Tolerantism

You can tell this has been a busy week - fewer blogs this week. My aim for consistency has not been reached; conversely, I have more blog ideas than ever, with so little time to act on them.
In preparing for the Equip History class, part 2, I believe I've coined a new word which I'm hoping will be of use to my fellow humans.
The idea of Tolerance is obviously a huge part of the last 500 years of Christianity. In the early days of the Reformation, the concept of toleration was not popular. When Luther split from the Church of Rome in 1517, it immediately spawned other Reformed beliefs, notably the Anabaptists (Rebaptizers) and the Calvinists. About the only thing the three Protestant groups agreed on was their distaste for The Mother Church, but from the Marburg Colloquy on, it was ugly and uglier. While it's hard to consider in these days, the prevailing thought was that if you did not believe the right thing - whether it be from Calvin, Zwingli, Luther or the Pope - you were going to hell. And by thing, they meant "my brand of Christianity." It makes sense, given that, that wars were fought; it became a kind of mission mind-set, that if my brand of Christianity did not prevail in war, souls would be lost forever. The concept of not baptizing your children as infants, as ludicrous as it now seems, became cause for murder and war. The pacifist Anabaptists were easy pickings - no better enemy than one who won't fight back - and when the Calvinists were shut out of the Peace of Augsburg, the Thirty Years War ensued, at which point, at the Peace of Westphalia everyone was so exhausted that they said, "Fine; you have your hell-bound country, and I'll have my City on a Hill." I never thought of it as an aid to healing before, but the concept of denominations was really a way to say, "We are all Christian, we are all saved, we just want to settle our disagreements by agreeing to disagree rather than throwing cannon balls at each other." That was the first big step toward true Toleration - of bitterly disagreeing with someone, but allowing that they have a right to their freedoms too.
The Act of Toleration in 1689 had to do with the Church of England allowing freedom of religion for several disparate branches of Christianity. Another step forward.
With the Enlightenment, Christendom was then asked to tolerate more than just fellow Christians. Whether or not he actually said it, Voltaire's Essay of Toleration has the ultimate toleration quote: "I may disagree with what you have to say, but I shall defend, to the death, your right to say it." Seems obvious now, but it was radical stuff in the post-Inquisition, post-Counter-Reformation, post-exploration/conquest era.
No one would have said, as we say now, that all these religions (much less denominations) are basically the same. Aren't we advanced?
Which leads us to the word of the day:
Tolerantism: the belief that to be truly tolerant, one must hold that all systems of belief are equal; to claim one truth is more valid than another is (shudder) intolerant.
For a Christian (or a Lutheran, Muslim, Mormon, Baptist, non-denom or Unitarian - wait, they invented the idea...) to claim that they are the only way to salvation, and that their worldview is supreme, or even that there is such as thing as a dominant worldview, is intolerant.
Do you see the difference? Actual tolerance means that I can say to my Muslim brother, "While I disagree that Mohammed (peace be upon him) is The Prophet, I will not harm you for believing in it." True tolerance is a "willingness to accept feelings, habits or beliefs that are different from your own." Tolerantism states that you must accept all feelings, habits or beliefs as equally valid to your own.
The 21st century's biggest anathema is to be intolerant. No one wants that label.
I, for one, am intolerant of Tolerantism.