I am happy to see a renewed interest in Voltaire’s Treatise on Toleration. Although the worst of religious violence in Europe had waned by the time of Voltaire was born, he witnessed plenty of religious oppression and discrimination. We need to relearn the lessons that Enlightenment thinkers learned from the religious violence that plagued Europe in the aftermath of the Reformation and Voltaire’s book is a great place to start. Unfortunately, those who most need to learn these lessons are probably not the ones reading Voltaire.

Voltaire: “It does not require great art, or magnificently trained eloquence, to prove that Christians should tolerate each other. I, however, am going further: I say that we should regard all men as our brothers. What? The Turk my brother? The Chinaman my brother? The Jew? The Siam? Yes, without doubt; are we not all children of the same father and creatures of the same God?”

Voltaire’s 250-year-old book on tolerance climbs French best-seller lists after terror attacks | Star Tribune.