June 28,
2000
French proposal targets 'proselytizing' By
Larry Witham THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Religious liberty advocates on
Capitol Hill are concerned about a proposed French law to imprison
religious "proselytizers" for up to two years for "mental
manipulation" of the public. The
bill aims to limit the spread of what French officials have called
173 "dangerous sects" in France. These include Jehovah's Witnesses,
Scientologists and Unificationists, among others, but also
well-known evangelistic denominations such as the
Baptists. The proposed crime, which
critics say could cover many religious, advertising and interest
groups, is to "exercise serious and repeated pressure on a person in
order to create or exploit a state of dependence." The bill would
allow the French government to shut down a religious group when two
representatives are found guilty of at least one legal
infraction. The legislation must be
reconciled with a less stringent bill approved in the French Senate
in December. It then would go to President Jacques Chirac for
approval. Once approved, French law
could proscribe incidents of evangelism even by the religious faith
of President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore, who are both
Southern Baptists. "This is
something that we are going to have to watch closely," a senior
State Department official said yesterday. "In a worst-case scenario,
it could turn out to be a nasty piece of
legislation." French Justice
Minister Elisabeth Guigou last week called the bill "a significant
advance giving a democratic state the legal tool to efficiently
fight groups abusing its core
values." However, she said, the new
criminal code could conflict with the European Convention on Human
Rights, and she recommended a "pause" before the French Senate votes
so that human rights and church groups can
comment. T. Jeremy Gunn, who as a
member of the U.S. Institute of Peace had visited France on
religious liberty matters, said several French officials resorted to
"ad hominem" attacks on American officials by charging they belonged
to the "sects" in question. State
Department officials who have spoken to French lawmakers say that
many of them describe the legislation — drafted by members of the
Socialist Party — as advocacy work by a charismatic citizen named
Jacques Guyard. Mr. Guyard leads an anti-sect movement and was
author of the government's sect
list. "There is a hope [among some
French officials] that this will rise above personality," the State
Department official said. "Overly
aggressive evangelical preaching could be interpreted by some as
mental manipulation," the Rev. N.J. L'Heureux, moderator of the
religious liberty panel of the National Council of Churches, said in
an interview. Mr. L'Heureux, a
Methodist, was one of eight witnesses who testified before the House
Committee on International Relations June 14 regarding the French
law and other efforts in Western Europe to curtail new, minority
religious denominations. The push
in Western Europe to form "sect commissions" and legislate against
sects began after the 1994 and 1995 suicides and murders by Solar
Temple members in Canada, Switzerland and
France. Scholars say Western Europe
is the most secular part of the world and many young people are
looking at unconventional approaches to find a deeper meaning to
life. For example, in traditionally Catholic France only 8 percent
of the population attends Catholic services, according to a Catholic
bishop cited in the State Department
report. France, Germany, Austria
and Belgium set up commissions to list sects, which in Belgium
include even the YWCA. But France is the first to make so-called
religious "mind control" a
crime. The French sect list,
published in 1996, was followed by the establishment in 1998 of a
government agency called the Interministerial Mission to Battle
Against Sects. "The fact that it is called a 'battle against'
assigns a prejudice," the State Department official
said. Testimony before the House
committee suggested the young democracies of Russia and Eastern
Europe are working out the relationship between majority and
minority religions and might be influenced by the proposed French
law. The European Union so far has
rejected the rush to blacklist small religions. France's former
foreign minister, M. Alain Vivien, is chairman of the French
anti-sect commission. According to the House testimony, he was in
Germany, Russia and Poland this month promoting anti-sect
work. In Rome, Pope John Paul II
welcomed France's new ambassador to the Vatican on June 14 by saying
"religious liberty, in the full sense of the term, is the first
human right." He urged the French news media "to be vigilant and to
treat fairly and objectively the different religious
denominations." Sensational
coverage of the French sect list had stirred public fears and some
harassment, the State Department's 1999 report on religious liberty
said. In response to the proposed
law, Michel Bertrand, president of the council of Protestant
Churches, said, "We will not move forward . . . by casting suspicion
on all forms of religious faith."
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