Benjamin Franklin on Tolerance

This post is excerpts from a Time Magazine feature article on Benjamin Franklin and his greatest virtues.  The piece was published in the June 29, 2003 issue of Time.[1]

Time Magazine did a piece on Ben Franklin’s Greatest Virtues, June 29, 2003.  They named seven:

1.            An Aversion to Tyranny

2.            A Free Press

3.            Humor

4.            Humility

5.            Idealism in Foreign Policy

6.            Compromise

7.            Tolerance

It is important to remember that America was not born with the virtue of religious tolerance, but had to acquire it. One of the myths is that the first settlers were advocates of religious freedom. In fact, the Puritans were very intolerant, not only of witches but also of any deviation from the tribal orthodoxy. 

Among those who ran away from the intolerant orthodoxy of Boston was Franklin. He ended up in Philadelphia, where there were Lutherans and Moravians and Quakers and even Jews, as well as Calvinists, living side by side in what became known as the City of Brotherly Love. Franklin helped formulate the creed that they would all be better off, personally and economically, if they usefulness of religion, but he did not subscribe to any particular sectarian doctrine. This led him to help raise money to build a new hall in Philadelphia that was, as he put it, "expressly for the use of any preacher of any religious persuasion who might desire to say something." He added, "Even if the Mufti of Constantinople were to send a missionary to preach Mohammedanism to us, he would find a pulpit at his service." 


Franklin wrote a letter that spelled out a religious philosophy based on tolerance that would last his life. It would be vain for any person to insist that "all the doctrines he holds are true and all he rejects are false." The same could be said of the opinions of different religions.

By the end of his life, he had contributed to the building funds of each and every sect in Philadelphia, including £5 for the Congregation Mikveh Israel for its new synagogue.
When Franklin was carried to his grave in 1790, his casket was accompanied by all the clergymen of the city, every one of them, of every faith. 

In a world that was then, as alas it still is now, bloodied by those who seek to impose theocracies, Franklin helped to create a new type of nation that could draw strength from its religious pluralism. This comfort with the concept of tolerance—which was based on an aversion to tyranny, a fealty to free expression, a willingness to compromise, the morality of respecting other individuals and even a bit of humor and humility—is what most distinguishes America and its like-minded allies in the messy struggles that confront a new century.

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[1] For the full cover story, see http://content.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,20030707,00.html