The Church of Scientology is furious. France’s judges have upheld its conviction for “organised fraud”, which includes charging followers thousands of euros for an “electrometer” to measure mental energy. “A heresy trial!” yells the Church, promising to fight this “affront to religious liberty” in the European Court of Human Rights.
I’m trying to think of the last time the Scientologists were this angry. Probably in 2005, when South Park aired an episode in which Stan joins the outfit and learns that 75 million years ago an evil intergalactic emperor called Xenu “rounded up countless aliens from different planets, froze them… and dumped them into the volcanoes of Hawaii”. The wickedly funny animation carried the caption: “This is what Scientologists actually believe.” Which was true.
Scientology became a laughing stock: a cartoon had accomplished more in 25 minutes than anti-cult campaigners had in decades. And now France labels it “organised fraud”. If you were to attach any of the Church’s leaders to an E-meter – an electronic device that checks “spiritual impediments” – I reckon the needle would be flickering wildly.
You’re probably thinking: well, cry me a river. They don’t like it up ’em. It’s hard to feel sorry for followers of L Ron Hubbard, particularly now that any search engine can uncover terrifying allegations against rogue Scientologists.
But – and I’m saying this through gritted teeth – the Church has a point. Not necessarily about this particular French case, but about a general threat to religious liberty in Europe.
The French government regards Scientology as a “cult” rather than a “religion”. That may seem like a statement of the obvious – but as soon as you start to nail down the differences between cults, sects and religions you run into trouble.
The EU says it guarantees religious freedom. But here’s the crucial thing: in some countries that applies only to groups that governments register as a religion. Generally speaking, the further east and south you
go, the more arbitrary the cult/sect/religion definition. If you’re a registered Baptist in Russia, then you’re fine; if you’re unregistered, you could be breaking the law by hosting prayers in your house.
I once went to a conference in Saxony at which a government minister lectured us on the difference between real and fake religions. “Lack of sense of humour” was a clue to fakery, he told us – a tricky rule of thumb to employ in Germany, I would have thought.
This isn’t to deny the existence of cults and cult-like behaviour: we’re perfectly entitled to apply the word to religious bullying. But “cult” isn’t a scientific term, any more than “church” is. You can find creepy sectarian movements in suburban parishes, inner-city mosques and internet start-ups. Britain’s most impartial cult-monitoring body, Inform at the LSE, receives troubling inquiries from the families of newly converted Christians.
Inform takes the line that all religious groups need to obey the same laws as civil bodies. That’s a sensible approach, rooted in English and American concepts of freedom.
The danger is that we’re moving towards a European model in which faith needs to be rubber-stamped by civil servants and a “cult” is any religious group the government dislikes.
We may smile at the fury of the Scientologists, in their comic-opera uniforms, at the leaking of the story of Xenu. But it’s worth remembering, next time you visit a country church, that it wouldn’t be there if genuine evil emperors hadn’t failed to crush a supposedly dangerous cult founded by Jesus of Nazareth.
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Talking of Europe, I see that Marine Le Pen is predicting that the EU “will collapse like the Soviet Union”. No, it won’t. Obviously I hope the damn thing falls apart, but this “EUSSR” routine insults the victims of the Gulags. Miss Le Pen should be grateful to the EU: it’s only thanks to its folie de grandeur that the Front National is surging in the polls.
You might say the same of Ukip, of course, but the two parties have little in common. The FN’s economics are basically socialist, while Ukip’s are free-market conservative. Also – how shall I put this? – Nigel Farage’s voters think the right side won the Second World War.
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Gloom would descend on the Thompson household in Carshalton Beeches c. 1971 when The Clangers came on. My younger sister and I didn’t always see eye to eye, telly-wise, but we agreed that the pink-snouted whistling moon mice were raging bores. So I’m not at all excited that the BBC is to spend £5 million reinventing this “fondly remembered” series.
The Clangers did have one fan, however: the Master, greatest of Doctor Who’s adversaries. In an episode of The Sea Devils, he turns on the television and is entranced by “a rather interesting extra-terrestrial life form”. He even attempts a Clanger whistle. Bless. Over the years the Master has been reinvented, too, but to little effect: the late and magnificently saturnine Roger Delgado owned the role. He truly is fondly remembered.
On Thursday we ran a blog post about the practice of “sexting”, suggesting that it’s important not to treat teenagers who send each other naughty snapshots as potential sex offenders. At which point a mother tweeted at me: “Doesn’t help when son’s drama group [in] high school act out sex attacks – each boy was sex offender, female the victim.” I contacted the mother, asking to know more. She said that in her 15-year-old son’s drama class, “they acted out scenes of sexual aggression. My son refused to act aggressively to a girl, so he was offered the choice of acting in a gay partnership instead.”
I can’t name the school for legal reasons; not yet, anyway. But I wasn’t surprised to discover that it was Catholic. In my experience, Catholic schools overcompensate for their association with “dogma” by providing extra dollops of PC self-righteousness. Let’s see what the local bishop has to say about this gruesome little experiment.
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How fascinating to learn yesterday that the health-conscious President Sarkozy of France took cheese off the menu while he was in office – “except when Angela Merkel was in town”, according to his head chef. This doesn’t strain credulity, I think we can agree. Mrs Merkel looks to me like an extremely determined cheese-eater; I can picture the glint of excitement in her eye as she digs into a ripe Elysée Camembert. She’s partial to British cheese, too. “You should have seen her scoop into the Stilton when she visited No 10,” says my Downing Street source. “It was like a JCB. Even the PM was impressed – and, believe me, he’s no slouch when it comes to the cheeseboard.”