1 - Introduction

Summary

How do we live together in the midst of our differences? The time may well have come to let a new voice speak into this pivotal question, a new voice that is, in truth, an old voice. This question is once again inspiring fresh conversation, as it invariably does in societies faced with the realities of diversity and plurality in their midst. The intensity of the conversation ebbs and flows with changing religious, political, economic, cultural, and geographic tides. Today it can be heard in high volume, as virtual cornucopias of cultures, philosophies of life, communities of belief, and ways of being are trying to live together in single western political societies, and in an increasingly connected global world. How are we to live together in the midst of this tremendous and ever-increasing pluralism? What shall be the basis of our common life, what guiding framework can we share, how do we acknowledge the differences in our midst, and what ethos will mark the interactions between those differences? These are among the most pressing questions involved in this most important conversation. And this conversation continues, with no signs of ending soon, because its current participants have yet to provide answers that fully or adequately resolve the tensions arising from today's pluralist situation.

One voice in the conversation, that which has been heard the loudest and has held the most sway in liberal democracies, offers an answer based in toleration: we live together by tolerating the differences we find around us.