/IPS BULLETIN OF RELIGIOUS AFFAIRS/ GERMANY: Bonn Tries to Lower Heat on Scientology Flap

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

NEW YORK, Feb 16 1997 (IPS) - When Germany’s state minister for foreign affairs arrived last week in the United States, the envoy planned trips to the United Nations, Washington — and, perhaps most importantly, Hollywood.

Werner Hoyer’s missions on his trip included a major effort to heal the rift growing between Washington and Bonn over Germany’s treatment of the Church of Scientology, a ‘New Age’ movement that the Germans consider a cult. The route of that damage control mission, however, now leads through Hollywood, where a few major Scientologist movie stars have given their movement clout.

The power of Scientologist movie stars became apparent last month, when ‘The International Herald Tribune’ ran a full-page advertisement, signed by dozens of these stars as well as by the heads of the MGM, Warner, Paramount, Universal, and Sony studios, blasting the German government for its persecution of Scientologists.

The response from the U.S. government was swift. In its annual Human Rights Report released two weeks ago, the State Department detailed charges of discrimination by Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s government against the Scientologists.

Now, Hoyer acknowledges, Bonn has to ensure that its differences over the Church of Scientology with Washington do not become a burden in their bilateral relations.

“We have to face the fact that the legal situation of the Church of Scientology is different here from its legal situation in Europe,” Hoyer says.

“In Germany, we have to accept the fact that there is a Supreme Court ruling in (the United States) protecting Scientology as a religion,” he concedes.

But Hoyer adds that Washington, for its part, must understand that German courts have ruled that Scientology is a “for-profit” organisation, subject to the same constraints as other for-profit groups that put forth worrying ideologies.

For the U.S. State Department, the issue has been a simple one of religious rights and free speech. The Human Rights Report notes that Scientologists have been purged from the ruling Christian Democrats and opposition Social Democrats, while the state of Baden-Wurttemberg has ordered surveillance of the church’s members.

It also drew attention to proposed boycotts of events involving Scientologists, including jazz concerts with pianist Chick Corea and films showing actors Tom Cruise and John Travolta. (Corea claims that one of his concert apearances was boycotted with government approval, although the latest Cruise and Travolta films have been hits in Germany.)

State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns says Germany’s policy towards Scientology is religious discrimination.

“We believe that the members of the Church of Scientology have a right to practise their religion in Germany,” Burns says. “Some Americans have had their religious rights infringed.”

Other U.S. politicians have used the crackdown on Scientology to draw some uncomfortable parallels with the 1930s. Republican Representative Carlos Moorhead of California has argued that the treatment of the Scientologists mimicked crackdowns on Jews during the Nazi era — charges which Hoyer calls “unacceptable and outrageous.”

Some Germans have countered that the Scientologists, whose belief is based on the writings of science-fiction author L. Ron Hubbard, are themselves propagating abstract ideas of “purity” that are worryingly similar to some Nazi ideology. Others point to the fact that people joining the church are compelled to invest their own funds into it and to bring new members, resulting in its expanding coffers.

Many German politicians fear that the dispute over human rights is a smokescreen or the Scientologists’ real goal: to claim tax exemption in Germany as a religion.

“We have to take it seriously,” Hoyer says. “Everybody knows that if they reach success in Germany, the road to Europe is open.”

That road will not be an easy one to travel. The Scientologists only won a tax-exempt status in the United States in 1993. More importantly, many European countries agree with Bonn that the group is largely a for-profit enterprise: Greece recently also ruled against the Church of Scientology’s claim to be a religion.

Still, the Scientologists have a few trump cards up their sleeves. Cruise and Travolta are two of the biggest stars in Hollywood right now, and their influence no doubt helped to secure the support of the five major studios, all of which have movie deals with Scientologists Cruise, Travolta and Nicole Kidman.

As Joe Roth, chairman of Disney Studios, put it in an interview with Time magazine, Hollywood bosses either believe the Nazi parallels or “they’re all whores for Tom Cruise and John Travolta, and they wanted to be on the right list.” (Roth did not sign on to the letter attacking Kohl’s government.)

In the meantime, the German ministers’s agenda this month takes him to California, in an effort to explain his country’s legal position and to lower the heat on the issue. But he has few illusions about the consequences his government has already suffered: “The Scientologist campaign has hit us hard.”