Traditionally, religions have played an essential role in speaking out on and resolving the core problems affecting the culture. Indeed, a key reason why religious institutions are legally entitled to charity status and tax-exemption is that their good works furnish valuable services to the community that the government would otherwise have to provide, burdening the taxpayer with the costs. The Scientology religion holds that social betterment is a primary role of religious organisations, and while church and state must remain separate, religious bodies should work in concert with government officials to resolve the ills of society.

To some, this function of religion may seem self-evident. Yet it is currently under attack in some quarters. In April 2004, Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Vatican’s representative to the United Nations in Geneva, warned of “an emerging subtle form of religious intolerance [that] opposes the right of a religion to speak publicly on issues concerning forms of behaviour that are measured against principles of a moral and religious nature.”

The increasing tendency to relegate religion solely to the private sphere is in opposition to what the framers of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international human rights instruments envisaged. Article 18 of the Declaration makes clear that the right to freedom of religion embraces “freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.”

Freedom of religion is not a narrowly defined term. The United Nations Human Rights Committee has set the international standard by declaring that “the terms ‘belief’ and ‘religion’ are to be broadly construed,” and that religious freedom “is not limited in its application to traditional religions ....” The Committee “views with concern any tendency to discriminate against any religion or belief for any reason, including the fact that they are newly established, or represent religious minorities that may be the subject of hostility on the part of a predominant religious community.”¹ The jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights is aligned with this standard.

1 General Comment No. 22 on Article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Forty-eighth session (1993).