The interests and memories which spring from local customs contain a germ of resistance which is so distasteful to authority that it hastens to uproot it. Authority finds private individuals easier game; its enormous weight can flatten them out effortlessly as if they were so much sand.
    -Benjamin Constant

This book began with an intuition concerning a remarkable coincidence in modern history. [T]he idea of toleration as we have received it in the tradition of John Locke and John Stuart Mill first came into providence along with the rise of modern nation-states. My intuition was that there might be some connection. [...]

The historical coincidence is seen not simply in the genesis of these two trends. The movement toward strong centralized governments was accompanied by a sustained secularization of private life and a trend toward relaxing the moral discipline of society.
    -A.J. Conyers, Preface to The Long Truce

For Locke, as we have also seen in the case of Hobbes and Bayle, as well as many other thoughtful people of the seventeenth century, 'religious sectarian warfare is the fundamental problem of politics.'

The Protestant reformers questioned the orthodoxy of the established church and created widespread disorder by insisting, through various sects, on establishing new bases of orthodoxy and thus securing their own power politically. At the same time, implicit in the Reformation was the freeing of the church from "priestly orthodoxy" and securing instead liberty of conscience.

The background of the Reformation and the ensuing wars clarified the problem for Locke. Orthodoxy was employed by the state to bring order, but now orthodoxy was an uncertain touchstone. Locke found that this new circumstance called for rethinking the role of the state in regard to religion. If one cannot be certain of what is right in matters of religion, and one does not wish to endure the tumultuous conflicts arising from many religious opinions, then two options present themselves. One option is "secular absolutism, in which the state establishes a religion but makes no claim it is the true religion." This was Hobbes's solution, and it became in essence the option first taken by Locke. The other option is liberal toleration. In this case, religion is no less subordinated to the state: it is relegated to the sphere of the private life and prevented from having meaningful political influence because "the disestablishment of religion deprives them [the priests] of all pretexts for interfering in politics." The change that students of Locke have noticed, and puzzled over, is a change in strategy, as Kraynak sees it, and not a change in "purpose and principle."

[C]ontemporary scholars have been unable to provide a satisfactory account of Locke's development because they deny that there is a connection between absolutism and toleration. Now, this denial is not simply an accident of scholarship. It occurs, first of all, because Locke defends liberty of conscience as a right in the Letter; and this work, rather than the absolutist Tracts or the prudential Essay was published by Locke and established its reputation. Hence, it is presumed that Locke's "first principle" is Liberty rather than Security, and that absolutism and toleration are opposites in principle because of their opposing attitudes toward liberty of conscience.

But this impression could not withstand a careful analysis of Locke's Letter, if it were not strengthened by the contemporary understanding of liberalism. Few people today use the Lockean arguments that liberty of conscience must be allowed in order to prevent priestly domination and must be limited by the requirements of security. Instead, liberty of conscience is justified by arguments from Kant, Mill, Dewey, and certain existentialists. They require liberty for ends such as the development of an autonomous moral personality, or the progress of culture and science, or the authenticity of self-expression. As an end-in-itself or as a means to ends higher than civil peace, liberty of conscience appears to have no affinity whatsoever with absolutism.

Yet this affinity remains, and can be seen in the practice of all tolerant societies. For even when liberty serves higher ends, the ends are limited by the requirements of civil peace. Hence, tolerant societies discourage actions which disturb others out of moral zeal, such as public preaching and public-spiritedness. And they encourage behavior which is private and retiring, whether devoted to lower ends such as commerce and hedonism, or to higher ends such as autonomy, culture, science, and authenticity. In addition, the diversity of opinions is limited by an underlying uniformity; for toleration is sustained only by a general distrust of religious and moral authorities. Hence, tolerant societies require official and unofficial enlightenment which promotes intellectual and psychological skepticism. These conditions are the foundations of all tolerant societies, indicating that toleration always is based on an exclusive moral choice and an ultimate uniformity of opinion. Therefore, despite its advances in the uses of liberty and in fostering diversity, contemporary liberalism retains its Lockean basis as its affinity with secular absolutism.

Toleration in its modern form is the solvent that dissolves the bonds of interdependency. It therefore makes society fit for the "new" ordering and regulating powers of the state.

The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, utility, or the greatest happiness principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, and wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.

[T]he very character of modernity has accorded tolerance the status of a secular virtue. It is a virtue inasmuch as it strengthens a certain predisposition toward life together. It is secular in that the predisposition it strengthens is one of postponing or diverting the quest for meaning that is an essential component of social cohesion and the forming of groups or associations. Religion, of course, is what we call that quest, along with the practices and habits of the heart it engenders, The religious impulse is strong enough to bind people together, and also strong enough to set them at deadly odds with one another.

Toleration, as we modern people have defined it, is the decision to replace that quest with another one both practical and material in nature. Thus, it actually lessens the binding authority of community life, an authority that makes subtle appeal to manners, traditions, group sanctions, and respect for elders. At the same time, the ersatz virtue increases the need for organization, authority exerted from outside the group, formal laws, as well as emphasizing the protection of abstract "rights" that are divorced from what the living community calls the "good".

What I am distinguishing as the practice of toleration, over against the doctrine that emerges from development of democratic liberalism, is the logical result of a recognition that our imperfections oblige us to listen to the insights of others. We are utterly dependent upon the gifts of society and tradition--even traditions other than our own. It is toleration that recognizes not the implied self-sufficiency of the individual or of various idiosyncratic groups in a supposed pluralistic world but the insufficiency of these limits and the ultimate need for a catholic vision. Even as the doctrine of toleration promotes isolation, the practice of toleration gently nudges us into community. Therefore, authentic toleration serves, and does not hinder, the forming and functional life of groups within society. It does not hinder in that it does not discourage the quest for ultimate meaning that is the inner light and life of any social group of any lasting importance.