Editing Religious persecution (section)

====Ecclesiastical dissent and civil tolerance====
No religion is free from internal dissent, although the degree of dissent that is tolerated within a particular religious organization can strongly vary. This degree of diversity tolerated within a particular church is described as ''ecclesiastical tolerance'',<ref>John Coffey (2000), p. 12</ref> and is one form of [[religious toleration]]. However, when people nowadays speak of religious tolerance, they most often mean ''civil tolerance'', which refers to the degree of religious diversity that is tolerated within the state.

In the absence of civil toleration, someone who finds himself in disagreement with his congregation does not have the option to leave and chose a different faith—simply because there is only one recognized faith in the country (at least officially). In modern western [[Civil law (legal system)|civil law]] any citizen may join and leave a religious organization at will; In western societies, this is taken for granted, but actually, this legal [[separation of Church and State]] only started to emerge a few centuries ago.

In the [[Christian debate on persecution and toleration]], the notion of civil tolerance allowed Christian theologians to reconcile Jesus' commandment to [[Expounding of the Law#Love for enemies|love one's enemies]] with other parts of the [[New Testament]] that are rather strict regarding dissent within the church. Before that, theologians like [[Joseph Hall (bishop)|Joseph Hall]]<!--or [[Thomas Thorowgood]] in protestant England--> had reasoned from the ecclesiastical intolerance of the early Christian church in the New Testament to the civil intolerance of the Christian state.<ref>John Coffey (2000), p. 33</ref>