Leading evangelical bodies in Switzerland this month backed a church’s appeal with the European Court of Human Rights against a ban on a public baptism in Lake Geneva.
The appeal followed the Swiss Federal Supreme Court’s Feb. 23 decision to uphold the Geneva Conseil d’Etat denial of the church’s right to hold the baptism in July 2022, despite previous baptisms in the lake without incident.
Geneva canton officials had banned the baptism, asserting that the church had no official relationship with authorities.
The Evangelical Church of Cologny, a member of the Fédération Romande d’Églises Évangéliques (FREE), had filed the appeal. Both the Réseau Évangélique Suisse (RES), which represents 250 evangelical churches in French-speaking Switzerland, and the Geneva Evangelical Network (REG) have now backed the appeal.
The FREE supports the church in both its “choice and approach,” according to a press statement on Monday (Aug. 12) by RES and REG, which asserted that the case has left a “taste of disappointment in evangelical circles.”
“In its ruling [of February], the Federal Court validated Geneva’s conception of secularism, according to which a naming ceremony celebrated in the public space could offend religious peace and the convictions of others,” the press statement read. “In the canton’s view, this ‘risk’ justifies the need for prior recognition of the community concerned by the State, in addition to the authorizations ordinarily required for the organization of a public event.”
After analyzing the decision-making of Mont Repos judges, based in Lausanne, in their initial ruling, the network concluded that it was “flawed and represents a worrying development in access to the fundamental right of religious freedom.” The network therefore encouraged the Evangelical Church of Cologny to take the case to the European Court of Human Rights.
“The general assembly of the Colognese church decided by majority vote to follow this recommendation, in the hope that this bad jurisprudence, with national repercussions, will be corrected. The FREE stands by the church in this process,” the RES and REG stated. “As evangelical bodies, RES and its affiliated FREE defend the peaceful expression of faith and religious freedom, in private and in public, while respecting the authorities and all sensibilities.”
They stated that the main point of disagreement with the Federal Supreme Court concerned the recognition procedure established by the Geneva canton.
“This involves the signing of a declaration of commitment by the religious community concerned, then a discretionary decision by the Geneva Council of State. And this decision cannot be appealed,” the evangelical bodies stated. “In other words, the State has the authority to choose to which communities it grants the freedom to exercise the right to religious freedom in the public domain, and to which communities it refuses this right.”
After the federal court upheld the original appeal, RES issued a statement in April lamenting the requirement imposed by the canton of Geneva limiting baptism permission to only “churches with which it has a relationship.”
RES asserted that the court’s decision confirmed a decline in religious freedom in the canton of Geneva and demonstrated a “secularism more orientated towards a distrust of the churches than towards an openness and richness of the social fabric.”
“It is also regrettable that religious organizations are treated as suspect a priori, in that they are required to make a commitment to the State in relation to religious events that is not required of other users of the public domain,” read the RES statement.
The church and the RES also hold that the canton can offer advantages to religious organizations that choose to maintain relations with it, but that it should not be able to restrict the rights of those that do not; full independence of churches must be the norm.
“Recognizing the primacy of Swiss law over any religious obligation ignores the possibility of a conflict between deep convictions and the requirements of the law, a case which has already arisen and could arise again – whether we think of conscientious objectors or cases of solidarity offenses,” the RES stated.
The ban on lake baptisms came from implementation of Article 6 of the State Secularism Act, according to a joint opinion piece in December for Lafree Info, news site for FREE, by the Rev. Jean-René Moret, pastor of the FREE, and Michaël Mutzner, scientific collaborator at Christian Public Affairs.
In the article, entitled, “Geneva secularism has a problem with religious freedom,” Moret and Mutzner stated that this regulation provided a ban in principle on religious public events apart from exceptional circumstances.
Even though the Federal Court had invalidated the ban in 2022, the canton did not review its practice in this area, wrote Moret and Mutzner.
“On the contrary! During the same year, it decided to henceforth ban baptisms at the Lake, although they had been explicitly authorized until then,” they reported.
A date for the European court ruling is uncertain, said Stéphane Klopfenstein, communications director for RES.
“It is very difficult to say; for it’s a long process, it can take years,” Klopfenstein , told Christian Daily International. “The first step is the decision on the appeal, and if it is positive, the long process begins.”
