This morning, I found
N.T. Wright, the Bishop of Durham, spoke before the British House of Lords last week, on the topic of
Moral Climate Change and Freedom of Speech.
In these initiatives, ‘tolerance’ is not the point. My Lords, I can ‘tolerate’ someone standing on the other side of the street. I don’t need to engage with them. ‘Tolerance’ all too easily supposes that all religions are basically the same, and that all of them can be discounted for the purposes of public life. No, my Lords: ‘tolerance’ is a parody of something deeper, richer and more costly, for which we must work: a genuine and reciprocal freedom, a freedom properly contextualised within a wise responsibility, freedom not to be gratuitously rude or offensive, especially to those who are already in danger on the margins of society, but to speak the truth as we see it while simultaneously listening to the truth as others see it, and to work forwards from there.
He attempts to place the now-famous Danish cartoons and the Muslim reaction to them within the context of a larger social and moral framework.
* * * * * *
As I noted earlier, I've started reading Wright's
The Challenge of Jesus. Once begun, I felt I was entering into an ongoing conversation. I need a feel for how Wright uses words, and a larger picture of the arguments within which he places himself.
Wright has written three heavy tomes, so far, in a series called
Christian Origins and the Question of God:
The New Testament and the People of God,
Jesus and the Victory of God,
The Resurrection and the Son of God. Some of the material in The Challenge of Jesus is culled from the lengthier works (especially Jesus and the Victory of God), so I assume some supporting evidence has been left out of the shorter book, which makes me curious.
At any rate, I am scanning Wright's recent book on the Bible,
The Last Word, to get a feel for his view of scripture. I continue to feel I have come into a conversation late, maybe bitten off more than I can chew.
