Opening night address for Freedom from Discrimination Month: "The Challenge of Religious Diversity"

The opening address for Freedom From Discrimination Month delivered by Walla Walla College President John Dybdahl.

In the opening address, Dr. Dybdahl told conference participants and others that “tolerance is not merely a nice option or unnecessary frill, but absolutely essential if we want to live together and… survive.”

He then went on to discuss what tolerance doesn’t mean—compromising your own religious principles, covering over differences, moral neutrality, or even laying aside missionary work—as well as what it does mean.

True tolerance, he suggested, has four requisites, which provided a structure for the balance of the conference:

1. Humility: Admitting that our answers and beliefs could be wrong or partially wrong, and are at best incomplete.
2. Respect for the other: Acknowledging the honesty and sincerity of others, their good motives, and the positive contributions their religions have made to humanity.
3. Listening to the other: Acknowledging the possibility that there may be a measure of truth in the experience and understanding of others to add to our own
4. First-hand experience: Getting to know others in ways beyond words, by directly experiencing their homes, their cultures, and their lives.

In both the opening address and in the discussion immediately following, the speakers made clear the importance of moving beyond a reluctant tolerance to a spirit of appreciation and love of the other.