In the 1990s, when a wave of “anti-religious” hysteria swept through a number of European countries, the Church set about organising actions to broadly promote religious tolerance as embodied in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Church of Scientology representatives today work continually with religious leaders of other faiths to promote tolerance. In Germany, France, Belgium, Greece, Sweden and the United States, the Church sponsored conferences that brought together leaders from a wide variety of religions to work out ways to end discrimination against individuals because of their religious beliefs. In addition to furthering religious tolerance, these conferences have given a voice to many small religious groups who would otherwise have no means to speak out about the abuses against their members.

In May 2002, the Church of Scientology’s Human Rights Office, in coordination with the Association of British Muslims and the Queens Federation of Churches in New York, brought together 75 clergymen, professors and government officials representing two dozen religious traditions for a conference at the Church’s British headquarters. The purpose was not merely to provide a kaleidoscope of religious diversity at the beginning of the 21st century, but as Reverend Marcus Braybrooke, President of the World Congress of Faiths, declared in opening the conference, “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.” The conference set an agenda to work to end intolerance and to reverse the trends of drug abuse, violence, crime and immorality.

In Los Angeles, an official of the Church of Scientology International sits on the Steering Committee of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Religious Forum, which works with law enforcement officials to improve relations among various ethnic and religious communities.

After the events of September 11, 2001, the Founding Church of Scientology in Washington, D.C. and the Church of Scientology New York redoubled their efforts to increase understanding among different faiths. In 2003, the President of the Founding Church was appointed chairperson of the Mayor’s Interfaith Council Education Committee in Washington, D.C. The President of the Church of Scientology New York, who, along with hundreds of Church volunteer ministers, daily assisted the Ground Zero rescue brigades and was featured in the New York Times, works alongside major religious leaders to ensure that the aftermath of the terrorist attacks does not lead to inter-religious conflict in the city.

In the 1990s, a wave of “anti-religious” hysteria swept through a number of European countries, most notably Germany and France. Members of minority religions often found themselves without jobs, ostracised in their communities, and denied the right to participate in the democratic process by being excluded from political parties and having their children ejected from schools —all because of their membership in a particular religion.

The Church of Scientology painstakingly documented these abuses and released the information to international human rights agencies. In 1997, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Religious Intolerance visited Germany to investigate the situation first-hand. In his report, he criticised what he called “a climate of intolerance” toward religious minorities and urged the German government to take steps to promote human rights. In France, where a parliamentary commission had arbitrarily blacklisted 172 minority religious organisations, the Church assembled representatives from many of these movements under one roof to form a coalition to defend one another’s rights. The Association of Groups and Individuals for Freedom of Conscience, representing some 60 movements, has quickly become an influential movement that speaks out for the rights of religious minorities.

In Russia, where a restrictive religion law threatens the existence of thousands of religious organisations, the Church’s Human Rights Office has promoted high-level roundtables to address the problem. In liaison with the Federal Ombudsman’s Office and the Russian Academy of State Sciences, these round tables have been attended by the Deputy Ombudsman of the Russian Federation and other high-level Russian government officials, and have brought together a diverse range of religious and government officials.