CANTERBURY, England (RNS) — Britain’s highest court ruled Dec. 11 that Scientology is a religion, giving a 25-year-old woman and her fiance the legal rights to marry at the church’s headquarters in London.
Louisa Hodkin appealed to the Supreme Court after a lower court ruled that services run by Scientologists were not acts of worship.
In his ruling, Supreme Court Justice Lord Roger Toulson wrote that religions should not be confined to those with belief in a supreme deity. “To do so would be a form of religious discrimination unacceptable in today’s society,” he said.
“We are really excited that we can now get married,” Hodkin said in a statement after the ruling. ”My fiance [Alessandro Calcioli] and I have always believed in the fairness of the British legal process. It has been a long and demanding journey, but the Supreme Court decision today has made it all worthwhile.”
In 1970, a British court ruled that Scientology did not involve religious worship so no one could marry in its chapels. As a result of the recent ruling, the Registrar General of Births, Marriages and Deaths will now recognize marriages performed in Scientology chapels.
The Church of Scientology was not a party to the legal action, but the Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling is seen as an important victory for an organization often described by British academics, lawyers and theologians as either a harmless philosophy or a dangerous cult.
L. Ron Hubbard founded Scientology more than a half-century ago. Since 1954, it has spread to more than 160 countries. In 1994, the church passed a major legal hurdle in the United States when the Internal Revenue Service granted tax exemptions to every Scientology entity in the country.
— Trevor Grundy
© 2013 Religion News Service. Used with permission.
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What a dysfunctional world we live in; hearing all the horror stories from people who have managed to escape this cult and which we now call religion. We truly have only God to protect us and praise to Him that He is faithful.
Scientology’s bona fides have been officially recognized by a number of governmental agencies and public authorities in the United Kingdom. These include: HM Customs and Excise, Inland Revenue (2001) and the ministry of defence (1996). http://goo.gl/WRG1fE
In October of 1983, the Australian High Court ruled that Scientology is a religion and “[t]he conclusion that [the Church] is a religious institution entitled to the tax exemption is irresistible.” The High Court reached this conclusion on the basis of an evaluation of the definition of religion that encompassed the teachings of all faiths generally accorded religious status. This was an expansion of the previous definition of religion in English law that had restricted religiosity to a narrow Judeo-Christian concept and which excluded the majority of worshipers in the world. The High Court decision is now recognized as the seminal decision on the definition of religion and on tax exemption in Australia. In fact, the Inquiry into the Definition of Charities and Related Organizations
conducted by the Australian government cites this case as “the most significant Australian authority on the question of what constitutes a religion…. The High Court found Scientology to be a religion. On the question of the current approach to the meaning of religion, the Scientology case provides the best elucidation….”
This case is recognized internationally as a leading case on religion. In February
2005, the English Lords of Appeal issued a judgment in Secretary of State for Education
and Employment and others (Respondents) ex parte Williamson (Appellant) and others
in which the Court referred to the Australian High Court Scientology decision as “illuminating” on the issue of the definition of religion, noting that “the trend of authority (unsurprisingly in an age of increasingly multi-cultural societies and increasing respect for human rights) is towards a “newer, more expansive, reading” of religion (Wilson and Deane JJ in the Church of the New Faith case [Church of Scientology case] at p174, commenting on a similar trend in United States jurisprudence)”