NEWS STORY: Minority faiths under fire in Western Europe

c. 1999 Religion News Service WASHINGTON _ Religious rights advocates have expanded their efforts to protect minority faiths to what many thought an unlikely arena _ some of Western Europe’s leading democracies. The concern stems from actions in France, Belgium, Germany, Austria and elsewhere that critics say run roughshod over the legal rights of minority […]

c. 1999 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON _ Religious rights advocates have expanded their efforts to protect minority faiths to what many thought an unlikely arena _ some of Western Europe’s leading democracies.

The concern stems from actions in France, Belgium, Germany, Austria and elsewhere that critics say run roughshod over the legal rights of minority religious groups, most of whom are relatively new, small or foreign imports.


Among the targeted groups are the Amish, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Wicca, Hare Krishna and Seventh-day Adventists. Others include dozens of small evangelical and Pentecostal Christian churches, the Church of Scientology, a number of Hindu and Buddhist movements, the Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church, obscure New Age groups, Satmar Hasidic Jews, Baha’is, Mormons, the Roman Catholic organization Opus Dei and even the YWCA.

In France, a government commission issued a list of more than 170 suspect groups. In Belgium, a list of 189 groups was released. Among them was the Assemblies of God, a fast-growing Pentecostal denomination based in Springfield, Mo.

Critics say the government actions fail to differentiate among the targeted groups, which vary widely in beliefs, practices and mainstream acceptance in the United States and elsewhere.

Instead, they say, the governments have cast all the groups as potentially dangerous sects in an overzealous response to the violence of Japan’s Aum Shinri Kyo cult, Southern California’s Heaven’s Gate commune, and, in particular, the 1994-1995 mass suicides and homicides in France and Switzerland carried out by Order of the Solar Temple members.”Everyone is being lumped together,”said Massimo Introvigne, director of the Center for Studies of New Religions in Torino, Italy.”It’s reminiscent of the McCarthy era in the United States.” Targeted groups, said Introvigne, have been subjected to media attacks, harassment, tax and other legal problems.

A sign of how widespread the”anti-cult”sentiment has become is a proposal before the 41-nation Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly to establish a central European”observatory”to monitor”groups of a religious, esoteric or spiritual nature.” The proposal also urges Western Europe’s wealthier nations to help their poorer neighbors create”information centers”to locally dispense information on suspect groups.

The proposal expresses concern for”protecting”the children of group members from”ill treatment, rape, neglect, indoctrination by brainwashing and non-enrollment at school, which makes it impossible for welfare services to exercise supervision.” At the same time, the proposal”reaffirms”the assembly’s”commitment to freedom of conscience and religion,”and”recognizes religious pluralism as a natural consequence of freedom of religion.”But because the proposal does not define what makes a group suspect, critics say the potential for abuse is great and could be subject to political whims and cultural prejudices.

The assembly, an advisory body to the council’s decision-making Committee of Ministers, is scheduled to vote on the issue Monday (June 21) at a meeting in Strasbourg, France.


Christiane Dennemeyer, a council spokeswoman, said the proposal is likely to pass although it could be amended.”The majority of (council) members appear at this time to be of the same opinion as the recommendation,”she said.

U.S. government officials concerned with religious liberty issues have taken note of the situation, pointing out that domestic laws in many of the affected nations as well as international treaties are supposed to safeguard the targeted groups’ religious freedoms.”The United States understands that there are some dangerous groups that use religion as a cover for their activities,”said Robert Seiple, the State Department’s ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom issues.”Our concern is these governments are framing the issue as one of sects and cults. That ignores some dangerous groups that act under political cover and includes some groups that in no way are dangerous, simply because of religious prejudice.” The issue was also the subject of a recent Capitol Hill hearing by the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, an independent federal agency that monitors human rights concerns set forth in the 1975 Helsinki accords.

At the hearing, Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., a commission member, said he was particularly concerned that nations with less developed democratic institutions, such as the former Soviet republics and China, are using the Western Europe situation as an excuse for their own heavy-handed treatment of religious minorities.

Russia and the other former Soviet republics as well as China have long been cited by religious freedom advocates as stifling, to various degrees, the free expression of faith. Conditions in those nations were often touted by advocates during their successful push to gain congressional and White House support for last year’s International Freedom Act, which made religious liberty abroad an official U.S. foreign policy concern and established Seiple’s post.”The Western Europe model influences what other nations do,”said Brownback.”That’s why it’s so very important what happens there.” Fear of new cult violence is often noted by Western European politicians as a prime reason for the need to move against suspect groups.

However, Willy Fautre, the Brussels-based director of Human Rights Without Frontiers, said some secular politicians, particularly in France and Belgium, have used past cult violence as an excuse to mask their bias against all religious faith. Likewise, he said, representatives of established churches, fearful of competition from new groups, have joined with the secularists to present a united front against the minority faiths.”The established Protestant and Catholic churches want to keep out the newcomers, while the secularists think they’re protecting enlightened Western society from irrational beliefs,”Fautre said in an interview following the commission hearing.”It’s really a case of strange bedfellows.” Among the suspect groups listed in the French government report was the Institut Theologique Bible college and seminary in Nimes run by Massachusetts-born Louis DeMeo, an independent Baptist pastor associated with the Greater Grace World Outreach in Baltimore. In addition to his 10-year-old college, DeMeo also leads a 200-member church and directs a 50-student Christian day school, both also in Nimes.

In an interview, DeMeo said he moved to Nimes 17 years ago”to help re-establish Christian life in France, which has abandoned its Christian heritage.” DeMeo said he has never been officially told why his Nimes institutions have been labeled potentially dangerous. He said the designation has resulted in tax, banking and job problems for himself and others associated with his schools and church.”The government never got in touch with us to ask who we were before putting us on the list or since,”said DeMeo.”It’s incredibly discriminating.” He also said he suspects he knows at least part of the reason why the French government has deemed him suspect.”They have this thing against evangelical Christianity coming from America,”he said.”It’s a threat to the French, very, very few of whom are evangelical Christians.” A spokesman at the Embassy of France in Washington said he could not comment on DeMeo’s case.


DEA END RIFKIN

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