RELIGIOUS FREEDOM AND TOLERANCE

The Creed of the Church of Scientology says: “We of the Church believe:” ... “That all men have inalienable rights to their own religious practices and their performance”.

No society can survive long where religious freedom is suppressed and religious intolerance is permitted to thrive. Throughout their history, churches of Scientology have worked to identify and isolate the causes of religious intolerance, and to develop effective ways to bring about a society where individuals may freely worship according to their conscience. These are firmly held beliefs as expressed in the Creed of the Church of Scientology.

Churches of Scientology have organized many multi-faith conferences in the United States and Europe to encourage religions to work together in the cause of religious freedom and tolerance. In Russia, they have helped to organize a series of high-level round tables on the subject, some in liaison with the Federal Ombudsman’s Office and the Russian Academy of State Sciences.

In the wake of September 11, the Church of Scientology in England hosted an international conference titled “Filling the Moral Vacuum” at its premises at Saint Hill, East Grinstead.

The Association of British Muslims and the Queens Federation of Churches, a coalition of 700 churches in New York, co-sponsored the May 2002 conference with the Church of Scientology’s European Human Rights Office. The 75 participants included religious leaders, human rights activists and scholars from England, Germany, Belgium, Sweden, Nigeria, Czech Republic, Uzbekistan, Russia, Belgium, France, Poland, United States, Latvia, Croatia, Canada, Spain, Zambia, Bulgaria, Armenia, Myanmar and Sri Lanka.

Rev. Marcus Braybrooke, President of the World Congress of Faiths, gave the opening address, stating that “society needs to be based on spiritual and ethical values, but in our modern world these cannot be based on the teachings of one religion, but on the moral values which the religions share.”