The tolerant and the tolerated: the limitations of the concept of religious tolerance

Abstract

Nowadays, religious tolerance is often pointed as the panacea of religious conflicts. As soon as a violent act – or even a terrorist act – that happened due to religious intolerance is reported, religious tolerance is pointed out as a solution. It is often seen as the most appropriate resort not only in academic circles, but also by the large and small media as well as by much of the population. But is religious tolerance truly the solution to such problems? What does this term actually mean? What were the causes and what was the historical moment of its arising? The present article proposes to study the context of the appearance of religious tolerance, it’s meaning and what this tolerance concretely represented. The purpose is to analyze how this tolerance has manifested itself, based on a qualitative bibliographical and documentary research, in order to ascertain whether it is able to guarantee equal conditions for free religious exercise-or to exercise no religion at all. This research reached the conclusion that tolerance does not presuppose equal respect for all religious conceptions (or for the absence of religion), often even allowing the granting of unequal and inferior treatment to religious minorities. This statement is exemplified by the analysis of the meaning of the judgment of the ADI 4439, which allowed confessional teaching in Brazilian public schools.