Historical, Structural, and Cultural Factors: A Socio-Legal Analysis

All religious groups operate within the confines of the legal structure of the societies in which they reside (Beckford and Richardson Reference Beckford, Richardson, Beckford and Demerath2007; Richardson Reference Richardson and Yamane2016). Doing so for favored groups, which might be the de facto or de jure official religion of a society, is usually quite different from the experience of newer and minority faiths. Indeed, these dominant faiths may take for granted many privileges and advantages in part because they have been able to influence the development of a legal structure that protects the privileged status they enjoy. Moreover, those in positions of power in society may share the values and beliefs of the dominant faith, allowing a degree of cultural intimacy that facilitates and protects the functioning of the dominant group.Footnote ⁵ The situation for minority faiths is, however, quite different. Often the beliefs and practices of such smaller groups are at odds with the values of the dominant culture, thus calling attention to the group and perhaps leading to levels of animus and efforts to exert social control. Such control efforts can vary greatly in intensity, ranging from various forms of harassment being allowed, or even officially encouraged, to direct official governmental efforts to suppress a minority religion (Richardson Reference Richardson and Yamane2016). Such efforts at social control of minority religions may lead to new legislation and often involve actions within judicial systems (Richardson Reference Richardson1995a, Reference Richardson2015c, Reference Richardson2021b). This Element therefore analyzes such efforts, which obviously affect minority religions as they attempt to survive in sometimes hostile environments and promote their ideas and practices. These control mechanisms also offer opportunities for judicial systems to expand their own purview and authority.

Even within the broad category of nations that purport to operate within the rule of lawFootnote ⁶ and promote democracy (Fox Reference Fox2020), differences exist. Implementation of the rule of law varies considerably within the Western nations and is virtually nonexistent in more authoritarian societies. Rule of law nations usually make efforts through their constitutions and legislation to maintain significant separation of religion and government, with the United States cited frequently as an example.Footnote ⁷ This model can allow and encourage a more competitive situation that facilitates some cultural and social space for minority religions to develop and function (Stark and Finke Reference Stark and Finke1992; McGraw Reference Lykes, Richardson, Richardson and Bellanger2003). Some rule of law societies have granted significant rights and privileges to a particular religion, or religions, either through constitutional provisions, by law, or historical precedent. Such societies adhere to the rule of law, but with specific important historical precedents. In such situations the dominant religious tradition may attempt to guard its rights and privileges against challenges from possible competitors by seeking alliances with dominant institutional and political entities in order to influence legislation and its implementation (Fox Reference Fox2020). Such dominant faiths may even enjoy explicit protections in founding documents or have special concords established by law or treaty. How such protections are developed is, according to William Chambliss (Reference Chambliss, Chambliss and Zatz1993), a dialectical agency-oriented process that reveals the values of those in power positions within a society. Some of those protections may result in quite explicit efforts at control, or even eradication, of minority religious groups.

Within nations that adhere to the rule of law, there are many differences historically and culturally that must be examined for full understanding of the legal status of minority religions. A theoretical analysis of the “sociology of religious freedom” (Richardson Reference Richardson2006b, Reference Richardson, Beyer and Beaman2007) examines important specifics, including the degree of religious diversity in societies. This diversity has occurred because of the considerable movement of people facilitated by modern means of travel, and because wars and other disruptive circumstances in their host societies have forced them to flee to safety. Religious diversity can force governments to attempt to manage religion to limit potential conflict and even violence between groups. Sometimes governments may decide to allow a degree of legal pluralism in a society, which grants some autonomy to specific religious groups to function in defined areas of life according to their own norms and rules.Footnote ⁸ Domestic relations (divorce, child custody, inheritance, and so on) is an area where some Western societies have granted, by either law or tradition, a degree of autonomy to Jewish and Muslim groups to manage such issues (Berger Reference Berger2013; Witte and Nichols Reference Witte and Nichols2013; Broyde Reference Broyde2017; Benhalim Reference Benhalim2019a, Reference Benhalim2019b).Footnote ⁹ Some Western nations have granted limited autonomy to indigenous peoples, which is another example of legal pluralism.

There are other important considerations as well if one is to grasp the level of religious freedom granted minority religions (Richardson Reference Richardson2006b).Footnote ¹⁰ The key characteristics of legal systems include pervasiveness, centralization, degree of autonomy, and whether a legal system operates in an adversarial or inquisitorial manner. Pervasiveness refers to how much legal considerations penetrate the everyday life of citizens in society. In some societies many if not most aspects of the lives of citizens are affected by laws and law-like considerations promulgated by governmental bureaucracies. The growing tendency for governments in some contemporary societies to surveil their citizens is an extreme example of pervasiveness. It occurs in the United States (Richardson and Robbins Reference Richardson, Robbins and Davis2010), but even more pervasively in some authoritarian societies such as China (Edelman and Richardson Reference Edelman and Richardson2003, Reference Edelman and Richardson2005) and Iran (Adeliyan Tous and Richardson Reference Adeliyan Tous and Richardson2024). However, there are many other ways that governments touch the lives of citizens in today’s world, some of which attempt to manage the religious life of citizens for, among other possible reasons, the management of potential conflict in an increasingly pluralistic world.

Centralization refers to whether government power and control is consolidated in one location and bureaucratic structure, or instead its functions are shared with other locations and bureaucratic structures in a more federalized system. The United States is an example of some sharing of power, with many functions left to the states by virtue of the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution.Footnote ¹¹ Germany also operates a somewhat federalized system, with considerable power granted to the 16 Länder (states) making up the country. Many other nations, both Western and non-Western, are much more centralized, thus potentially offering more control over all aspects of life for their citizens, including in their religion. Thus, the highly centralized government in France has launched major efforts to limit, control, or even dissolve some minority religions (see, e.g., Richardson Reference Richardson, Krylova, Shterin and Richardson2004; Wright and Palmer Reference Wright and Palmer2016; Adeliyan Tous, Richardson, and Taghipour Reference Adeliyan Tous, Richardson and Taghipour2023; Westbrook Reference Westbrook2024).

Autonomy of the judiciary is quite important to consider when examining factors influencing religious freedom in a society, even in countries where the other branches of government have been quite critical of new and minority religious groups (Richardson Reference Richardson2006b; Finke and Mataic Reference Finke and Mataic2021). Societies vary greatly in the levels of independence granted to judicial systems. Some such as Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, the United States, and even France and Belgium have judicial systems with considerable independence from other institutional structures. These courts have the inherent power to overrule actions of the legislative and executive branches in some circumstances, and their judicial systems are not usually dominated by any political party, the military, or a dominant church.Footnote ¹² These societies have constitutions, laws, and historical precedents that offer protections for human and civil rights, including religious freedom. Thus, if individuals holding positions of power within judicial systems share values that include religious freedom, then those values should be manifest in decisions made concerning religion and minority religious groups (Richardson and Van Driel Reference Richardson, Van Driel, Shupe and Bromley1994; Richardson Reference Richardson, Krylova, Shterin and Richardson2004). Such a situation has been described as demonstrating the “judicialization of religious freedom.”Footnote ¹³ Of course, minority religious do not always prevail in the legal arena, but they can at least be heard in countries operating under the rule of law and sometimes do prevail for understandable reasons.Footnote ¹⁴

Another characteristic worth noting concerns whether a society has a functioning system of lawyers willing and able to represent religious groups that are involved in legal actions. The adversarial system that operates in the United States is an example of such a system that allows lawyers who are so inclined to act as advocates defending religious freedom (Richardson Reference Richardson, Barker and Richardson2021c). Western societies such as France which operate the judicial system in an inquisitorial fashion are less prone to hear strong defenses of religious freedom in cases involving minority religions. In such systems, minority religions are disadvantaged unless the judge or representative of a governmental agency dealing with religion cases values religious freedom and has the autonomy to exercise their values.

The context of rule of law contrasts sharply with societies such as China, Russia, and Iran where minority religious groups may be defined as enemies of the State and thus are not allowed to defend themselves in any forum. These and other nations use the judicial system to promote the interests of the regime, a situation sometimes referred to as “rule by law.” Rule by law describes a system of governance in which the government can create and enforce laws as it sees fit, without regard for the impact on people’s freedoms or interests. This type of political system has one all-powerful entity, the executive branch – which might be dominated by a political party, the military, a dominant church, or a combination of such entities – able to enact any law it desires, usually through actions of a compliant legislative branch, with law enforcement and ultimately the courts enforcing those edicts through actions and rulings based on the law.

The various historical and structural factors delineated above obviously underpin efforts to exert control over both new and older minority religions in increasingly religiously diverse contemporary societies. Social control of such groups is obviously made easier in more pervasive and centralized systems of governance, especially if there are no competing institutions such as a functioning sector of entities, such as NGOs, that make up civil society, or an autonomous judicial system with the power to limit such efforts. In such societies the effects on religious groups of efforts at control are more effective, as the groups, in order to survive, make efforts to accommodate to the desires of entities within society that wield power. The degree of judicial autonomy plays a major role as well, whether demonstrated by rulings that offer some protections to minority religious groups or by efforts of the courts to extend and expand their own purview and authority.

This Element emphasizes that rule of law nations, although sometimes quite varied in historical factors and culture noted above, offer more opportunities to protect religious freedom. The typical tripartite political arrangements in such nations, as well as their underlying governing documents, usually afford protections for civil and human rights, including freedom of religion. In sharp contrast, rule by law nations with one dominant political organization do not brook any competition and religious groups are often viewed as a challenge to the authority of the state. Political authorities in such societies assume that any religious organization that gains a following must be controlled or abolished, regardless of what might be contained in constitutions and other governing documents. And in such societies the law becomes a tool with which to exert control, placing all religions, not only new and minority religions, at risk.

United States

The United States has served as a model rule of law state since its inception nearly two and a half centuries ago. The establishment of a strong tripartite system of government with its inherent checks and balances has served as an example for many other nations since the Republic was established. Recently and regrettably, the status of the United States as a rule of law nation is being called into question since the election of President Trump to a second term. He has issued dozens of edicts that seem to circumvent statutes and constitutional provisions and seems intent on ignoring the statutory roles of Congress and the Judiciary. His administration has refused to obey selected court orders when some of his directives have been challenged. Moreover, some in his administration have stated that as president he can ignore court rulings and have argued that judges who rule against him should be impeached. Erwin Chemerinsky, Dean of the Law School at University of California, Berkeley, among many others, has offered an analysis of the current situation in the United States (Chemerinsky Reference Chemerinsky2025). For an international perspective on what is happening in the United States, see the discussion by Hans Petter Graver, former Dean of the University of Oslo Law School (Graver Reference Graver2025a). He compares what is happening in the United States to what occurred in Germany in the 1930s, as well as in some contemporary Eastern European nations (Graver Reference Graver2025a).Footnote ¹⁵

Thus, it is unclear at the time of this writing whether the United States will persist as a rule of law nation. Nonetheless, historically America has a vibrant history of allowing, and even indirectly promoting, the growth of minority religions because of the First Amendment of the Constitution, which protects the free exercise of religion and has historically disallowed the establishment of a state religion. In addition, the country is a federated system with considerable power left to the individual states, thus its federal government has been less centralized and pervasive than most European countries. As a result, and with the tradition of “separation of church and state” at the national level, the country is replete with various religious experiments, some of which have developed into large international religions, such as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons), and the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Other examples of American-born religious groups of note include the Church of Christ, Scientist (aka Christian Science), and the Seventh-day Adventists.

In the second half of the twentieth century, America also saw the origination or growth of a number of NRMs that gained impetus to become international movements. Examples include the Church of Scientology, the Unification Church (now the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification), the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (known familiarly as the Hare Krishnas), and the Children of God (COG) (now The Family International, TFI). Some smaller new religious groups using controlled substances or sacrificing various animals as part of their rituals have emerged in the twenty-first century in North America or were imported from abroad (see Ward Reference Ward2009; Richardson and Shoemaker Reference Richardson, Shoemaker, Richardson and Bellanger2014; Stoddard Reference Stoddard2024). Although these newer religious groups often encountered serious difficulties, including legal actions against them, they could rely to some extent on protections offered by the US Constitution when required to defend themselves in court or to bring actions to defend their interests.Footnote ¹⁶ The adversarial system extant in the US legal system also offered opportunities to have strong advocacy at their disposal in such actions. This was occasionally accomplished by the development of in-house legal prowess (e.g., Jehovah’s Witnesses and Scientology), but often it involved securing support from legal or academic experts or NGOs interested in religious freedom. Some NRMs and older minority religions (see Richardson Reference Richardson and Hunt2015b) won many cases in the US Supreme Court or from governmental agencies such as the Internal Revenue System (e.g., Richardson Reference Richardson and Lewis2009; Roux Reference Roux, Barker and Richardson2021). Although the experience for minority religions with courts was sometimes positive, courts also found new interpretations of applicable legal provisions that limited or even cancelled those victories (Richardson Reference Richardson1995a, Reference Richardson1998b).Footnote ¹⁷

In the twenty-first century there has been a major shift in the way minority religions are treated in the United States as a result of a significant Supreme Court decision in 1990 (Smith v. Oregon), which took away some long-standing protections for minority religious groups. The case involved two drug counselors in Oregon who were members of the Native American Church, which used peyote as part of its sacred rituals. Their employment was terminated, and they sued, claiming this violated their religious freedom. They won at the trial level and with the Oregon Supreme Court but eventually lost on appeal by the State of Oregon with a Supreme Court ruling that dramatically changed how such matters were to be viewed. The new guiding principle became that if a law is facially neutral, then it is valid even if it infringed on the religious freedom of some individuals and groups.Footnote ¹⁸

This decision was viewed by many as a contraction of longstanding religious freedom rights. The situation led to a dramatic Congressional reaction with the near-unanimous passage of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) in 1996. The Religious Land Use and Institutional Persons Act (RLUIPA) in 2000 affirmed and even extended traditional protections for various religious activities.Footnote ¹⁹ These two acts offered grounds to defend religious freedom for minority religions, including even for prisoners and members of the military (see McGraw and Richardson, Reference McGraw, Richardson, Djupe, Rozell and Miller2020). Some resistance to these broader options has developed, however, as a conflict between some religious freedom claims and rights of some legally protected minorities, such as LGBQT persons, has developed in recent case law (Richardson and McGraw Reference Richardson and McGraw.2019).Footnote ²⁰

Germany

Germany’s religious history is quite different from that of the United States in that the region has been the location of devastating religious wars in its past.Footnote ²¹ In modern times, however, Germany has managed to develop a society based on a dual Catholic-Protestant arrangement that has been relatively peaceful. Indeed, as James Beckford (Reference Beckford1985, 251) notes in his discussion of why and how this peaceful coexistence developed, the cooperative religious landscape is sometimes credited with contributing to the relative peace and prosperity of Germany in the post-WWII environment.Footnote ²² This overall situation of seeming agreement on how German society should function in the postwar environment has not, however, precluded considerable concern about the rise of interest among a small minority of youth in some of the NRMs that have come to Germany, many of which are defined as American products. Consequently, there have been a number of official efforts to understand and control participation in what are referred to in Germany as “youth religions” or “youth sects.” Given the small size and numbers of these groups in Germany, it seems that the focus on them has all the trappings of a moral panic (Cohen Reference Cohen1972; Richardson and Introvigne Reference Richardson, Introvigne and Bromley2007), illustrating Beckford’s point that the reaction to newer religions is of more interest than the religious groups themselves (Reference Beckford1985, 11).

In the United States, battles over NRMs often were fought within the judicial system because of First Amendment protections afforded religion; in addition, the nation had a history of church-state separation. In Germany the situation is considerably different, with there being a much closer relationship between the dual religious hierarchy and the government. There is a view that the government in Germany is more paternalistic toward its citizens than the US government (Beckford Reference Beckford1985). Indeed, there has been a working relationship between certain governmental entities, such as the Federal Ministry for Youth, Family, and Health, and the national hierarchies of the Catholic and Protestant churches, both of which have devoted considerable resources to the perceived problem of the new youth religions. The ministry, which has a constitutional edict to protect German citizens, has used this as a justification to produce widely circulated publications warning of the threat of youth religions, and these have been used as materials in schools throughout Germany. These publications have also been promoted by mass media outlets in Germany that have contributed to concern among the general population, thereby contributing to the moral panic. The ministry has sponsored special programs and financed research projects directed at promoting the official view of the new religions (Beckford Reference Beckford1985, 257–9). The ministry has also cooperated with various anticult organizations that have been developed in Germany, and it has taken the lead in having other federal ministries join in efforts to control the supposed menace of youth religions.Footnote ²³

The debate in Germany over youth religions, especially Scientology, led directly to the establishment in 1996 by the German Bundestag of an Enquete Commission on “So-called Sects and Psychogroups.” The Commission took its remit seriously and had 49 sessions over two years. It also requested that scholars in the area of study conduct research for the Commission before issuing its report (Seiwert Reference Seiwert and Richardson2004). The final report in 1998 was, however, quite controversial. Hubert Seiwert, a scholar of some repute who was appointed to the Commission as an expert on religious groups, even drafted a critical minority report that was attached to the final official report and signed by two other Commission members.Footnote ²⁴ Seiwert noted that no accusations of criminal or unlawful activities by any of the religious groups could be substantiated – except possibly for Scientology, but even that was not certain. However, the Commission, which included some well-known anticult-oriented members, maintained a negative posture toward the groups that had given rise to the establishment of the Commission when it made recommendations. Seiwert notes that the report had little impact on governmental policies with the exception of one major change that allowed the government to ban associations, including new religious groups, under certain conditions (Seiwert, Reference Seiwert and Richardson2004, 98).Footnote ²⁵

Although most issues concerning religious minorities were not dealt with by the German judicial system, one episode deserves mention. The legal status of “public corporation” in the German Constitution, with its many attendant rights and privileges, had been granted to the two major religious organizations, Catholic and Protestant, along with several other minority faiths. However, it was denied to the Jehovah’s Witnesses in 1993 in the Bundesland of Berlin for reasons that were not authorized in governing documents, a clear demonstration of the role of public animus toward the group.Footnote ²⁶ The Witnesses sued and won at the trial court level but lost on appeal to the Berlin Administrative Court. After years of legal battles back and forth between various courts, the well-respected Constitutional Court of Germany finally ruled definitively in favor of the Witnesses in 2000, a major victory for the Witnesses in the Bundesland (state) of Berlin. However, although this decision was an important precedent, public corporation status was not automatically granted in the other 14 Länder in Germany, leading to more legal battles.Footnote ²⁷ Finally, in 2015 public corporation status for the Witnesses was gained the last Länder. These cases brought by the Witnesses demonstrated the value of having an autonomous judicial system (even though the final resolution took a while) if religious freedom is to be protected.

Germany, by virtue of its membership in the Council of Europe (CoE) and being a signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) is, of course, subject to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). One ECtHR decision in 2008 concerning Germany’s right (or responsibility) to warn citizens of potential harm is worth noting. The Leela Förderkreis E.V. and Others v. Germany case was brought by three Osho organizations because of their dissatisfaction with a German Constitutional Court decision on language used to describe the groups in official government publications. That decision, while disallowing some negative terms used – including destructive, pseudo-religious, and manipulative – had allowed continued use of other terms the groups found offensive – cult, NRM, and psychogroup. The groups submitted the matter to the ECtHR that ruled that those terms did not violate Article 9 (freedom of religion and belief) of the European Convention, thus granting considerable deference to the State as it made efforts to inform citizens of perceived danger.Footnote ²⁸

France

France has a much more centralized national governance structure and also has a unique religious history.Footnote ²⁹ The anti-religion sentiments that exploded in the French Revolution led to establishment of an official policy of laïcité adopted in 1905. The constitutional principal of secularism in France, laïcité, has deterred the presence of any forms or symbols of religion in public forums and discourse. This policy – developed with Catholicism, traditional Protestantism, and Judaism as the major cultural presences – seemed adequate as a way to manage and control religion in order not to disrupt society. However, the policy has encountered considerable difficulty in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries with the influx into France of millions of Muslims from North Africa. Muslims now constitute about 10 percent of the French population. The presence of a number of older minority religions – Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and others – along with the development in France of newer ones that espouse views about their dress and activities that are contrary to the tenets of laïcité has put strains on that policy.Footnote ³⁰ The situation in France has become fraught with difficulties. Moreover, responses that the French government has made have resulted in it becoming an outlier in Western Europe in how religion is managed (see Palmer Reference Palmer2008; Ollion Reference Ollion and Kirkham2013). It has passed laws against Muslim women’s head garb being worn in public and when working in public jobs, such as teaching or even in private employment (Adrian Reference Adrian2016; Vickers Reference Vickers2021; Richardson Reference Richardson2022). Its governmental institutions have been encouraged to pursue punitive measures against various minority faiths, efforts that often have involved state-financed anticult organizations.

Efforts by various entities within the French establishment, including government, religious groups, and mass media, were undergirded by the French version of secularism, referred to by some as “assertive secularism” (Kuru Reference Kuru2009). However, it is clear that some of the dramatic actions taken were given impetus by a series of tragic events involving some of the newer religious groups. Some French parents were already expressing concern about their children showing interest in the new and esoteric groups. Events such as the Jonestown mass murders and suicides in 1978 (Hall Reference Hall1987; Moore Reference Moore2022), and the burning of the Waco, Texas compound in 1993 with eighty Branch Davidians and four law enforcement officers dying in the 51-day siege (Wright Reference Wright1995) were extremely disturbing. Most influential in France, however, were the Solar Temple murders and suicides that occurred in Switzerland, Quebec, and France between 1994 and 1997. The deaths of 74 individuals (Mayer Reference Mayer1996; Bogdan Reference Bogdan and Lewis2011) exacerbated fears and set off a major moral panic in the nation (Richardson and Introvigne Reference Richardson, Introvigne and Bromley2007). The moral panic greatly facilitated the dramatic actions taken in France in the twenty-first century to control or even eradicate minority religious groups.

Even before then, concern over minority religions came to the fore in the 1980s, leading to the first Parliamentary action – the development of a report on the issue (Adeliyan Tous, Richardson, and Taghipour Reference Adeliyan Tous, Richardson and Taghipour2023; Westbrook Reference Westbrook2024). No formal action was taken at that time, however, and it was not until the mid-1990s that serious efforts were made by the government to address the perceived peril from groups defined as threatening the French way of life by attracting French young people. A “parliamentary commission of inquiry on sects in France” was established which, after only twenty-one hours of confidential hearings with individuals and organizations (including the Catholic Church) critical of the new groups, issued its now-infamous list of over 170 groups that should be controlled or even forced out of France due to their use of “mental manipulation” to recruit young people (Anthony and Robbins Reference Anthony, Robbins and Richardson2004; Duvert Reference Duvert and Richardson2004). Being included on the list has had quite extreme consequences for some of the groups: some are unable to build or rent facilities for meetings and many experience harassment by governmental entities and private parties. Some individuals have lost (or been unable to find) jobs if it became known they were members of some of the forbidden groups (Palmer Reference Palmer2011).

The Parliamentary Commission then issued an additional lengthy report cataloging what it defined as problematic groups, discussed how they were organized in simplistic and inaccurate terms, and listed many problems supposedly caused by them. Although acknowledging that the legal structure in France should be adequate to deal with the problem of sectes, the report nonetheless proposed a number of additional governmental actions that should be taken to control them (Adeliyan Tous et al. Reference Adeliyan Tous, Richardson and Taghipour2023, 8–11). This recommendation led to the establishment by then French President Jacques Chirac of a special “Interministerial Observatory on Cults” reporting directly to the prime minister, who was charged with coordinating activities to control sectes.

In 1998 the Observatory issued a report calling for radical changes in the law to facilitate its efforts, including granting private anticult groups the right to bring legal actions against the groups, a very radical proposal that was approved by the Parliament.Footnote ³¹ In addition, various governmental entities set up training programs for police, state prosecutors, judges, and teachers to make them aware of the alleged dangers the sectes posed for French society (Palmer Reference Palmer2011, 17).

Even those proposals and activities were unsatisfactory for some political leaders, leading to a second effort that included establishing a Commission of Inquiry into the Financial, Asset and Tax Situation of Sects, as well as Their Economic Activities and Their Relations with Economic and Financial Circles, established on December 15, 1998, and headed by Parliamentary Deputies Jacques Guyard and Jean-Pierre Brard. This new commission focused on the finances of the sectes and how they raised and managed funds. These efforts led to new and intrusive reporting requirements on group finances, with huge taxes being levied against some of the groups. These actions eventually resulted in the ECtHR ruling against France for its actions, in an unprecedented decision.Footnote ³² The new commission also had proposed creating a new crime of “mental manipulation,” a proposal that was eventually abandoned; nevertheless, the crime of mental manipulation circuitously found its way into current statutes, using the substitute language “the fraudulent abuse of the state of ignorance or weakness,” but with the identical description used to define mental manipulation (see Adeliyan Tous, et al. Reference Adeliyan Tous, Richardson and Taghipour2023). Eventually a new statute, referred to as the About-Picard law, was passed on May 30, 2001, containing many new measures that would supposedly facilitate controlling sectes (Duvert Reference Duvert and Richardson2004). That law, however, has not been aggressively implemented against some of the more controversial groups, such as Scientology and Jehovah’s Witnesses, and has instead been more broadly used against New Age types of movements and other organizations (Altglas Reference Altglas2010; Palmer Reference Palmer2022).Footnote ³³

The moral panic in France continued and there were other efforts to take additional actions against minority religions. In 2006 yet another commission was established focusing on allegations of child abuse in sectes.Footnote ³⁴ After another biased study process, the Commission issued a 789-page report with fifty specific recommendations. However, the report did not lead directly to any further legislation at that time.

The concern within the ranks of some governmental entities in France was also on display in the 2020s, with proposed legislation rewriting some criminal statutes to attempt to deal with Islamic radicalism. However, the language of the proposal, which was couched in terms of opposing separatisme (separatism), would also encompass sectes, and potentially other types of groups. The proposal was subsequently approved and thus became another law that could be used against minority faiths.

In 2024 yet another, more serious effort to control sectes was made. The new proposition was referred to as a “law reinforcing the fight against cultic deviance.” This proposal, which offered some major amendments to the About-Picard law,Footnote ³⁵ was rejected by the Senate. However, the Assembly passed the proposal, and under French Parliamentary rules it became law. A request was later made by more than sixty senators that the Constitutional Council of France review the new law to see if its provisions complied with the French Constitution (Introvigne Reference Introvigne2024a). The Council did review the new statute, limiting its application somewhat, but it allowed most provisions to be enforced.Footnote ³⁶

The new statute was strongly supported by elements of the French governmental structure, which suggests that Altglas’s claim that there might be a movement within the government to limit anti-secte efforts may not represent the current state of affairs in France (Altglas Reference Altglas2010). It remains to be seen what the future will hold for minority faiths in France. Meanwhile, the long list of forbidden groups still exists, thus limiting the religious expression for many in French society, although some French courts and the ECtHR have occasionally issued rulings limiting governmental actions against minority faiths.

Belgium

The Belgian political approach to minority faiths has been considerably influenced by France as it has adopted a critical approach to newer groups that have come to Belgium in the twenty-first century, as well to groups that have existed in Belgium for decades.Footnote ³⁷ The long history of how Belgium manages religious organizations is presented in Fautré (Reference Fautré2021), who notes that particularly the Flemish parts of Belgium follow the French approach to minority faiths, attempting to control them and to warn citizens about their alleged dangers. In 1998, the government established the Center for Information and Advice on Harmful Cultic Organizations, following similar efforts in France.Footnote ³⁸ In June of 2021 the Center published a report, “Recommendations concerning help for victims of cultic influence,” which contained several far-reaching ideas about ways to monitor and control such entities.Footnote ³⁹ The report has been roundly criticized by some scholars (Creemers Reference Creemers2021; Fautré Reference Fautré2023), and Willy Fautré (Reference Fautré2021) suggests that concern about Islam gave initial impetus to governmental efforts to exert control over minority religions. The recommendations include requirements to follow certain organizational patterns, financial arrangements, and other quite specific ideas on how minority religions should function. Fautré, as well as Creemers (Reference Creemers2021), argue that such a wide-ranging report that affects all minority faiths is problematic and should not become official policy. It remains to be seen how, or even if, the recommendations offered will be implemented.

While the Center has engaged in its effort to develop ways to better control and manage minority religions, the courts in Belgium have demonstrated some independence from the government’s position, as has been seen in Germany and France. For example, a nearly twenty-year-long battle was fought over the status of Scientology in Belgium, which involved at least two different investigations and several trials. Federal prosecutors attempted to have the organization banned, using charges of fraud, extortion, and running a criminal organization (BBC 2015). The effort was finally concluded in 2016 with the Justice Court of Brussels ruling against the Prosecutor and dismissing all charges against Scientology, with the judge stating that beliefs could not be prosecuted and that the investigations were biased (Introvigne Reference Introvigne2016).

Three other major court cases involved the Jehovah’s Witnesses. One was a case brought against a Witness congregation in Ghent because of the practice of “shunning” that is sometimes applied against members who violate important precepts and practices of the Witnesses. The Public Prosecutor in Ghent brought a case in 2015 on behalf of some former Witnesses who had been shunned by their congregation, using a 2007 antidiscrimination law that had been passed in Belgium by the Belgian government. The Government prevailed at the trial court level in a decision criticized as ignoring international legal precedents on shunning and religious freedom (Richardson Reference Richardson, Fokas and Giorgi2025b). This anomalous ruling was then overturned on June 7, 2022, by the Court of Appeal of Ghent, which concluded that shunning can be freely taught and practiced in Belgium (Introvigne Reference Introvigne2022b) and the decision was then confirmed by the Belgian Court of Cassation.

A second major loss in the courts involved the massive campaign launched by the Center for Information and Advice on Harmful Cultic Organizations against the Jehovah’s Witnesses for allegedly engaging in systematic child sex abuse and then concealing such crimes from authorities. This was provoked by claims made by the Center, since disproved (Introvigne Reference Introvigne2022b), that mass media in the Netherlands had presented information about child sex abuse in Belgian Witness communities. This misinformation was presented to the Belgian Parliament, provoking a large outcry and other actions focused on discrediting Jehovah’s Witnesses in Belgium. The Belgian judiciary took the accusations seriously and opened an investigation leading to the Prosecuting Judge authorizing a search of Witness headquarters in Belgium. The Court of Brussels ruled on October 5, 2021, that the charges against the Witnesses were unfounded and dismissed the case. On June 18, 2021, the Belgian Jehovah’s Witnesses sued the Belgian Ministry of Justice for defamation. The Court ruled in favor of the Witnesses, but at the time of this writing, an appeal of that judgment was pending.

Belgium also suffered a significant loss in an ECtHR case involving the Witnesses. In 2001 the tax laws of Belgium were revised making it clear that religious organizations would be exempt from such taxes. Thus, Kingdom Halls for all Witness congregations in Belgium were allowed the exemption, along with many other religious groups, including of course, the predominant Catholic and Protestant denominations. However, on November 23, 2017, the law was amended to restrict the property tax exemption to nationally “recognized religions” only, which in Belgium included only Roman Catholic, Protestant, Anglican, Jewish, and Muslim national organizations. Six Witness congregations of the Jehovah’s Witnesses in Brussels filed suit against the government but lost at the trial level and before the Belgian Constitutional Court. They appealed to the ECtHR, which handled the case rapidly and issued a strongly worded unanimous ruling in their favor only two years later, stating that Belgium had violated Article 9 (Freedom of Religion and Belief ) and Article 14 (Discrimination).

Thus, while the Belgian government’s approach seems similar to the French model of opposition to, and control of, minority religious groups, the Belgian courts, and eventually the ECtHR, have rendered judgments offering a modicum of assurance that the situation in Belgium may be somewhat ameliorated.

Italy

Perhaps surprisingly, Italy has developed a reputation for being open and accepting of new and minority religions. Homer (Reference Homer and Richardson2004) offers a brief history of the establishing of Italy as a nation and how interactions with the Catholic Church and some extant religious minorities – particularly the Waldensians but also some Protestant groups – contributed to this posture vis-à-vis more contemporary new faiths.Footnote ⁴¹ “Italy has become a trendsetter in creating laws and procedures that foster religious liberty in an increasingly pluralistic society” (Homer Reference Homer and Richardson2004, 203). Homer especially credits the modern Italian judicial system for rulings that have favored such controversial groups as Scientology, the Unification Church, and TFI. He details how these and other court rulings implement statutes enacted over the years that established methods whereby minority faiths could gain legal recognition and even financial support from the government. Those statutes have been successfully used by a large number of smaller religious groups in recent decades, although some minority religions have experienced difficulties gaining legal status.Footnote ⁴² In addition, no overall law granting religious freedom for minority religions has been enacted. Nevertheless, Muslim groups have had difficulty gaining official status within Italy. In general, however, the situation in Italy concerning minority religions is more favorable than that found in Germany, Belgium, and France.

The Netherlands

The Netherlands is another society in which moral panics over newer religions have not developed. Richard Singelenberg (Reference Singelenberg and Richardson2004) describes a society where critics of NRMs and other minority religions have made efforts to galvanize public opinion against minority faiths of various kinds. Those efforts contributed to a few sensationalized reports in the media in the Netherlands that raised public concern. However, such efforts were not ultimately successful. When the government did become concerned enough to sanction a formal report in 1984, its conclusions were innocuous and led to no further governmental action.

A more recent effort involved an unsuccessful effort by Chinese diplomats to encourage the Dutch government to limit activities and asylum opportunities for Chinese refugees, many of whom had fled religious persecution in the People’s Republic of China. In addition, efforts have been made by a Dutch group affiliated with the anticult FECRIS organizationFootnote ⁴³ centered in, and financed by, France to seek sanctions against the Jehovah’s Witnesses for alleged child sex abuse (HRWF 2025). The Dutch Ministry of Justice and Security commissioned a study by a Dutch university on the issue, but it was poorly done and easily critiqued by several scholars of religion, leading to no further governmental action (Introvigne Reference Introvigne2025). It is worth noting in concluding this brief review that Singelenberg (Reference Singelenberg and Richardson2004), in a prescient epilogue to his report of an otherwise calm and relatively peaceful society regarding NRMs, did alert readers to a growing problem concerning assimilation of Islam into the pillarized Dutch society.Footnote ⁴⁴ Singelenberg’s closing comment drew attention to the growing challenges faced by the Netherlands and many other European societies about the influx of Muslims into society.

Denmark

Denmark also has avoided major controversy over NRMs and other minority faiths (Rothstein Reference Rothstein and Richardson2004, Reference Rothstein, Lewis and Tollefsen2015), with some nuances worth noting. During the 1980s and 1990s, the country experienced a major effort to influence public opinion against NRMs. At that time, the Dialog Center International (DCI), headed by Professor of Missiology, Johannes Aagaard, issued many reports and claims that NRMs, especially Scientology, were dangerous and should be controlled. The DCI was a major countercult organization that had considerable influence in Denmark; it also had branches operating in a number of other European countries, including Germany and several in Eastern Europe. However, Aagaard retired from DCI in 2003, which contributed in part to the eventual demise of the Danish branch of DCI in 2007. The influence of the DCI lessened considerably, allowing the general culture of Danish “indifference to religion” (Rothstein Reference Rothstein and Richardson2004, 231) to return concerning NRMs. Rothstein gives some credit for this more positive atmosphere to the fact that the Ministry of Ecclesiastical Affairs and the mass media rely to a significant extent on scholars of religion for policymaking and news stories. He also was able to secure a quite positive and lengthy statement from the Minister of Ecclesiastical Affairs regarding state management of religion (Rothstein Reference Rothstein and Richardson2004, 232).

It should be noted that the DCI had focused considerable attention on Scientology, which contributed to its being denied some privileges that had been granted to many other minority faiths, for example, performing weddings and receiving tax breaks. Rothstein (Reference Rothstein and Richardson2004, 226–8) offers considerable detail about Scientology’s interactions with the Danish government, suggesting that it became the major focus of anticult sentiment in Denmark for a time. He also calls attention to the growing animus toward Islam in Denmark, a problem that has developed considerable momentum since his 2004 report. Since then, however, attention has been focused on a governmental investigation of alleged child sex abuse, shunning, and other activities in the Jehovah’s Witnesses, following accusations made in a tabloid magazine. According to Introvigne (Reference Introvigne2024b), this was provoked by a similar development in Norway in which the government was attempting to exert control over the Witnesses. How this development will be handled by the government and the mass media is not clear at the time of this writing.

The United Kingdom

James Beckford (Reference Beckford and Richardson2004b) investigated how prisoners of different religions are treated while incarcerated in the United Kingdom. Followers of several different minority religions are represented in those institutions, including Buddhists, Sikhs, Hindus, Jews, and Muslims, although the vast majority of prisoners are either from Christian denominations or claim no religion. He notes that at the time he was writing three religions were not allowed to be registered: Rastafarianism, the Church of Scientology, and the Nation of Islam (Beckford Reference Beckford and Richardson2004b, 241). These were designated “non-permitted religions,” which violated written policies requiring nondiscrimination in the prison system. Beckford points out that the Church of England has statutory authority over prison chaplaincy, and that although some Muslims chaplains had been added, limitations remain on the religious freedom of non-Christian prisoners. Sophie Gilliat-Ray (Reference Gilliat-Ray and Barker2007), who worked with Beckford on the prison chaplain research project, offers a somewhat more optimistic interpretation as she notes that the growing presence of Muslim chaplains in UK prison systems and a similar development in the UK health system.Footnote ⁴⁵

Although Beckford’s study did not address the broader UK society and treatment of minority faiths, other information suggests that, while there have been some well-publicized incidents and legal cases involving some of the controversial groups,Footnote ⁴⁶ the overall atmosphere toward minority religions seems far removed from the moral panics noted in Section 1 (see Bradney Reference Bradney, Chryssides and Zeller2014 for details on several cases). Examples include a ruling in 2013 by the UK Supreme Court that Scientology was in fact a religion and worthy of protections and privileges afforded other religious groups (Roux Reference Roux, Barker and Richardson2021, 62–3). This represents a significant shift from the British government’s position some decades earlier when Scientologists were precluded from entering the country between 1968 and 1980, even if they had been offered employment there (Richardson Reference Richardson and Joseph1995b, 52–3). A child custody dispute involving TFI in 2000 also resulted in another controversial NRM ultimately prevailing in a major High Court case (Bradney Reference Bradney, Chryssides and Zeller2014; Richardson and Borowik Reference Richardson, Borowik and Palmer2026; see Section 5 of this Element).

Another indication of religious tolerance in the United Kingdom was the formation in 1988 of INFORM (Information Network Focus on Religious Movements) through the efforts of Eileen Barker, a Professor at the London School of Economics at the time.Footnote ⁴⁷ This organization had as its focus the furnishing of accurate information about controversial religious groups to the media, the government, and members of the general public (Barker Reference Barker and Côté2001, Reference Barker, Côté and Gunn2006). INFORM received funding from the British government’s Home Office, from the Church of England, and other religious organizations, and has continued to operate for more than thirty-five years. It has been moved in recent years to the University of London where it is currently housed. The presence of INFORM in the United Kingdom has helped ameliorate concern about NRMs. Moreover, the organization has also served as a model for similar organizations in other countries.

The four more tolerant Western European countries discussed here share governments that function in a manner that usually offers support for religious freedom, particularly for Christian-oriented faiths. Their particular historical situation has contributed to them being able to avoid succumbing to moral panics concerning the new other minority faiths that have occurred in other European nations. Political leaders seem more attuned to concerns about religious freedom, and their judicial systems have, when needed, been able to offer support from more tolerant views toward most minority religious groups. Although minority religions have had to adjust their activities to adhere to normative and legal expectations within all the societies examined in Sections 1 and 2, they have been able to function and maintain their presence. Nevertheless, all countries have faced adjustments regarding the integration of Muslim immigrants into their societies.

China

Although China is a large country in both size and population, it is politically consolidated, with a powerful central government dominated by the Chinese Communist Party (Broy Reference Broy2024). Repressive control of religious movements is challenging but has been accomplished in recent decades, and has been particularly effective with, for example, suppression of Falun Gong (Edelman and Richardson Reference Edelman and Richardson2003, Reference Edelman and Richardson2005; Tong Reference Tong2009) and, more recently, the Church of the Almighty God (Introvigne, Richardson, and Šorytė, Reference Introvigne, Richardson and Šorytė2019) and the Uyghur Muslims (Palmer et al. Reference Palmer, Melanson, Mahmut and Udun2021, Reference Palmer, Mahmut and Udun2024). The Falun Gong and CAG were virtually extinguished in China or driven underground, with hundreds of arrests being made of practitioners who are harshly treated when incarcerated (Tong Reference Tong2009). However, both groups were able to take advantage of the pandemic chaos to expand clandestinely within China, leading to further efforts to suppress them. Efforts by the central government to control and even eradicate the Uyghur culture in Xinjian have been well documented (Human Rights Watch 2024). Harassment of many other religious and spiritual groups, including Tibetan Buddhists and the Catholic Church, also continued. In the case of the Chinese Catholic Church, this led to a decision by the Vatican to acquiesce to CCP dominance. Moreover, lawyers who try to defend minority religious groups in China are themselves subject to sanction (Human Rights in China 2001), and there are no NGOs that can effectively defend religious freedom for individuals and groups being persecuted by the State.

One major aspect of the explanation for China’s success in suppressing religious freedom is that the country has no independent judicial system that might be able to ameliorate the social control efforts directed at minority faiths. Indeed, the judicial system has been actively engaged in implementing the government’s plan of control and eradication, a classic example of rule by law (Edelman and Richardson Reference Edelman and Richardson2003, Reference Edelman and Richardson2005). This extreme situation of social control of religion exists despite guarantees of religious freedom in the Chinese Constitution. China’s constitution states that its citizens enjoy “freedom of religious beliefs,” and the government officially recognizes five religions: Buddhism, Catholicism, Islam, Protestantism, and Daoism. However, governmental authorities closely monitor all religious activities and even those formally recognized churches must adhere to the official policies that are an effort to remake those religious traditions into ones that grant ultimate authority to the atheistic Chinese government (PEW Research Center 2023). Considerable resources are expended by the Chinese government to monitor and control religious groups that do not adhere to the official stance on religion, as they may be viewed as competitors to the government. Such disfavored noncompliant groups can be dealt with quite severely (Yang Reference Yang2006; Tong Reference Tong2009).

Russia

Geographically, Russia is even larger than China, but it too is very centralized politically and has exerted pervasive control in recent decades over several religious groups, especially those considered as competitors to the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC). This includes Muslim movements, Christian ones such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and American-derived NRMs (Shterin and Richardson Reference Shterin and Richardson2002; Shterin Reference Shterin2024). It has officially abolished – or “liquidated” – some religious groups using laws against extremism passed in the aftermath of the World Trade Center destruction in 2001 (Richardson Reference Richardson2017c). Russia now clearly exemplifies what can occur when an officially recognized religion, the Russian Orthodox Church, forms an alliance with an autocratic political structure and uses its connections and power to attack minority religious groups while also promoting the government’s agenda in other areas (Finke and Mataic Reference Finke and Mataic2021).

This domineering approach to religious groups that the ROC views as competitors did not occur immediately after the fall of the Soviet Union. Indeed, in the early 1990s, a new constitution was adopted with sections on religion patterned after provisions in Western-oriented governing documents; new laws were passed that implemented this orientation (Shterin Reference Shterin2024). There was in fact a hope and expectation of many that Russia was becoming a new member of the group of nations governed by the rule of law. After these changes in governing documents occurred there was a movement of a number of Western religious groups to come to Russia and also some, which had been operating underground, developed a more public presence as they assumed they could now promote their beliefs and practices openly.

However, this influx of newer religions, coupled with the coming out of some which had operated more clandestinely, alarmed the ROC and some governmental officials, and a backlash developed quickly. This ultimately led to the passage in 1996 of much more restrictive legislation and the ignoring of the constitutional provisions that seem to promote religious freedom in a way familiar to citizens of Western democracies (Richardson, Krylova, and Shterin Reference Richardson, Krylova, Shterin and Richardson2004). New religious groups that had been registered under the provisions developed in the early 1990s were required to reregister and to operate with quite onerous provisions concerning numbers of participants and length of time functioning in Russia. Some challenges to these new provisions were initially successful in court, but it was not long before the courts adopted the official political posture, thus severely limiting religious freedoms for any Russian citizen who might express interest in a religion that was not the ROC (Shterin and Richardson Reference Shterin and Richardson2002).

Russia has also criminalized a number of NGOs that promote human and civil rights, accusing them of being agents of foreign powers. This clear example of rule by law has further limited access to religious freedom in Russia. Russia has been a member of the CoE and had lost a number of ECtHR cases brought by Jehovah’s Witnesses and some Muslim groups (Lykes and Richardson Reference Lykes, Richardson, Richardson and Bellanger2014). Russia refused to implement the Court’s decisions, claiming national sovereignty instead. It also declined to pay its financial its obligations to the CoE, and, after the invasion of Ukraine, was expelled as a member of the CoE. Thus, Russian citizens who think their religious freedom is being violated now have no effective recourse to either Russian courts or the ECtHR.

Iran

Iran is yet another very centralized state controlled by a dominant political order based on a narrow version of Islam designed primarily to maintain control in the hands of a group of Shia clerics. The government has made many attempts to exert control over religious and spiritual ideas permeating the culture from the West (Adeliyan Tous and Richardson Reference Adeliyan Tous and Richardson2024). The version of Shia Islam promoted by the state allows little ideological flexibility, leading to severe penalties – up to and including leaders of new groups and spiritual movements being sentenced to death by a usually complicit judicial system. Such treatment of leaders of small minority religious and spiritual groups are internally justified by the assumption that they are not only misleading Iranian citizens but also are challenging the authoritarian theocratic state.

Nevertheless, the Iranian post-Revolutionary Constitution guarantees religious freedom for its citizens. Article 23 states: “The investigation of the beliefs of a person is forbidden, and no one may be molested or prosecuted for holding a belief.” Also, Iranian citizens who follow certain historical religions from the region, including Zoroastrianism, Judaism, and Christianity, are granted special protections in Article 13 (Adeliyan Tous and Richardson Reference Adeliyan Tous and Richardson2024, 6). However, other provisions of the Constitution make it clear that all Iranian citizens are expected to adhere to a version of Islam promoted by political authorities in Iran. This includes the historical traditions supposedly granted special protections in Article 13, as well as any other religious or spiritual movement that might develop within Iran. The Baha’i are treated particularly poorly, with most citizenship rights barred for those who adhere to this faith (Adeliyan Tous and Richardson Reference Adeliyan Tous and Richardson2024, 19–22).

The courts in Iran have little independent authority and are expected to enforce the particular version of Islam supported by the regime, rendering harsh penalties for leaders and practitioners of any religious group or tradition deemed to be in competition with the accepted interpretation of Islam.Footnote ⁵⁷ Minority faiths in Iran have in the twenty-first century been dealt with in a number of ways not strictly legally, based on the claim that they threatened the identity and unity of Iran. Moreover, discrimination against such groups has been facilitated by statutes adopted in Iran in 2021 as detailed in Adeliyan Tous and Richardson (Reference Adeliyan Tous and Richardson2024, 32–45). This change in legal justification seems an indication that the government is increasingly concerned about the influx of newer religious and spiritual concepts from the West coupled by a lower level of commitment to the government sponsored version Islam (Adeliyan Tous and Richardson Reference Adeliyan Tous and Richardson2024, 24–5).

It is clear that the approach to religious freedom in China, Russia, and Iran – countries not guided by a rule of law governing philosophy – exists in sharp contrast to that of most Western nations. Those nations have adopted a rule by law perspective, and thereby severely limit religious freedom for individuals and nonsanctioned religious organizations in those nations.Footnote ⁵⁸

Changes in the Church of Scientology

While there is a wealth of scholarly literature about the development and functioning of Scientology,Footnote ⁶³ the focus here is on legal and public relations actions involving Scientology and their effects on the organization. Several scholars have described court cases and related activities. Palmer (Reference Palmer2008, Reference Palmer and Lewis2009) and Westbrook (Reference Westbrook2024) detail the machinations of the French government to exert control over Scientology in that country.Footnote ⁶⁴ Wright and Palmer (Reference Wright and Palmer2016, 218) have documented France’s effort to control or abolish Scientology, as well as other minority faiths, including more than twenty law enforcement raids against Scientology facilities over two decades. Anson Shupe (Reference Shupe and Lewis2009) reported extensively on the battles between Scientology and the Cult Awareness Network. Scientology eventually acquired the name and other assets of CAN after the anticult group lost a major legal battle in which it was successfully sued because of an effort to deprogram a young Scientologist (Roux Reference Roux, Barker and Richardson2021). This writer (Richardson Reference Richardson and Lewis2009) and Roux (Reference Roux, Barker and Richardson2021) discuss several successful legal battles fought by Scientology in Western countries that attempted to exert control over Scientology activities or even force its dissolution. Scientology prevailed within the courts in Italy (also see Introvigne Reference Introvigne and Richardson2004), Germany, the United Kingdom, Australia, Belgium, Spain, and even France, Germany, and Russia – the latter three countries through cases brought before the European Court of Human Rights. A major legal victory for Scientology in the United States was the recognition of Scientology as a religion by the Internal Revenue Service in 1993, after many years of legal battles over the tax status of the Church.

All of these actions taken against or by Scientology demonstrate that the organization was forced to allocate considerable resources to legal and political activities – either to defend itself or to take action itself in various countries that functioned under the rule of law and had reasonably autonomous judicial systems. According to one experienced Scientology official located in Europe, Eric Roux, Church leaders learned early that it had to defend itself on many fronts in various countries. Church leaders established a specific department to deal with external affairs of all kinds and each Scientology Church has such a department, although they can vary greatly in proportional size. That department is currently called the Office of Special Affairs (OSA), which handles public relations, government affairs, and also promotes social programs sponsored by the Church, along with managing any legal action in which the individual Church is engaged. As part of efforts to defend the Church, OSA has developed considerable prowess and experience in legal matters and has been involved in various forms of litigation for nearly the entire existence of Scientology. Indeed, it has a well-earned reputation for being litigious, which is a tactic that may deter some critics and governmental agencies from taking actions against the Church.Footnote ⁶⁵

Roux also stressed that Scientology has learned over the years that it must abide by the laws of any country in which it operates. Thus, one major duty of the OSA is ensuring Scientology’s compliance with any applicable laws. This focus on compliance may reveal areas where a country or a locale is not adhering to its own laws; this in turn has led to political and even legal efforts to force governmental compliance with its own statutes. Many current efforts of OSA are devoted to public relations and promoting humanitarian social programs sponsored by Scientology in various countries. According to Roux, because the Church has won many such battles, litigation has become less important in recent times. Scientology’s right to exist in many Western societies seems to have been established, even if controversies remain in some countries.

The public relations efforts of the Church deserve special attention because of the huge internet battles in which the Church has been involved. Donald Westbrook’s account (Reference Westbrook2018) describes the efforts of Church representatives to counter attacks that have been launched by detractors, many of them former members and even leaders of the Church. Although Scientology had been actively promoting its views and philosophy in social media since the inception of the internet, efforts to counter negative information online increased in this area. This development was motivated in part by the release of a large number of allegedly secret and sacred Scientology documents that had been made available on the internet. Voluminous allegedly true copies of internal Scientology documents were released in the case United States v. Fishman (743 F, Supp. 713, N. D. Cal. 1990), allowing detractors to publish them on the internet. This in turn led to a major effort for Scientology defenders to prevent and prohibit dissemination of the documents, an effort that has not been very successful (Urban Reference Urban and Barker2013).Footnote ⁶⁶ Westbrook (Reference Westbrook2021, 387), however, thinks the issue of whether Scientology’s efforts will eventually prevail in the “internet wars” is an open question. It remains to be seen whether the allocation of resources to defend Scientology in the cyber arena will be effective. Thus, Scientology has been forced over the decades of its existence to use many of its resources in defensive efforts involving judicial systems. And as the battleground has shifted from the courts to the internet, in large part because of the Fishman case, Scientology has been allocating more resources to this new arena of activity in order the defend itself.

Changes in the Unification Church

The Unification Church (now called the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, which I abbreviate UC), has also been a very controversial NRM, having been the subject of governmental hearings, legislative actions aimed at control, or even liquidation, and numerous legal actions against the organization in countries around the world. The considerable negative attention of legal and political authorities directed toward the UC developed because UC beliefs and practices often did not comport well with values of the dominant culture. In addition, some activities of UC members were thought to violate norms and even laws in societies where the UC was operating. Criticism focused on recruitment tactics, fundraising efforts, mass weddings, and concern about the UC attracting many young higher status recruits was widespread. As with other new and minority religions, the UC had to learn to operate within the confines of whatever legal structure was extant in a society. Alternatively, if UC leaders thought relevant statutes were not being followed or were applied unfairly, then the UC would launch challenges to those provisions, many of which were successful.Footnote ⁶⁷

The UC seems to be a classic example of the claim that NRMs are sometimes dramatically affected by governmental action and legal battles. Like Scientology, many of those legal battles have been initiated by the UC, as they defend their practices and various ways the organization operates. Mickler (Reference Mickler2000), who reported that the UC was involved in “near constant litigation since 1975,” presents a list of nearly sixty major legal actions of various types in the United States involving various UC entities and individuals and causes of action, one of which went all the way to the Supreme Court (and was successful there, although with a 5–4 margin). He also discusses specific actions taken by the UC that resulted in gaining the right to engage in public solicitation (dozens of such cases filed between 1977 and 1978 across the nation, with nearly all successful); the right to tax exemption privileges as a bona fide religion; to take action against deprogrammers who kidnapped UC members; to stop the expansion and misuse use of conservatorship statutes against members of the UC;Footnote ⁶⁸ and to allow foreign UC missionaries to come into the United States. He also discusses twenty different government reports and hearings focused on the UC that required the organization to defend itself.

Perhaps the best-known legal action involving UC was the tax evasion trial of Rev. Sun Myung Moon (1920–2012), which resulted in his spending thirteen months in a federal prison. This much-criticized action by federal tax authorities (see H. Richardson Reference Richardson1984; Richardson Reference Richardson1992) involved a small amount of money that did not meet the usual criteria for prosecution, but the case was pursued anyway. The effort by tax authorities engendered considerable support for Rev. Moon from other religious organizations that managed their finances similarly to that of the UC. Many amicus briefs were submitted to the US Supreme Court when the case was unsuccessfully appealed, including many from large traditional religious organizations. This legal case took up considerable time and attention of the UC, and substantial resources were allocated to defend Rev. Moon and one codefendant.

The UC won a major victory in Europe after Rev. Moon was barred from entering any of the so-called “Schengen nations” (Vasmatics Reference Vasmatics2021; Zoehrer Reference Zoehrer, Barker and Richardson2021).Footnote ⁶⁹ However, it should be noted that the UC has achieved some success internationally in legal actions, including winning a case against Russia in the ECtHR in 2009.Footnote ⁷⁰ The UC has also been the target of legal actions and governmental attacks in several countries, including efforts to ban the organization outright in various countries such as Austria, Singapore, the Republic of China, Thailand, the Philippines, and others, including most recently, Japan. The UC had been under attack in Japan since it developed there, in large part because of its Korean origins. Deprogramming of UC members was being practiced against UC members in Japan long after it had been abandoned in America and most other countries (Richardson Reference Richardson2011a; Duval Reference Duval2025a). However, the assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe by the son of a UC follower on July 8, 2022, provoked a huge outcry against the UC and calls for its dissolution. The concerted campaign against the UC has involved efforts to pass legislation and also massive media attacks against the Church (Nakayama Reference Nakayama2023; Duval Reference Duval2025b). Duval has criticized the efforts to dissolve the UC in Japan and violations of human rights commitments to which Japan is a signatory (Duval Reference Duval2024). In March 2025, a Japanese court ordered the dissolution of the Unification Church, following a request by Japan’s Education Ministry. If this decision is upheld on appeal, this means that the UC will cease to exist as an organization in Japan and all its assets – buildings and bank accounts – will be given to a liquidator to become part of a fund to compensate so-called “victims” of the UC and also to pay the victims’ lawyers. A decision by the appeal court is expected in late 2025.

And in September 2025, South Korean authorities arrested Hak Ja Han, the wife of the late Rev. Moon and current leader of the UC, on charges of bribery. Dealing with all of these legal actions – taken by the UC either as plaintiff or as defendant – means that a large and not inconsequential amount of UC resources were devoted to these efforts. In addition, the church had to respond to numerous governmental hearings and reports, at the national, state, and local levels. This constant battle detracted from efforts to expand the organization and promote its message.Footnote ⁷¹

Changes in the Children of God/The Family International

The early history of the COG (now TFI) was filled with as much controversy, if not more, as that of Scientology and the Unification Church. The COG/TFI was by far the most notorious of groups that were a part of the so-called Jesus Movement. The group created parental concern because it attracted numerous young people to an itinerant lifestyle that required sending some of them off on missionary activities in over ninety countries (Davis and Richardson Reference Davis and Richardson1976). Their deliberate efforts to disrupt services in Christian churches, which they viewed as hypocritical, upset others. However, they were particularly reviled because the group developed practices of sexual sharing among its members and engaged in the practice known as “flirty fishing,” which used sex as a recruitment tool between 1977 and 1987 (Richardson and Davis Reference Richardson and Davis1983).Footnote ⁷²

The COG/TFI has undergone many changes over time which have been well chronicled by Claire Borowik, who directed public and legal affairs for the group between 2006 and 2010. She describes continual opposition to the group by detractors and the attendant negative media treatment that eventually contributed to considerable changes in the organization (Borowik Reference Borowik and Barker2013). In 2010 there occurred a major “Reboot,” which resulted in the discontinuation or revision of many practices and beliefs of the group, as significant efforts were made to align the organization with the dominant culture of societies in which they were operating.

Borowik (Reference Borowik, Richardson and Bellanger2014) also describes the many pressures brought to bear on COG/TFI organizations in various countries, including Argentina, Spain, Australia, and France in the early 1990s (also see Richardson Reference Richardson, Palmer and Hardman1999b). She details how dozens of COG homes experienced military-style raids involving hundreds of armed personnel that resulted in over 600 children being separated from their parents, some of whom were arrested. Those raids were instigated by oppositional groups, including some former members, and other entities within the so-called anticult movement who influenced government officials and mass media in those countries. The raids often featured claims of child abuse or neglect, including sexual abuse.Footnote ⁷³ As a result, the children were forced to undergo various rigorous physical and psychological examinations and also have their educational progress assessed.Footnote ⁷⁴

The upshot of all these disruptive actions by the authorities was for all the children to eventually be returned to their parents; any parents who were incarcerated were released. However, these results occurred only after numerous and sometimes lengthy legal actions took place in which COG members were forced to defend themselves. These legal actions, of course, required the allocation of significant resources to mount defenses, thus another example of deformation of this controversial missionary-oriented group.

One other important legal action clearly demonstrates the deformation hypothesis. Richardson and Borowik (Reference Richardson, Borowik and Palmer2026) offer details of the longest child custody case in UK history that took place over several years in the 1990s. The much-publicized case involved a custody dispute between a mother within a COG group in England whose own mother sought custody of her grandchild. The over 200-page decision of Lord Justice Ward finally allowed the mother to retain custody, but only after he was assured that the organization had implemented sweeping changes in how it operated. Not only did this case involve allocation of resources to respond to charges, but it also resulted in needed changes of practices in the organization that had resulted in child sexual abuse. This decision is a clear demonstration of how legal actions can result in changes within a religious organization.Footnote ⁷⁵

Changes in Hare Krishna (ISKCON)

The International Society for Krishna Consciousness was one of the most visible and controversial of the newer religions that burst on the scene in America in the 1970s (Rochford Reference Rochford1985) and then spread to a number of other countries around the world. ISKCON devotees were very noticeable because of their dress and their lively public chanting. They were seen in a variety of public spaces practicing sankirtana (chanting the holy names of God), handing out literature, and asking for donations. These actions were challenged by authorities in various locales, but some key court cases were resolved on First Amendment grounds in ways that allowed such activities to continue. This situation was short-lived, however, as efforts by authorities developed new legal theories to justify exerting control over ISKCON activities.

Sociologist E. Burke Rochford discusses some of the early legal cases ISKCON won, such as against Los Angeles International Airport and the City of Chicago (Rochford Reference Rochford and Richrdson1988). He claims that by the mid-1970s ISKCON was functioning in every major airport in America, as well as on the streets of major cities, in national parks, and at state fairs in a number of states According to Rochford, the success in fundraising led to an emphasis on financial gain instead of the original mission of ISKCON, which was to promote the movement’s philosophy and lifestyle. The success also encouraged some activities that were ethically questionable (Rochford Reference Rochford and Richrdson1988, 281–4). Thus, the early legal victories paradoxically contributed to major changes in the organization and how it functioned.

The seemingly incessant fundraising created a negative view of ISKCON in mass media and with the general public. New legal actions were filed against various ISKCON entities in the late 1970s, based in general on claims that the way Krishna devotees were comporting themselves in their fundraising efforts did not constitute activities protected by the First Amendment. Those legal actions were eventually successful in having time, place, and manner restrictions forced on the organization, or in disallowing their activities completely (Rochford Reference Rochford and Richrdson1988, 293–5; Richardson Reference Richardson1998b). This new round of legal actions eventually culminated in a precedent-setting ruling by the US Supreme Court in 1981 allowing the Hare Krishnas to continue activities at the Minnesota State Fair but be limited to a booth, rather than being able to circulate through the crowds at the fair.

These legal losses contributed to a growing disillusionment among Hare Krishna devotees. Some members had started families and were no longer living communally in ashrams; thus they were obliged to find ways to support their families. After the death of Swami Prabhupada in 1977, an internal conflict among various factions in the movement ensued – a “succession crisis” (Melton Reference Melton and Miller1997). The leadership crisis was in part a consequence of a scandal that developed over child abuse within boarding schools set up within ISKCON facilities to take care of children so their parents could go into public places to practice sankirtana, to raise funds, and to support themselves.

These boarding schools, called gurukulas, operated in the late 1970s into the 1980s in various places around the United States and abroad. Former students charge the gurukulas of fostering child abuse of various kinds, including sex abuse (Rochford Reference Rochford2007; Burt Reference Burt2023; Nilsson Reference Nilsson2024). Sensationalized media coverage of the abuses contributed greatly to negative perceptions of ISKCON in the United States. In 2000, a lawsuit seeking $400 million in damages was filed in Federal Court in Dallas, Texas on behalf of several dozen former students at various gurukulas. A federal court dismissed the suit, which was then refiled in a Texas State Court, with several dozen additional plaintiffs. This lawsuit resulted in declarations of bankruptcy by several ISKCON communities named in the suit. By the time matters were settled in bankruptcy court, more than 500 former students were listed as plaintiffs. They were collectively awarded $9.5 million dollars, to be distributed according to the types of abuse and length of time endured by the claimants.

One result of these various issues is that ISKCON temples around America and elsewhere were forced to find other ways to maintain themselves. They did so by appealing to what Rochford (Reference Rochford2007, Reference Rochford and Barker2013) refers to as the “Hinduisation” of ISKCON. This term refers to deliberate efforts by various ISKCON entities to attract the growing number of Hindu citizens who had immigrated from India and Nepal to the United States. These efforts were reasonably successful, and most temple communities were able to survive, but have become vastly different in character, as Rochford (Reference Rochford2018) describes in some detail. The original enthusiasm of young, first generation, devotees has evolved into a style of worship with some similarities to congregational life in other more traditional religions. Thus, the ISKCON experience with the law and attendant media attention has led to widespread changes in the movement.

Changes in Christ Communal Organization

For a brief time, the Christ Communal Organization, another Jesus Movement group, operated in Oregon (Harder, Richardson, and Simmonds Reference Harder, Richardson and Simmonds.1972; Richardson, Harder, and Simmonds, Reference Richardson, Harder and Simmonds1979). Centered at a rural facility referred to as “The Land,” CCO engaged in agriculture as one method to support its communal lifestyle. The group was unusual in that it did not use street solicitation as a method of fundraising (Richardson Reference Richardson and Richardson1988, 28–9). Instead, it produced much of its own food needs, and generated funds from sales of produce from The Land and other agricultural projects in the area that it owned and operated. The organization also developed work teams that were hired out to do agricultural work for other farms, for example, picking fruit, harvesting vegetables, and especially tree planting for a large timber company. The proceeds from such efforts went directly to the organization instead of to individual workers. This method resulted in an adequate means of support for several years, and the group was able to maintain itself and even develop other outposts in a number of states across the United States as well in a few foreign countries.

Initially CCO had received approval from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to operate as a tax-exempt organization, thus relieving it of paying taxes on proceeds from sales of products and also from the proceeds of the work teams that were hired out to other agricultural entities in the region. However, this situation was not to last, as in the mid-1970s the IRS changed its position and sent CCO a tax bill for well over a million dollars (see Richardson and Sim Reference Richardson and Sim1982). The IRS justified this change of definition by claiming that CCO was operating as a religious organization as a subterfuge, and that it was really functioning as a money-making entity with the proceeds accruing to the benefit of group leaders. This and other efforts by governmental entities forced changes in practices, and even beliefs, of this Jesus Movement organization (Stewart and Richardson Reference Stewart and Richardson1999). The position taken by the IRS with CCO has been roundly criticized by some prominent tax attorneys (Emory and Zelenak Reference Emory, Zelenak and Robbins1982) who became defenders of CCO in the ensuing legal battles with the IRS. Emory and Zelenak pointed out that the IRS was discriminating against NRMs such as CCO. They noted that the Catholic Church, for example, had been granted a nation-wide exemption for its operations, some of which were similar in functioning to that of CCO.Footnote ⁷⁶

The failure of legal efforts to defend CCO’s method of operating and supporting itself led to the demise of the movement. Indeed, The Land property and other assets were eventually assumed by defense attorneys as payment for their legal services. CCO members who resided on The Land and other communal operations eventually left, with some departing the group completely. However, many members folded into various Calvary Chapel churches that were developing around the country at that time (see Richardson Reference Richardson1993a). Thus, the demise of the communal operations of CCO because of IRS legal action had a major impact on the growth of Calvary Chapel over the next few years. The dramatic changes in CCO exemplify how governmental decisions and subsequent legal actions can lead to the deforming and even demise of a religious organization.

Changes in the Church of Christ, Scientist

Although the Church of Christ, Scientist is not considered a controversial NRM, it has been embroiled in considerable controversy in the past over its use of spiritual healing, especially in regard to medical treatment for children of Church members. Many other Christian-oriented groups also practice versions of spiritual healing. Monica Miller (Reference Miller, Richardson and Bellanger2014, 228) lists over a dozen religious groups that practice some form of spiritual healing derived from interpretations of selected passages in the Bible. Christian Science is by far the best known of such groups and has been responsible for major efforts to gain exemptions in federal and state laws to allow use of spiritual healing in cases involving children where traditional medical interventions might seem indicated (Miller Reference Miller, Richardson and Bellanger2014, 229).

Changing sentiments concerning child welfare have resulted in heightened awareness of child morbidity and mortality in the various groups practicing spiritual healing. Some states have ignored statutes that granted exemptions for spiritual healing and some states have changed their statutes to no longer offer an exemption. Cases involving Christian Science have attracted considerable critical attention to the Church and it practices, and its earlier successful efforts to gain exemptions in federal and state laws have come under attack. These efforts by state authorities forced the Church to allocate more resources to legal defense of members who have been prosecuted for child endangerment, child abuse, and even manslaughter. In addition, changes have occurred in the way such cases are handled by the Church as well as other relevant matters (Richardson and DeWitt Reference Richardson and DeWitt1992).

The modifications that have occurred are instructive from the perspective of the deformation thesis. One major operational change was for the national Christian Science organization to start managing legal cases that arose instead of maintaining some distance from them. That initial posture forced individuals and their congregations to defend as best they could when accused of violating laws related to the death of a child. This sometimes resulted in badly managed cases and considerable negative publicity. The centralization of case management, of course, required a reallocation of resources in order to implement the new approach.

Even more interesting are changes in the Church’s position on how to define the situations involving a child needing medical care, some of which suggest changes in the beliefs of the Church. Changes included:

1. (1) emphasize that parents, not Church authorities, are to make decisions about welfare of a child with a medical condition;

2. (2) urge parents to examine their own spiritual context and strength and that of their family and friends as they consider how to proceed when dealing with a child’s medical problem;

3. (3) state that even if parents decide to seek medical treatment for a child’s illness they will remain in fellowship with the Church; and

4. (4) Church members are directed not to ostracize parents who decide to seek medical treatment for their child. (Richardson and DeWitt Reference Richardson and DeWitt1992, 561)

It is worth noting that the above elements were not considered to be restatements of Church positions by Church officials. However, those statements do suggest that Church practices and even underlying ideas were adjusted in trying to deal with the aftermath of the controversy over how CS children in need of medical care were dealt with.Footnote ⁷⁷

Changes in Jehovah’s Witnesses

Jehovah’s Witnesses, which emerged in the late nineteenth century in the United States, are a fascinating example of how involvement in legal actions can change a religious organization.Footnote ⁷⁸ They were the first religious organization to which the deformation thesis was applied (Côté and Richardson Reference Côté and Richardson2001). Their involvement in the legal arena led to thoroughgoing changes not only in their operation and functioning but also in the culture and even some beliefs of the organization. Such transformations were somewhat ironic, given that Witnesses do not participate in politics, do not vote, do not serve on juries, and do not defer to secular authorities.

Côté and Richardson (Reference Côté and Richardson2001) describe two major efforts the Witnesses undertook to use courts in the United States and elsewhere to defend and promote their beliefs and practices, both of which were characterized as a “disciplined litigation” approach.Footnote ⁷⁹ The first such effort occurred in the 1930s and 1940s, with a number of cases filed with courts across the country addressing the right to proselytize and other matters, such as refusing to salute the flag and refusing military service through conscientious objection. Many of these cases eventually reached the US Supreme Court, which ruled in the Witnesses’ favor in a number of cases. In two such cases – the controversy over saluting the flag and the fees imposed for distributing literature – the Supreme Court actually reversed earlier judgments against Witness practices and issued new rulings affirming them. In the middle decades of the twentieth century, the Witnesses won dozens of cases accepted by the Supreme Court, which led to a disbanding of the Church’s legal arm for a time.

This lull in legal actions was not to last. The second major use of litigation concerned how the Witnesses would defend their abstention from blood transfusions, a doctrine that was formally adopted in 1961. Because many in the medical profession ignored this religious prohibition, the Jehovah’s Witnesses filed a number of cases across the country in the 1970s to gain legal sanction for their beliefs. This return to disciplined litigation successfully persuaded the courts to allow refusal of transfusions, and to require damages when such health directives declared by adults were ignored by medical professionals. In more recent times the Witnesses have had to defend themselves in several countries against charges of various kinds of child abuse, as recounted in some of the reports on individual countries discussed earlier, as well as in Japan.Footnote ⁸⁰

This orientation toward reconstituting the organization into one attentive to litigation when needed then evolved into what Côté and Richardson call “vigilant litigation.” This term refers to an approach that views litigation as a tactic to be used selectively. The vigilant litigation approach is currently being tested in several countries that are seeking control or dissolution of the Witnessed based on allegations of child sex abuse or because of their practice of “shunning” members who violate some major tenet of the group.Footnote ⁸¹ Legal attacks that seem to be coordinated have been launched in the Czech Republic, Norway, Belgium, Spain, New Zealand, and Denmark, among other countries. Most of the litigation has been thwarted by courts and governmental entities that accepted information and testimony from some scholars of religion quite knowledgeable about Witness practices. Nevertheless, the Witnesses have lost a few cases, for example, New Zealand, while others are ongoing. The Jehovah’s Witnesses have also made considerable use of the European Court of Human Rights, once it began to start enforcing European Convention provisions supportive of religious freedom. They have submitted several hundred cases from various countries throughout Europe and have achieved a very impressive record of wins with that Court (Richardson Reference Richardson and Hunt2015b, Reference Richardson2017c, Reference Richardson, Baran and Knox2025a).Footnote ⁸²

Côté and Richardson (Reference Côté and Richardson2001) conclude that the vigilant litigation strategy offers a model for newer controversial religions to use in defending themselves and their practice and beliefs. They suggest that Scientology and the Unification Church in particular might find such an approach useful. It is clear that these groups and other minority faiths have indeed used such an approach and been successful doing so, at least in nations that operate under the rule of law.

This section has shown how new and minority religions have adapted and even altered beliefs and practices because of the confrontation with opponents in the courts and in the court of public opinion. The analysis is offered as a corrective to explanations that emphasize internal factors and broader political and cultural considerations as reasons for alterations in minority religious groups. Several prominent examples from selected controversial minority religious groups presented earlier demonstrate how court decisions sometimes dramatically influence and shape a religion.

United States Supreme Court

The First Amendment to the US Constitution reads as follows:

Perhaps surprising to some, it should be noted at the outset that the many protections codified in the First Amendment to the US Constitution were not initially applicable to state and local governments. Those provisions applied only to laws and policies promulgated by the Federal Government. Development of the jurisprudential pattern that resulted in provisions of the First Amendment applying also to state and local legislation and policies seems a good example of a community rights perspective being implemented by the US Supreme Court. The process whereby those important provisions were made applicable to nonfederal governmental entities is referred to as “incorporation” (Richardson and McGraw Reference Richardson and McGraw.2019, 14–15). This term is dependent on the “due process clause” of the Fourteenth Amendment, which was the mechanism whereby the Supreme Court over several decades applied First Amendment protections to nonfederal entities. That clause is included in this portion of the Fourteenth Amendment of the US Constitution:

The “incorporation” of the several protections included in the First Amendment arose through a number of cases decided by the Court in the mid-twentieth century. Furthermore, a number of those cases were brought to the Court by minority religions of one kind or another. Through their legal actions those groups were trying to defend their right to enjoy religious freedom for their members and to ensure that the groups themselves could continue to exist. Apparently, the Court developed a desire to extend the values and protections expressed in the First Amendment to all citizens in the nation. This series of decisions can be viewed as an expression of a particular set of values by the Court through its decision-making authority. These decisions seemed to reflect the belief that the nation might suffer harm if citizens could be treated significantly differently, depending on which governmental entity was impinging on their lives. To ensure similar treatment for citizens throughout the land appears to be an underlying theme of the jurisprudential pattern developed by the Court as it made a series of decisions using minority religion cases that extended the protections of the First Amendment to all residents of the United States (Richardson Reference Richardson and Hunt2015b).

European National Court Systems

The importance of the independence of judicial systems is demonstrated with what has been happening in European national courts. Even in countries with national policies critical of NRMs and other minority religious groups, including Germany, France, and Belgium, the national court systems have demonstrated some respect for such groups in the jurisprudential patterns developed in recent decades. Belgian courts have rejected claims again the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and in Germany, although it took a long time, the Constitutional Court finally ruled definitively in favor of the Witnesses being registered as a public corporation. Even in France some local courts have ruled in favor of some NRMs, such as Scientology. In the more tolerant European nations, new religions have seen fewer legal challenges, and when they have arisen, as in Italy and the United Kingdom, the courts have usually shown support for NRMs and other minority religious groups. This, of course, does not mean that every challenge to the religious freedom of minority groups has been rebuffed. There are ongoing problems associated with the integration of Islam within many European countries. However, the overall jurisprudential pattern in European nations supportive of the rule of law has been one that recognizes constitutional and statutory provisions supportive of religious freedom, where they exist.

Those extant constitutional and statutory provisions have been relied on by judges who demonstrated some respect for the importance of protecting religious minorities as they concerned themselves with their view of the overall good of society. Similarly to what occurred with major rulings in the United States, this pattern seems to demonstrate Sir Ivor Richardson’s concept that the judiciaries in European countries have acted in a manner protective of a specific value perspective developed over time in Western European nations. And, as in the United States, the use of rulings in legal cases brought by (or against) minority religious groups to express that value seems clear.

European Court of Human Rights

The ECtHR offers another demonstration of Sir Ivor Richardson’s theory that autonomous courts can, if allowed by underlying governing documents and not deterred by other political or institutional structures, make rulings extending their authority and purview in ways supportive of particular rights and values. The European Convention of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, approved after the devastation and demonstrated inhumanity of WWII, furnished the statutory authority for the ECtHR to operate and make decisions supportive of human and civil rights. And as former Soviet-dominated nations joined the CoE, the Court began making rulings that exerted authority over those former Soviet nations.

Those rulings presented different and more stringent standards of review for newer members of the CoE, and this dual pattern seems to have continued, as noted by a number of scholars (Evans Reference Evans2010; Cali Reference Cali2018; Jusic Reference Jusic2018; Richardson Reference Richardson2019; Stiansen and Voeten Reference Stiansen and Voeten2019). While there may be several reasons for this dual pattern to have developed,Footnote ⁸⁴ the pattern could be viewed as demonstrating the Court’s desire to extend its authority to encourage the dissemination of values extant in Western European communities into the newer regions of Central and Eastern Europe whose nations have chosen to join the CoE. The Court’s major shift of jurisprudential pattern that began with Lautsi described earlier has led, among other things, to less focus on how religion is managed in most of the CoE’s early member countries. This suggests that the Court is willing to allow considerable margin of appreciation to those nations (Berry Reference Berry, Temperman, Gunn and Evans2019) for cases involving religion (as well as other matters), but less so with newer members of the CoE. It remains to be seen whether the Court’s efforts to promote values from Western European communities to all areas within its purview will be successful, or if the tensions apparent in this dual approach will lead to difficulties for the Court.Footnote ⁸⁵

Summary

The Introduction offered a sociologically oriented analysis of how judicial systems operate in societies governed by the rule of law. Section 1 included the United States as a case study to offer some contrast with how various European countries handle minority religions. The United States has been for most of its relatively short history a federalized system operating with a tripartite governance structure. This has left considerable authority with individual states, while also allowing the court systems of the federal government and the states a great deal of autonomy and independence. Over time, however, increasing authority has accrued to the federal government, with some of that upsurge attributed to court cases involving minority religions through which protections afforded by the US Constitution have been extended to individuals and entities in the individual states. Those protections afforded by incorporating First Amendment provisions dealing with religion have contributed to a society that has offered considerable protections for religious freedom for most religious groups.

The more stringent approaches to minority faiths in Germany, France, and Belgium derive from their unique histories and cultures that contribute to contemporary concern about the growth of such groups, many of them imported from the United States. Although the governments in these three countries have promoted an approach to minority religions that attempts to control and even dissolve them, nevertheless the relative autonomy of the courts in those nations has afforded most minority religions some degree of protection, demonstrating again the importance of the autonomy of judicial systems for protecting religious freedom.

The Western European countries covered in Section 2 – Italy, the Netherlands, Denmark, and the United Kingdom – have been more tolerant of minority faiths. They have all managed to avoid the moral panics that occurred in the three nations covered in Section 1, which have shown less tolerance of minority groups. This is not to say that no concerns have been manifested about minority faiths, but rather that when issues did arise, the reactions were somewhat muted by governments that have not adopted a throughgoing anti-minority faith perspective. Moreover, the courts of these countries have issued rulings favoring religious freedom when cases have come to their attention.

Section 3 looked at the role and record of the European Court of Human Rights concerning religious freedom for individuals and groups concerning religious freedom. This very important regional court has built an impressive record on religious freedom issues, particularly since the fall of the Soviet Union and the influx of many former Soviet-dominated nations into the CoE. It has particularly addressed the right of minority religions to exist and function in those new member societies that lack a history of religious freedom. However, the Court has developed a split jurisprudential pattern that grants most original members of the CoE considerable leeway in how they manage religion. Indeed, in the last decade this more lenient approach with early CoE members has expanded considerably.

Section 4 focused on three nonwestern societies – China, Russia, and Iran – which all have very centralized and pervasive governmental systems that do not operate as rule of law societies. Instead, they are dominated completely by a political party, or a political party that has formed an alliance with a specific religious perspective and organization. This brief look at such autocratic and even theocratic societies demonstrates again the importance of having some degree of autonomy for the judicial systems. When that is absent, religious freedom has no champion, and the citizens are deprived of rights granted in other societies that do adhere to some version of rule of law governance.

Section 5 examined whether legal actions involving minority religious groups, whether brought against or by the group, changed or “deformed” those groups in ways that deterred them from implementing their original visions of how they should function. Such interactions with the legal and judicial systems can lead to changes in religious practices and even beliefs, as was demonstrated. A number of more controversial and well-known minority religions and newer faiths were described in detail to demonstrate the efficacy of the deformation hypothesis. This examination revealed that a variety of thoroughgoing changes had indeed been wrought by the involvement of groups with the legal systems and courts in various countries in which they were present. This result was seen with contemporary NRMs, including the Church of Scientology, the Unification Church, the COG/TFI, Hare Krishna, Christ Communal Organization (another large Jesus Movement group), and older minority religious groups such as Christian Science and Jehovah’s Witnesses. Not only were ways of functioning and practices modified through engagement with legal and judicial systems, but sometimes belief systems were modified as well.

Section 6 focused on the courts themselves, to understand how courts operate and what the courts might be trying to accomplish with their rulings in the area of religion, particularly cases dealing with new or older minority religions. The analysis revealed the efforts by some court systems to expand their authority into new areas of law and geography not covered in their original remit. This expansion occurred because of efforts by judicial officials to promote Western “community values.” This involved major growth of the purview and authority of both national and a major regional court, the ECtHR, as they sought to promote values that judicial leaders thought best for a given society or region. The effects of pressures on the courts from other institutional entities within a given society or region also were examined to explain how the agenda of a court system might be affected as they dealt with various cases, including those involving religion.

Final Observations

The major conclusion that can be drawn from the discussions of individual nations and regional courts demonstrates the extreme importance of an independent judiciary in order to protect religious freedom. In rule of law countries, even if they become caught up in moral panics, the courts, if supported by foundational documents granting religious freedom, can and have served as a bulwark against extreme measures being taken against minority faiths. In rule by law nations, however, the acquiescence of the courts to dominant political entities results in few if any protections for religious expression. Thus, there is clearly a strong connection between judicial independence and the rule of law, and this has great implications for religious freedom as well as other matters. This connection raises an important question of how to protect judicial independence.Footnote ⁸⁶ Religious freedom is impossible without a strong judiciary willing to defend the rule of law.

It is also evident that religious groups operating within a society must do so in a manner that comports with the laws and cultural values of that society. Religious groups are changed as they encounter the legal and judicial systems in societies in which they operate. If a religious group brings a legal action themselves, they are implicitly agreeing to abide by the court’s ruling, which might mean changes will be required. If they are before the courts as defendants, then the court has great power to bring about major modifications with its rulings, as demonstrated in this Element.

Finally, it is clear that judicial systems, if protected from interference by founding documents and tradition, can act in ways that extend their ability to work their will on a society – or even an entire region, as with the European Court of Human Rights. And if those founding documents include the concept of religious freedom, the courts can and have used such cases to greatly expand religious freedom, as well as their geographic purview and authority.