Presentation by Rev. Heber C. Jentzsch, President of the
Church of Scientology International
to the
Discussion in Congress held by
The Institute on Religion and Public Policy
The State vs Religion in France
(cont...)

I wish I could tell you that the situation in France is improving and that the voice of moderation is at last receiving an audience. Unfortunately, I can offer no such reassurance. Strongly influenced by the French anti-religious movement, which M. Vivien and MILS represent within the French government, last month the movement’s actors in the French National Assembly passed a repressive bill designed to criminalize minority religions.

The bill’s preamble chillingly proclaims its discriminatory intent “to paralyze the activities of sect organisations.” No attempt is made to define a “sect” – a derogatory term which, as we have seen, is applied in France to improperly classify no less than 173 religions, including that of our own President and Vice President.

Under this bill, any religious organization which the government, or the French anti-religious movement, decided to classify as a sect could literally, and without much ado, be shut down and extinguished as a fellowship of believers. No longer would responsibility for a violation be placed on the shoulders of the violator, but this bill, if passed, would criminalize the entire religion for the wrongdoing of some of its people. The bill also creates a new penal offence called “mental manipulation” with hefty prison sentences for those found guilty. There is no medical, legal or academic definition of this term. Indeed, the scientific community has formed a strong consensus that no legally tangible phenomenon of this sort exists. French religious leaders and some of the French media have correctly pointed out that it could be applied to anybody from Carmelite nuns to newspaper reporters to insurance salesmen. Not only the French Protestant Federation, but even French Roman Catholic leaders have expressed concern that this bill, if it passes the Senate and becomes law, could one day be used to shut down their own churches and monasteries.

The bill also prohibits any minority religion from proselytizing within 200 meters of “a hospital, retirement house, public or private institution of prevention, curing or caring, or any school from 2 to 18 year old students.” These repressive provisions would not have looked out of place in Stalinist Russia.

An earlier version of the bill, proposed by Senator Nicolas About, passed the French Senate in December. One of its proponents blatantly declared on the Senate floor that its aim was simply to dissolve minority churches without even granting them their due process rights: “The dissolution, which is a political decision, also has the advantage of not using the judicial procedures in which sects are so skillful in maneuvering.” In other words, since several courts of appeal have upheld the rights of minority religions, the instigators of About’s bill sought to bypass judicial barriers by closing down religious organizations by government edict. That would bestow on Alain Vivien the role of accuser, judge and executioner.

This intended legislation is the most dangerous attack on religious freedom and civil liberties in Western Europe in the last 60 years, since the Nazi master plan to annihilate the Jews and their religion.

That the traditional churches in France are protesting is encouraging, but you may ask why there is not a greater outcry from the democratically-minded segment of society. France is not a country with a history of religious tolerance. Some of the measures in the proposed bill are hauntingly evocative of the infamous Revocation Edict of 1685, which stripped French Protestants of their civil rights and denounced their faith as a “false religion” – just as today’s minority religions are stigmatized as “sects.” There is never any rational reason for discrimination, not today, not 60 years ago, not in 1685. But at least part of the reason – and this view is shared by a growing number of sociologists – is the appallingly high level of political corruption in France. Convictions, convenient resignations and transparent excuses are commonplace. Ergo, the current attempt by Alain Vivien and his legislator friends to criminalize and do away with religion takes on the character of a campaign to remove the traditional barriers to immorality and corruption, including abuse of public office.