The earliest actions in defence of religious freedom by a Church of Scientology were born out of both necessity and conviction. In achieving success, the Church has helped broaden the understanding of religion within the world’s cultures and so advanced the rights of all faiths.

In the early 1960s, in the state of Victoria, Australia, a climate of intolerance posed a daunting challenge to Australian Scientologists to pursue their chosen religious path. But when the dust finally settled, the Church of Scientology in Australia had gained the respect of the state and federal governments of Australia, with the Deputy Premier of Western Australia characterising former acts of discrimination against Scientologists as “the blackest day in the political history” of his state. And the Church had won the right of its parishioners, in 1973, to have their weddings recognised as legal by the Australian federal government.

But the most important victory was still to come. In October 1983, in Australia’s uppermost federal court, the Church of Scientology established the definition of religion under the constitution for the first time. The High Court of Australia determined that “[t]he conclusion that [the Church] is a religious institution entitled to the tax exemption is irresistible.” In reaching this decision, the court embraced a definition of religion that encompassed the teachings of all faiths generally accorded religious status, an expansion of the previously existing definition in Australian law that had restricted religiosity to a Judeo-Christian concept.

In fact, the Australian government’s own Inquiry into the Definition of Charities and Related Organisations cited the case as “the most significant Australian authority on the question of what constitutes a religion....” That definition of religion became the basis for anti-discrimination laws that have protected the rights of, among others, Seventh-Day Adventists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Muslims and Hindus.

While the Church was setting a precedent in Australia, so too was it strengthening the rights of religious organisations under European law. In the 1970s, the Church brought two cases against Sweden before the European Commission of Human Rights. Until then, the Commission had held that a corporation, being a legal and not natural person, was barred from bringing an action under Article 9 (freedom of religion) of the European Convention on Human Rights. In ruling on the Church’s cases, however, the Commission reversed its opinion, finding that “When a church body lodges an application under the Convention, it does so, in reality, on behalf of its members. It should, therefore, be accepted that a church body is capable of possessing and exercising the rights contained in Article 9(1) in its own capacity as a representative of its members.” ²

The Commission’s ruling had profound ramifications. In Religious Liberty and International Law in Europe, Malcolm D. Evans, Professor of Public International Law at the University of Bristol, England, noted that later decisions have built upon this finding and “have confirmed that churches and other forms of legal person are, in principle, beneficiaries of the rights set out in Article 9....”

Given that the case that led to this precedent was brought against the Swedish government on religious freedom grounds, it is fitting that today the churches of Scientology are fully recognised in Sweden as religious, charitable and tax-exempt organisations.

² X and the Church of Scientology v. Sweden, No. 7805/77, 16 DR 68 (Dec. 1979), 70.