One of several multi-faith marches for religious freedom led by the Church of Scientology in Germany, this peaceful demonstration in Frankfurt helped draw attention to widespread governmental discrimination against a range of religions.

Because the Church helped to establish a new climate of zero tolerance for religious bigotry, an organisation was needed to bridge the gap in understanding between a person who joins a little-known religious movement and other family members.

Thus, a coalition of religious organisations formed the Foundation for Religious Freedom. Managed by a multi-faith board that includes civil rights experts as well as Christian, Muslim and Scientologist representatives, the Foundation educates the public on religious rights, freedoms and responsibilities through a host of activities. It is a member of the International Association for Religious Freedom, the oldest such advocacy organisation in the world.

“Filling the moral vacuum” was the subject of this gathering in interfaith leaders from across the world at the Church’s headquarters in East Grinstead. West Sussex, England.

The Foundation maintains a referral list of qualified experts in different religious fields who provide enquirers with factual information about groups outside the mainstream. These experts regularly deal with media enquiries in countries as diverse as Germany, Brazil, Great Britain, the U.S. and Canada.

According to the Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Religion, the Foundation “has made every attempt to connect anxious parents with scholars who have researched particular groups and thus can provide an informed perspective on their beliefs and practices.” Indeed, whereas “anti-sect” groups are bent on sowing division and conflict between family members, the Foundation’s emphasis in handling the more than 15,000 enquiries they have received has been to resolve differences and bring people together.

To advance the cause of dialogue in religious matters, the Foundation has published a practical handbook, The ABCs of Tolerance³, which offers helpful tips to families whose relative has joined a movement they know little about. Translated into seven languages, the book has won praise from religion experts, including Dr. Huston Smith, author of The World’s Religions, and the Swiss theologian and author, Dr. Hans Kung, who described it as “a most useful handbook.” The work is available hardcopy and on the Foundation’s website: www.toleranceforall.org, which receives 1,000 visitors a day.

Such endeavours are not new for the Churches of Scientology. Much earlier, in 1977, and towards that same objective of healing divisions, the Church in Sweden co-founded the Swedish Religious Forum. The group boasts a diverse religious membership. It seeks to make better known and applied the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights among religious congregations and to defuse religious as well as racial tensions. The Forum made a significant difference in bringing about a more tolerant climate towards religions and a heightened understanding of religious freedom, with its activities often featured in major Swedish media, including Svenska Dagbladet and Dagens Nyheter.

In January 2004, the name of the Forum changed to the Swedish Religious Peace Council, with a board that includes civil rights experts as well as Christian, Muslim and Scientologist representatives.

The churches of Scientology’s focus in advancing freedom of religion throughout Europe has been to dispel the stereotypes about minority religions that fuel intolerance and to increase public understanding of the value of religious liberty. As an example of such Church activities, in August 1998, Scientologists organised the European Journey for Religious Freedom, a 3,325-kilometre marathon through eight European countries to raise public awareness of religious discrimination on the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The marathon culminated with a colourful and moving multi-faith festival of speeches and music in Frankfurt’s Old Opera Square.

The next day, religious and human rights leaders from Germany, France, Britain and the United States met to formulate actions in response to what they saw as increasing religious intolerance on the part of the German government. They included, for example, representatives of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People who conducted a fact-finding investigation into the involvement of certain government officials in inciting religious hatred in Germany.

In 1994, the Church of Scientology in Denmark co-founded another organisation, the Danish Interfaith Forum, its membership including representatives of Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, Unitarian, Christian Science, Quaker, Lutheran and Baha’i faiths. In fact, churches of Scientology regularly organise conferences to formulate solutions not only to religious discrimination, but other pressing problems of society. The Church has hosted such events in Germany, France, Belgium, the United Kingdom, the United States and other countries.

In May 2002, the Church of Scientology International’s Human Rights Office, in coordination with the Association of British Muslims and the Queens Federation of Churches in New York, assembled 75 clergymen, professors and government officials, representing two dozen religious traditions, for a conference in England. They included faculty members from universities in England, Germany, Belgium and Sweden, as well as other attendees arriving from Nigeria, Czech Republic, Uzbekistan, Russia, France, Poland, United States, Latvia, Croatia, Canada, Spain, Zambia, Bulgaria, Armenia, Myanmar and Sri Lanka.

The purpose was not merely to provide a kaleidoscope of religious diversity at the beginning of the 21st century, but as Reverend Marcus Braybrooke, President of the World Congress of Faiths, declared in his inaugural address, “Society needs to be based on spiritual and ethical values, but in our modern world these cannot be based on the teachings of one religion, but on the moral values which the religions share.”

Indeed, the conference facilitated representatives of the religions in working together to address social problems of declining moral values, poor education and drug abuse. Religions may have different theologies, but they share common goals and are faced with common social maladies and pressures.

Theologians, as well as attendees from a wide range of faiths, characterised the conference as an important step forward. Dr. Kartan Surindar Singh, Chairman of the UK Sikh Education and Cultural Association, praised the Church of Scientology for providing an “impetus” towards such inter-religious dialogue, while Mr. Bala Balaraman, a Hindu and former chairman of a British association of faiths, said he learned something profound: “It taught me that people of different religions can meet and understand each other when they discuss problems affecting humanity at large.” The conference ended with a declaration “to help alleviate anxiety and tensions in the world by emphasising religious values and sentiments” and set an agenda to work to reverse the trends of drug abuse, violence, crime and immorality.

In addition to uniting religions to help solve the problems of society, Scientologists have stepped in to heal wounds torn open by inter-religious conflict. In 1999, the civil war in Kosovo displaced an estimated one million Kosovars from their homeland. This ethnic cleansing had its historical roots in religious differences that were exploited by warmongers inciting people’s hatred against each other. Whereas at one time, both Serbs and Albanians had been mostly Christian, over the recent centuries ethnic Albanians had become overwhelmingly Muslim. The depth of religious intolerance is evident from the Serbs’ destruction of mosques and other Islamic landmarks and in the attacks on Serbian Orthodox churches and religious relics by ethnic Albanians who returned to their homes after the war ended.

The majority of those made homeless were shepherded into refugee camps in Albania, Macedonia and Montenegro. Although the Red Cross and other humanitarian groups struggled to provide them with basic living needs, many were suffering severe trauma. Scientology ministers from around the world travelled to Albania to help those in the camps, the largest of which, in Tirana, was the temporary home for some 100,000 refugees. They began by helping the displaced Kosovars solve immediate living problems such as how to feed their children with no stove and how to keep them dry and warm, and simultaneously helped the disoriented and sometimes almost hysterical refugees recover from their emotional shock. One Kosovar summed up the gratitude of many when he described his transformation from “no hope” to a state where he felt “full of life again — something I had lost due to the war and the long journey here. I have been given a new life.”

³ In some language editions the book is titled, The Cult Around the Corner.