as a promising alternative toLocke as a “proto-liberal” theorist of toleration (Bejan 2011;Nussbaum 2008a, 2008b). After all, the 1663 “Charter ofRhode Island and Providence Plantations” enshrined twounprecedented policy innovations closely associated withliberal toleration—complete religious disestablishment andequal protection for all citizens in the “free exercise and en-joyment of all their civil and religious rights.” And whilecontemporaries like Milton and Locke balked at the idea oftolerating Catholics and atheists, Williams argued that Jews,“Turkes” (Muslims), “pagans” (American Indians), and even“anti-Christians”—that is, followers of the papal anti-Christ—were equally entitled to toleration, as well as all protestant sects.

Yet it is Williams’s close relationship with the Narra-gansett Indians, who sheltered him after his banishment fromMassachusetts Bay, and his impassioned calls for toleration ontheir behalf that have caught scholars’ attention above all asevidence of an open-minded, even multicultural approach totoleration attractive today. Foremost is Martha Nussbaum,who presentsWilliams as an exemplar of ideals of fairness andrespect that “continue to be central to the best work in recentpolitical philosophy” from Kant to Rawls (Nussbaum 2008a,57). But in making Williams’s relationship with the Narra-gansett central, she and others have deliberately downplayedthe extent to which Williams justified the radical scope of histoleration—includingAmerican “pagans”—onexplicitly evan-gelical grounds.8

8. For a detailed historical treatment of this issue and the salience ofconcerns about “evangelical liberty” to Williams’s toleration, see Bejan
(2015).

later at Whitehall by arguing that all heretics and infidelsshould be tolerated because all were potential converts. As heput it in his most famous toleration tract, The Bloudy Tenentof Persecution ([1644] 1963b), “he that is a briar, that is, a Jew, aTurke, a Pagan, [or] an anti-christian today, may be when theword of the Lord runs freely a member of Jesus Christ tomor-row” (95).Whereas an earlier generation of scholars implicatedWilliams in the “missionary conquest” of America, those con-cerned to celebrate him today as a multiculturalist avant lalettre ignore these arguments altogether. Nussbaum dismissesthis “instrumental” reason as “a common Protestant argumentin the period, one that Locke made central to his own casefor toleration” but insists that unlike Locke, “one cannot readWilliams’s text . . . and doubt that [he] also thinks damage toconscience an intrinsic wrong” (2008a, 54). The further im-plication that evangelism as such is disrespectful and an un-acceptable reason for toleration is clear from her insistencethat his only motivation in conversing with the AmericanIndians must have been “a respectful curiosity” about theircustoms (46–47). “Despite his fervent Christian beliefs, thereis no record that he ever tried to convert any of them” (54).

Given Williams’s own detailed accounts of evangelizingthe Americans, both in his published works and correspon-dence, this claim simply cannot be sustained. The Rhode Is-landCharter commended him and other colonists by name fordiligently attending to the “conversion of the poor ignorantIndian natives” to “holy Christian faith and worship, as theywere persuaded” (Charter 1663). Yet Nussbaum’s concertedefforts to downplay the evangelical core of Williams’s tolera-tion project reflect the same subterranean discomfort evidentin recent histories of Readmission. It seems that in order tomakeWilliams palatable tomodern audiences, one must denyagainst all evidence that his evangelical arguments reflectedany interest in actually converting anyone. Yet this funda-mentally misrepresents his toleration project. For Williams,the suggestion that toleration and evangelism went hand inhand was more than just an opportunistic, instrumental asidethat can be written out. Williams’s participation in and re-imagination of the evangelical tradition inaugurated byCastelliohad important consequences for his theory of toleration—bothethically, in the everyday practices and interactions of indi-viduals, and institutionally, in the political and legal arrange-ments he believed liberty of conscience required.

To see this, it is necessary to look at howWilliams himselfpracticed toleration toward American “pagans” and Englishprotestants alike. His approach in both cases was unapolo-getically evangelistic, but unlike most of his contemporaries,Williams saw evangelism as an essentially critical and con-



troversial affair. He believed that the true form of Christ’sworship had eluded Christians since the conversion of Con-

men were created of stone, then wood (217). Moreover, whenWilliams talked Hellfire, the Narragansett talked back. To his


stantine had tempted them with the powers of proselytismand persecution. Nevertheless, the “saints” could fulfill theircharitable duty to evangelize by witnessing against that whichwas false in Christendom. In this commitment to a polem-ical form of evangelism Williams’s controversial religiousand political pamphlets and the conversations described inhis handbook of Narragansett language, A Key into the Lan-guage of America ([1643] 1963a), were of a piece. The Keyreported many dialogues with the Americans about “HowMan fell from God, and his present Enmity against God, andthe wrath of God against him until Repentance” (Williams[1643] 1963a, 86–87). The helpful dialogue about damnationincluded in the chapter “Of Their Religion” expanded on thistheme: “Friend, when you die you perish everlastingly. Youare everlastingly undone. God is angry with you. He willdestroy you. For your many Gods. The whole world ere longbe burnt” ([1643] 1963a, 134). In response to the profitablequestion, “What then will become of us?” Williams replied:“God commandeth. That all men now repent” (138–39).

Pace Nussbaum then, Williams evidently took his duty topreach—forcefully—against errors and spread news of the“written word of God” quite seriously. Still, one might won-der whether in deploying the violent imagery of hellfire andeternal damnation he risked losing the evangelical high groundand lapsing into proselytism himself. Williams’s fellow Puri-tans in Massachusetts accused him of as much, and he wassensitive to the charge. He insisted that the words, not swords,of civil dialogue were the only legitimate means available towould-be evangelists—and in this, they might profit fromthe Americans’ example. Although Nussbaum and others citeWilliams’s praise for the Americans as paragons of “BereanCivilitie” as further evidence of his disinterested appreciationfor their culture, even this had evangelical significance. ForWilliams, the Americans resembled the “noble” and “gentle”Bereans, who sheltered Saint Paul after he fled persecution inThessalonica, not only in their hospitality toward an exiledevangelist but in their willingness to listen critically and par-ticipate actively in evangelical conversation. The Bereans “re-ceived the Word with all readiness of mind, and searched theScriptures daily, whether those things were so. Therefore manyof them believed” (Acts 17:10–12 KJV).

Williams insisted that like the Bereans before them, theAmericans must be left at liberty to engage with Scripture andjudge for themselves, “according to their Indian or Americanconsciences, for other consciences it cannot be supposed theyshould have” ([1644] 1963b, 354). A Key reported how, aftertelling them about the creation of Adam and Eve, they re-sponded with their own creation story in which the first


assertion that “English-men, Dutch men, and you [Amer-icans] and all the world, when they die . . . that know notthis God . . . goe to Hell or the Deepe [and] shall ever la-ment,” they responded, “Who told you so?”, and he notedtheir critical questioning about whether to accept his an-swer—“Gods Booke or Writing”—approvingly (218–19).

Here the distinctive character of Williams’s universalevangelical toleration as a departure from the tradition in-augurated by Castellio comes more clearly into view. Ethi-cally, toleration was clearly compatible with viewing others aspotential converts and with expressing one’s negative judg-ments about them and their religion as well. As far asWilliamswas concerned, the Americans were “Divell”-worshippers andCatholics deserved the name of “anti-Christians.” And yet hebelieved that American pagans, Catholic anti-Christians, Jews,and “Turkes” should not only be grudgingly forborne but ac-tively engaged in civil, yet unmistakably evangelical, conver-sation. This mutual and occasionally antagonistic evangelismwas a messy, unconstrained, and altogether uncertain affair instark contrast with the organized efforts undertaken by hischief competitor in Indian affairs, John Eliot. Williams sus-pected that Eliot’s system of “civilizing” Indian proselytes inEnglish-style “praying towns” before “Christianizing” themintroduced inappropriate forms of material and physical co-ercion more evident of proselytizing zeal than a truly evan-gelical care for their souls. Upon his second return to Lon-don in1651,Williams carried apetition from theNarragansettto Parliament “that they might not be forced from theirReligion.” This plea for toleration was necessitated, he ex-plained, by the “dayly visit[ations]” and “Threatenings” theyreceived “by Indians that came from Massachusetts, that ifthey would not pray they should be destroyed by war” (1988,2:409–10).

Williams’s implication was clear: toleration was essentialto true conversion in creating the social and political con-ditions under which evangelism, rather than proselytism,could proceed. Here, one can see that his distinctive ethicalconception of toleration had profound institutional conse-quences as well. For a sufficiently evangelical conversationto take place, the informal freedom to worship privately assecond-class citizens, as was the case for Jews in England afterReadmission, was insufficient. Rather, toleration required thatbelievers and nonbelievers alike be fully included in politicaland social life, and hence that the evangelical liberty to preachand propagate their own doctrine be extended to all. He il-lustrated this point with the familiar metaphor of the ship ofstate. In a tolerant society, “both Papists and Protestants, Jewsand Turks, may be embarqued into one Ship.” But as on a



transatlantic crossing, all must be “suffered to breathe andwalke upon the Deckes, in the ayre of civill liberty and con-

law banning religious insult of the kind adopted in Mary-land, Carolina, and Pennsylvania.9

sylvania, as well as the 1669 Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina allincluded religious insult provisions.

10. Nussbaum goes further, claiming that Williams “nowhere alludesto [his religious] beliefs in arguing for liberty of conscience” (2008a, 43).


versation in the Ship of the commonwealth”—not “choakedand smothered” below (Williams [1644] 1963b, 204). Althoughthe passengers might hate each other, they should make themost of their suffering: “in the lamentable shipwreck ofmankind . . . next to the saving of your own souls . . . yourtask as Christians is to save the souls . . . of others” (87).

Although his most famous institutional innovation re-mains the “wall of separation” realized in the Rhode Island’sunprecedented disestablishment of religion, the radicalism ofWilliams’s position—enshrined in the Rhode Island charter asthe “free exercise and enjoyment of [citizens’] civil and reli-gious rights”—in contrast with restrictions routinely placedon tolerated minorities like the Jews at Whitehall cannot beoverestimated. But Williams’s further emphasis on evange-lism as an essential element of free exercise had equally radicalimplications. Evangelical liberty—as a freedom to witness andadmonish others for their spiritual errors—was crucial for thefree flowing of the Word among the “briars” of the wilder-ness. Toleration thus had two distinct requirements: first, the“permission of the most Paganish, Jewish, Turkish, or Anti-christian consciences and worships” and second, “that they . . .be fought against with that Sword which is only (in Soulematters) able to conquer: to wit, the Sword of God’s Spirit, theWord of God” (Williams [1644] 1963b, 3). Williams’s crucialinnovation here—and where he departs further from earlierevangelical tolerationists—was in seeing evangelism itself notonly as an inducement to, but an object of toleration. Moreradical still, he insisted that this evangelical liberty belongedto all Christians and not just ordained and beneficed clergy.Through the idea of equal protection enshrined in the RhodeIsland Charter, this evangelical liberty became a universalright belonging to non-Christians, too.

Nevertheless, Williams’s determination to put this unre-stricted evangelical liberty into practice in Rhode Island—which became a “receptacle for all sorts of riff-raff” and reli-gious refugees from New England—severely tested the limitsof his toleration. Particularly obnoxious were the Quakers,who among the many enthusiastic Protestant sects had takenLuther’s reinterpretation of evangelism as a holy war of wordsmost closely to heart.Williams complained that “their Tonguesare the most cutting and bitter of any that I can hear ofprofessing the Protestant Reformation, and it is certain, wherethe Tongue is so . . . they will be as bitter and cutting in Handalso, where God pleaseth to permit a Sword to fall into it”([1676] 1963c, 207). But in a classic example of trying tocombat uncivil speech with more speech, Williams chal-lenged several leading Quakers to a public debate and pub-lished the results. Moreover, Rhode Island never enacted a


Forst (2013) calls the connection between Williams’s “re-ligious argumentative framework” and the radicalism of histoleration “paradoxical” (183), but this is wrong. This sectionhas shown that its ethical and institutional character andevangelical outlook were intimately and logically connected.10

The success of Williams’s “livelie experiment” of radical in-clusion and unconstrained evangelical liberty in Rhode Is-land thus presents a direct challenge to Rousseau’s suggestionthat religious intolerance leads always to civil persecution. Asa practice of individuals and of states, his evangelical tolera-tion capitalized on the ethical minimalism of tolerantia whileturning it inside out. Whereas early evangelical tolerationistshad argued that religious outsiders should be tolerated so asone day to be brought inside the fold and embraced fully asfellow members of the body of Christ, Williams’s polemicalapproach erased the distinction by turning everyone into out-siders and “briars,” Christians and non-Christians alike. In theend, it was this brilliant but counterintuitive strategy that en-abled him to create a new kind of community in the New En-gland wilderness from altogether unlikely materials.

JOHN LOCKE AND REASONABLE EVANGELISMWilliams’s views on toleration are often lumped together withthose of his younger and more famous contemporary, JohnLocke (1632–1704). Yet as scholars have been increasinglywilling to acknowledge—particularly critics of the liberal tol-eration with which he is synonymous—Locke’s toleration,both as a private practice and a public policy, was also evan-gelical in important ways (De Roover and Balagangadhara2008; Matar 1993; Scherer 2013; Turner 2011).

Locke argued consistently in A Letter Concerning Tolera-tion that to embrace toleration was to follow Christ’s exam-ple and acknowledge words, not swords, as the only divinelysanctioned methods of spreading the Gospel, for “no man canbe a Christian without Charity” and “that Faith which works,not by Force, but by Love.”Thus, in employing inaptmethods,persecutors were guilty, among other things, of failing to“sincerely and heartily apply themselves to make other peopleChristians” (Locke [1689] 2010, 8). This evangelical instru-mentalism became even stronger in the later Letters. While hisinveterate Anglican critic Jonas Proast expressed shock at the“largeness of the toleration,” Locke gave an apt summation of

9. The 1649 Maryland Toleration Act, the 1682 Great Law of Penn-



the evangelical toleration tradition since Castellio: “we prayevery day for their conversion [as is] our duty,” but it will

Here, Locke’s evangelical toleration was closer to that ofCastellio, or even Augustine, in being motivated by a spirit

difference of opinions . . . seeking truth alone, desire themselves and othersto be convinced of it only by proofs and reasons; they are gentle to the errorsof others, being not unmindful of their own weakness; forgiving humanfrailty and ignorance, and seeking forgiveness in turn” (1976, 6:495).

13. Locke’s late work The Reasonableness of Christianity (1695) was anexercise in latitudinarian theology in which he attempted to show that the


“hardly be believed that we pray in earnest if we exclude themfrom the other ordinary and probably means of conversion;either by driving them from, or persecuting them when theyare amongst us” (1690, 62).

Although Locke is sometimes accused of smuggling inChristian assumptions under the auspices of neutrality, he wasevidently not a very able smuggler. Still, many scholars havebeen tempted to dismiss these evangelical arguments as rhe-torical moves meant to embarrass the orthodox while doingvery little work. In focusing exclusively on the rationalist, in-differentist or skeptical aspect of his thought however, onefails to appreciate the importance of Christian love in sup-plying the moral core of his toleration project, not to men-tion Locke’s personal interest—and participation—in prac-tical efforts in this direction.11 Loving one’s neighbor meantone could not simply content oneself by allowing him to goto Hell in his own fashion. “The care of each man’s Salvationbelongs only to himself,” but “affectionate Endeavours toreduce Men from Errors . . . are indeed the greatest Duty ofa Christian.” Indeed, “anyone may employ as many Exhor-tations and Arguments as he pleases, toward the promotingof another man’s Salvation” ([1689] 2010, 46).

Locke’s extension of evangelical conversation from a dutyof Christians to a universal right of “anyone” is in stark con-trast with the one-sidedness of traditional evangelical tolera-tion. In this, he sounds a lot like RogerWilliams, and yet closerexamination reveals that his approach to “charitable Admo-nition” was quite different. Whereas Williams’s evangelismwas polemic, Locke’s was irenic and oriented toward peaceand conciliation, not controversy. This difference can be ex-plained in part by the different projects in which they wereengaged.WhileWilliams saw toleration as a means of creatingcommunity out of unlikely and uncooperative materials inthe New World, writing from exile in the Netherlands Lockesaw it as a way to maintain unity in the face of diversity inthe Old. As he declared in a letter to his friend Philipp vanLimborch commenting on his hopes for the Act of Toleration:“Men will always differ on religious questions and rival partieswill continue to quarrel and wage war on each other” until “theestablishment of equal liberty for all provides a bond of mutualcharity by which all may be brought together into one body”(1976, 3:689).

11. As Turner (2011) has shown, during his tenure as Secretary to the
Lord Proprietors of Carolina (1669–76) and later as a member of theBoard of Trade (1696–1700), Locke approved and facilitated the kind ofstate-sponsored missionary efforts among the Americans decried byWilliams.

of genuine inclusiveness in wanting to bring asmany outsidersin—to the Commonwealth or to the Church of England—aspossible. Locke had little patience for the separatist scruplesof “fanatics” like Williams. Any Christian who would denythat name to others was “truly the author and promoter ofschism and division . . . and tears in pieces the church ofChrist” (1692, 289). Despite his own considerable heterodoxy,Locke remained a communicating member of the Church ofEngland throughout his life. This was not just a curious ac-cident of his biography; it reflects a deeper outlook and un-derstanding of what toleration as a practice of individualscoexisting under conditions of deep diversity requires.

Accordingly, while Williams and Locke both justified tol-eration evangelically, they understood its horizontal dimen-sion as a first-person practice in vastly different ways. Al-though he described himself as an “evangelical Christian,”Locke had rejected the bombastic, polemical excesses of “pa-pists” or “fanatics.”12 He complained that many people whomight easily have been brought into the Church “by friendlyand Christian debates” and the “gentle methods of the Gospelmade use of in private conversation” had nevertheless beenkept out by such “ill and unfriendly treatment” and “railingfrom the pulpit” (1690, 86–87). People would be more likelyto listen if complimented rather than insulted. Hence, to reapfully the benefits of “charitable admonition” and the “oppositearguings of men of parts,” one must not only listen to othersand refrain from interruption but should reflect a sincere“indifferency” to one’s own opinions and a willingness to re-vise one’s views (1996, 185–86). His lasting latitudinarian in-terest in emphasizing points of agreement as “fundamental”and deemphasizing disagreements as adiaphora or matters ofindifference reflected the same reasonable, consensus-oriented,and persuasive approach.13

As with Williams, Locke’s more robust understanding ofethical toleration had institutional consequences as well. Herewe can see that the familiar picture of “Lockean” toleration asthe separation of church and state and a particular slate of

12. By this hemeant: “[Those who] declare war on no one on account of

fundamentals necessary to salvation were sufficiently minimal so thatanyone who acknowledged Christ deserved the name of “Christian”—thesimilarity to Hobbes’s own minimalist creed in Leviathan critics gleefullypointed out.



individual conscience rights is misleading in key respects.While the Letter preached a theory of the “essential distinc-

than atheists, as Nussbaum assumes (2008b), his principledopposition to civil oaths meant that they, along with the

cessity to a stable social order was often adduced—including by Locke—as anargument against the toleration of Catholics and atheists, and they were usedto ferret out radical protestant sectarians like the Quakers as well.

15. Forst (2013) characterizes Locke’s insistence on a shared belief ina deity as the sine qua non of social life as “Locke’s Fear” and themain obstaclekeeping his theory from meeting the bar of “mutual respect” (244).

16. In addition to his interest—and occasional participation in—theongoing missionary efforts of his countrymen in the New World, the Fun-damental Constitutions of Carolina justified its grant of religious liberty onexplicitly evangelical grounds (1997, 178).

17. For the concept of “blind spots” in the history of toleration, seeLaursen (2011).


tion” between civil and spiritual goods, laws, and government,in practice Locke was amenable to a national church and astate-supported ministry actively engaged in missionizing athome and abroad (Turner 2011). In contrast with Williams’ssystem of the free and vigorous exercise of universal evan-gelical liberty leading to often highly uncivil wars of words,Locke’s tolerant society would be one wherein members uni-versally gave up their “implacable enmities” and “ill use” to-ward one another and recognized their indifferent differencesas “several paths that are in the same road” while “diligentlyendeavor[ing] to allay and temper all that Heat and unrea-sonable averseness of Mind . . . [and] fiery Zeal for his ownSect” ([1689] 2010, 27–28). This hope for concord led Locketo view the mutual anathemas characteristic of evangelicalcompetition as violations of mutual charity and social unity.Although in his mature toleration writings, he advocated asystem of individual freedoms of (public) worship and asso-ciation, one searches in vain for the principled commitment toevangelical liberty one finds in Williams.

Still, Locke’s reasonable evangelism will likely sound moreappealing to a modern audience than does Williams’s enthu-siastic, polemical approach. But here again, his evangelicaltoleration was actually closer to traditional arguments in mak-ing the toleration of diversity conditional on the recognition ofa deeper, underlying unity—in this case an agreement on cer-tain “fundamental” beliefs, including the existence of a deity,the principle of toleration, and the golden rule. As a policymatter, then, Locke’s evangelical toleration also had clearlimits, which brought it closer to the traditional vision as well.While Williams’s toleration turned neighbors into strangers,Locke’s preserved a strong distinction between those insideand those outside the pale. The relative difference, however,was no longer between fully included insiders (Christians)and tolerated outsiders (Jews and Turks), as it had beenfor Castellio and the evangelical defenders of Jewish Read-mission. Rather, for Locke, the relevant distinction was be-tween “reasonable” insiders who received all the rights andprivileges he associated with toleration and “unreasonable”outsiders who did not (see Fish 1997).

Locke’s transformation of medieval tolerantia from anoutsider into an insider status was thusmore exclusionary andyet no less radical than Williams’s had been. In extending thepale of this more robust toleration as a system of full inclusionand affective belonging, Locke also sharpened the edge—leaving Catholics, atheists, and the intolerant, out in the cold.Williams, by contrast, included all of these groups. Althoughin calling for the toleration of “anti-Christians” Williams wasdeploying a common Protestant epithet for Catholics, rather


Catholics of dual allegiances so feared by Locke, were tolerableas well.14 And althoughWilliamswas evidentlymistaken in hissuspicions of Quaker intolerance, he was more than comfort-able tolerating other theologically intolerant Protestants likehimself, even making nice with the persecutorial denizens ofMassachusetts when the exigencies of the moment demanded(1988, 2:464–70). For Locke, however, for whom oaths wereessential, cohabiting on terms of equal liberty required a degreeof social trust impossible beyond a fixed range of permissibledifference in behavior and belief.15

Thus, while Locke’s toleration became more liberal overtime, it also became more limited. The Letter’s infamous ex-clusionsreflectedthisinsistenceonfundamentalagreementanda reasonable, refined approach to evangelism as conditions oftoleration that necessarily excluded somepeople andpositions.By tempering their “unreasonable averseness of mind,” hehoped that evangelical disagreements might themselves be-come sources of solidarity through which citizens recognizedthe fundamental commitments they shared, as well as the rea-sonableness and respectability of their disagreements. Locke’sgrowing emphasis on the evangelical importance of tolera-tion and Christian mission, both in theory and in practice, inhis later works thus reflected his belief in the importance ofcultivating as well as expanding this consensus by makingconverts, and so reenforcing these affective bonds.16

EVANGELICAL TOLERATION TODAYFar from being theological window-dressing, then, or an un-fortunate “blind spot” in otherwise attractive theories, evan-gelical hopes and endeavors were deeply imbricated inWilliams’s and Locke’s toleration projects and strongly influ-enced the institutional and ethical forms they took.17 Never-theless, the few scholars who take note of these argumentscontinue to dismiss them as merely prudential, anachro-nistic holdovers from a theocratic age, “transitional” theories

14. Oaths were a serious business in the seventeenth century; their ne-



“typical of [their] time” but of blessedly little contemporarysignificance (Forst 2013, 185; Nussbaum 2008b). Evangelical

gelical activity than not.18 The liberal connection between re-ligious freedom and free speech—and the priority of these

19. The arguments made by Sala (2013) from a contemporary theo-retical perspective in favor of the liberal commitments of “unreasonable”evangelistic Christians are supported by empirical work as well (e.g.,Woodberry 2012).

20. For an attempt to do something along these lines on the basis ofthe Islamic idea of da’wa, see March (2009).


toleration may have been persuasive in a context where tol-eration was a matter of reconciling doctrinal disputes betweenEuropean Christians, they suggest, but in our globalized worldof multicultural—and secular—liberal democracies, this is nolonger the case.

This article has sought to challenge such arguments andthe reductive, secularizing assumptions on which they restby recovering evangelical toleration as an important albeitforgotten tradition in early modern political thought. Still, onemight wonder whether placing high-profile “proto-liberals”like Locke and Williams at the center of this tradition simplyconfirms critics’ suspicions of a disqualifying missionary in-tolerance at the core of liberal toleration. If these patron saintsof liberalism were evangelical tolerationists, what are we?

Rather than writing off the entire tradition of liberal tol-eration as an imperial endeavor on the basis of its evangelicalorigins, the preceding sections demonstrate the importance ofbeing attentive to the varieties of evangelical toleration in play.Here we might see Williams and Locke as representing twocompeting strands of evangelical tolerationism—one sectarianand polemical, the other ecumenical and irenic—with lastinglegacies for liberalism. Something of this legacy can be seen inthe tension that continues to characterize liberal political theoryand practice when it comes to how to address the various formsof verbal violence that trouble us today. Whether they come inthe form of proposals to prohibit blasphemy and religious in-sult by law or to establish speech codes, trigger warnings, or safespaces on college campuses, attempts to eradicate the wars ofwords characteristic of tolerant societies inspire vastly differentreactions among self-proclaimed liberals. Those in favor argue,like Locke, that the members of tolerant societies should becommitted to reasonable and civil modes of public discoursethat emphasize points of commonality and downplay divisionsso as to foster a deeper culture of inclusion and mutual respect.Others, like Williams, see these forms of uncivil speech as theinevitable and tolerable by-products of the rowdy, agonisticevangelical competition at the heart of liberal democracy inwhich the freedom to condemn—and offend—others is sac-rosanct.

Genealogically speaking, the kind of evangelical tolerationassociated with radical sectarians like Roger Williams shedslight on a strong conceptual and institutional connection be-tween religious freedom and free speech intuitive to manyliberals—especially in America, where it constitutes the first“fundamental” of our “First Amendment Faith” (Waldron2012, 29). Yet this connection is hardly obvious or universal.Historically, as in the case of Jewish Readmission, tolerationhas more often been accompanied by restrictions on evan-


freedoms in America in particular—is thus a curiosity to beexplained. The contrasting emphases placed on the protectionof evangelical controversy byWilliams and Locke suggest thatAmericans’ peculiar form of “free speech fundamentalism”

owes something to the relative density of competing strandsof sectarian Protestantism in the American colonies, and toevangelicals like Williams who were unwilling—or in con-science, unable—to bite their tongues or hold their peace.

This genealogical observation arguably has contemporarynormative significance. The different theories of evangelicaltoleration developed by Williams and Locke thus provideexamples of religious reasons that can be offered to believingChristians not simply for tolerating others but for endorsingthe specific slate of conscience rights—not only of speech butalso exercise and assembly—associated with religious free-dom in liberal democracies besides.19 An evangelical toler-ation that affirms liberal institutions must rest on a partic-ular theology of conversion, true, but it is one that canperhaps be argued for from within many religious tradi-tions, including proselytizing faiths other than Christianity.20

While these comments are necessarily speculative, ruling outsuch questions on the grounds that evangelical arguments areinvariably “protestant” or “protestantizing” will not do. Sucharguments are not exclusive to Protestant Christianity, nor is“Protestantism” a homogeneous monolith. Whether protes-tants in early modern England espoused evangelical tolera-tion—and what kind—depended on their particular theolo-gies of mission and conversion. This suggests that toleration,in the early modern period or today, never rests on uncon-troversial secular assumptions; it requires theological work aswell. The salience of evangelical arguments to a citizenry alto-gether less tolerant and secular than political theorists mighthope should not be underestimated.

Still, one might grant the genealogical significance of evan-gelical toleration and its power in explaining certain diver-gences within contemporary liberalism without accepting thefurther claim that theorists should approach these early mod-ern arguments as alive and possibly attractive for the present.Valuing one’s co-citizens primarily as “briars”—that is, as po-tential converts—asWilliams did, seems to show a striking lack

18. Consider also the treatment of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Europe orheadscarves as “ostentatious” religious signs in France, Turkey, and Quebec.



of respect for their conscientious strivings and moral person-hood, to say the least. And indeed, despite a growing consensus

ethic it inspired—is deserving of attention as a potentiallyattractive approach to difference and disagreement not only

Earlier versions of this article were presented at the Centre for


in favor of including religious arguments in democratic delib-eration, even those theorists most open to them balk when itcomes to evangelism, which they associate with an imperialisticexclusivism incompatible with mutual respect (Nedelsky 2006,112). The tendency to recast all evangelism as proselytismnoted above thus undermines its pretensions to persuasivenessand insinuates that evangelical toleration—even more so thanthe similarly instrumental secular arguments from peace andpublic order—falls afoul of the principle of reciprocity essentialto deliberation, both in not being universally shareable and inrelying on an asymmetry in openness to persuasion (Forst2013, 185; Urbinati 2014).21

Yet this distinction between unacceptably “instrumental”evangelism and acceptably “principled” persuasion seemsclearly overdrawn. Both proceed by reasoning on the basis ofcore moral commitments or first principles, which are notthemselves open to negotiation and which one believes to betrue and hopes, one day, will be universally shared. Here,would-be evangelists appear to have the edge on consistencyin actually practicing what they preach. Instead of insu-lating themselves among the like-minded, they act on theircommitments by talking to those with whom they funda-mentally disagree on a regular basis and doing the unglamorousand unpleasant work of trying to convince them that they arewrong. The same cannot usually be said of scholars whoreproach evangelicals for being “unreasonable” and closed-minded and congratulate themselves on their own willingnessto revise their views while conversing exclusively with thosewho already agree with them. Then again, if open-mindednesswere a genuine prerequisite of dialogue, who would bother?Evangelism—more so than deliberation or persuasion—moreaptly describes much of what the citizens of modern liberaldemocracies actually do in the public sphere. When politicaldisagreements begin to look more like proselytizing than pub-lic reasoning, one wonders whether a truly evangelical com-mitment to competing for converts, rather than preachingto the converted, might well be a good thing.

Here, Williams’s “paradoxical” and polemical evangelicaltoleration—and the engaged, inclusive, and contestatory

21. For a compelling rejoinder to the reciprocity argument when it
comes to the role of religious arguments and citizens in democratic de-liberation in general through an appeal to a “systemic” rather than a“dyadic” model of persuasion, see Hertzberg (2015, in this issue). Inter-estingly, this critique of evangelism as a violation of reciprocity is itselfevidence of the salience of early modern evangelical toleration—and itscritics. Hobbes criticized evangelism as “unwanted counsel” and describedall missionary activity in Leviathan as a violation of the golden rule (2012,2:456).

for religious citizens, but for everyone. Unlike Locke, whotheorized toleration from a safe distance, Williams confrontedthe challenge of constructing and governing a tolerant so-ciety first-hand. In the process, he was forced to acknowledge aharsh reality with which many theorists remain uncomfort-able: namely, that familiarity with those from whom we differon the “fundamentals,” in politics as in religion, is more likelyto breed contempt than its opposite.

Williams’s and Locke’s respective “blind spots”—Quakers,on the one hand, and the “unreasonable” on the other—liketheir divergent approaches to evangelism, owe much to thesedifferent perspectives. It is little wonder, then, that Locke’s isso widely shared among political theorists, who approach tol-eration in a similarly aspirational and irenic way. But Wil-liams knew well from experience that a tolerant society can-not pick and choose its materials and remain “tolerant” forlong. He was under no illusion that constant contact with thosewe believe to be culpably in error on the fundamentals wouldbring us to respect them more. Nevertheless, he saw that con-stant evangelical engagement with the damned could perhapskeep us from demonizing them in the way that cloaking one-self in the righteous certainty of the like-minded certainly will.

While Locke’s irenic ideal of inclusiveness and of embrac-ing the Other as a friend and brother is no doubt attractive, thealternative to holding those whom we believe to be culpably inerror at arm’s length is more often pushing them overboard.If we can appreciate Williams’s alternative vision, as I thinkwe should, we should also be prepared to take its evangelicalsources seriously, especially insofar as they challenge our as-sumptions about what it means to be “tolerant” today.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Ethics at the University of Toronto and the “Toleration ofTolerations” workshop hosted by the Columbia University So-ciety of Fellows. I am grateful to Bryan Garsten, Andrew Sabl,Andrew Murphy, Stephen Holmes, Ira Katznelson, JenniferNedelsky, Simone Chambers, Linford Fisher, Murad Idris,Rebecca Woods, Claire Sabel, and Alan Johnson as well as thejournal’s anonymous reviewers, for their comments and con-structive criticisms at various stages during its development.

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Evangelical Toleration (The Journal of Politics)

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