Though tolerance is often treated as a unidimensional concept, there are at least three components of tolerance: extent of approval, extent of permission, and origins of belief. This paper explains why these dimensions should be examined separately, rather than fused together as they are in much of the tolerance literature.
This paper reexamines the issues introduced in Greer's "Attitude Toward Religion Reconsidered"—definition, measurement, and evaluation of attitudes toward religion—in order to come to more positive conclusions about religious attitudes and attitudes towards religion.
This article presents a new approach to measuring political tolerance, with scales measuring support for freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom of political association, in hopes that they will serve as better predictors of opinions and behaviors in actual disputes.
This article considers how to measure political intolerance. The traditional Stouffer-based measure of intolerance is compared to the Sullivan, Piereson, and Marcus "least-liked" measure using data from a national survey. The traditional predictors of intolerance perform very similarly irrespective of which of the tolerance measures is used. Future tolerance research can profitably utilize either measurement approach.
There are many obstacles to religious tolerance, but we often overlook the most basic obstacle: few people have a clear idea of what religious tolerance is. This essay illuminates the nebulous concept of religious tolerance in depth in hopes that reason will inform the good will of people hoping to practice tolerance.
This analysis suggests that the tensions that once existed between Protestants and Catholics, and the hostility that Jews faced from both groups, have largely diminished in America. These findings strongly suggest that the United States has the capacity to overcome historical religious divisions and prejudices.