ABSTRACT
Tolerance was an issue in early Christianity because Christians were on the defensive. John Stuart Mill believed religious tolerance to be in "the permanent interests of man as a progressive being" because of his confidence that truth emerges from creedal competition. Backward societies, rather than requiring religious tolerance, require tutelary regimes. Civil tolerance, the obverse of civil piety, is indifference among all diversities of faith and observance so long as these are consistent with the state sect itself. The great difficulty was that Christians and their imperial rulers subscribed to different ultimate concerns. To tolerate someone else's ultimate concern means in part to tolerate his faith in it, and in part to tolerate the services that it demands of him. A very different concern is ceded ultimacy in, say, Christianity and Judaism, but at least they have in common that each professes an ultimate concern.
