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the wheat from the chaff. There is discretion to enable the adjudicators to entitle what are
considered to be publicly beneficial groups and to disqualify (or disentitle) immoral, harmful
or non-beneficial groups.
Definitional Disqualification in Non-Charity Law and Charity Law Contexts
With respect to privileges provided to groups superficially qualifying as religions but not
entitled to charitable status, the situation is more obscure. The judiciary have resorted to a
form of definitional disqualification to exclude groups which might seem to fit the definition
but which are probably disapproved of. Hence, in the UK, where the definition of religion is
‗belief in a supreme being and an expression of the belief through worship‘, it might or
might not be conceded that a group believes in a deity, but even if it does, the form of
worship adopted might not pass muster. The group is not by definition a religion if it fails to
pass through either or both of these hoops.
In Ex parte Segerdal (1970)16 Scientology failed the definitional requirement to obtain
registration of its chapel at Saint Hill Manor as a place of meeting for religious worship.
While the court did not reveal any overt hostility to Scientology, one suspects that nice
distinctions were made to disqualify a group disapproved of. It is interesting that one judge
noted ‗without feeling that I am really able to understand the subject-matter of this appeal,
I have formed, for what it may be worth, a possibly irrational, possibly ill-founded, but very
definite opinion‘.17
Definitional disqualification is also to be found in charity law cases. For example, in 1999
Scientology failed to convince the Charity Commissioners that the practices of auditing and
training constituted the ‗reverence and veneration for a supreme being … necessary to
constitute worship in English charity law‘.18 Although the Commissioners examined
additional questions, including public benefit, they did so only for ‗completeness‘, the
application having already failed by definition.
Where there is no explicit requirement that the group involved must benefit the public, or
where the judiciary have not explicitly invoked public policy parameters, as in Segerdal, the
extent to which such parameters might be invoked (or indeed have been invoked) to
disqualify an applicant group is inscrutable. However, exhibiting a more open approach in
their 1999 Charity Commission decision, the Commissioners published reasons why they
would have rebutted the presumption of public benefit normally allowed religious
organisations, even if they had not found that Scientology failed the ‗worship‘ test, being
the second prong of the English definition of religion. The reasons advanced included the
newness of the ‗religion‘, which provided little basis on which to form a judgement about
public benefit, public concern expressed through unsolicited objections to registration,
adverse press coverage and some unfavourable expressions of judicial concern.19 These
reasons indicated a willingness by the Charity Commissioners to introduce broad public
policy considerations into the adjudicative process, along with a welcome propensity to
transparency.
It seems therefore that there are alternative approaches to the disqualification of
questionable groups from privileges generally afforded to religious organisations, definitional
disqualification or prima facie inclusiveness and subsequent disqualification on transparent
grounds of public policy. In a case like Segerdal, where Scientology failed the definitional
tests laid out in England, the former clearly applied. In so doing the judges exhibited a very
British reserve in not revealing underlying public policy concerns.
A further way to implement a form of definitional disqualification, but based on explicit
public policy considerations, would be to require the existence of mandatory ethical values
to qualify as a legally recognised religion for the purpose of fiscal entitlements.20 Indeed, it
is arguable that the propagation of ethics is an implicit requirement in the public benefit

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criteria of charity law and the underlying rationale for privileging religious charities.21 It
might be considered that the public benefit standard is appropriate for any group wishing to
access fiscal privileges.22 Otherwise, it might still be acceptable to public policy makers to
privilege groups (generally non-profit but not necessarily so), that do not benefit the wider
public, but provide solace and wellbeing within a limited circle of believers. Here an internal
ethic acceptable to the state would be required. In either case, the existence of allegations
of harm could be weighed to determine whether the substance and extent of the allegations
merited group disqualification from fiscal privileges.
An examination of the New Zealand Centrepoint Trust case (1985),23 which involved a
successful application for exemption from stamp duty as a charitable trust by a group living
in community and following the precepts of a spiritual leader, provides some support for an
approach requiring minimum mandatory ethics. There High Court Justice Tomkins unpicked
a distinction between religious classification per se and subsequent qualification as a
religious charity. It seems that Tomkins J. recognised the need for at least some minimum
acceptable internal ethic before the prima facie status of a religious group could be
achieved.24 Once this was shown, a wider ethical code relating to the community was
necessary to achieve charitable status. The case also provides support for the view that a
distinction might be made between matters of transient morality and what constitutes harm.
While Tomkins J. dismissed submissions that a laissez faire attitude towards sex by the
religious group involved was harmful to the children, he did so on the basis that no adverse
evidence from qualified persons, had been presented.25 While demonstrating a liberal
attitude arguably consistent with contemporary mores, he nevertheless left the gate open to
evidenced concerns not necessarily amounting to strict illegality.
An Inclusive Prima Facie Approach and Public Policy Disqualifications
As noted above, the other way to disqualify questionable groups from privileges generally
available to religious organisations is to apply a very broad (or inclusive) definition of
religion as a prima facie qualification only, and then apply public policy parameters to sort
the good from the bad. By this I mean the beneficial from the harmful and the non-
beneficial. The concepts of benefit and harm may also have some overlap with the concepts
of moral and immoral according to contemporary standards. The courts have long refrained
from making choices between what groups may qualify as religions on the basis of doctrine
or belief – but the courts can and have made choices between groups based on questions of
morality and/or harm.
This can be observed even in the leading precedent of Thornton v Howe (1862), which is
generally used in the UK to support the proposition that ‗any genuinely theistic sect, no
matter how small or obscure or eccentric‘, will qualify as a religion.26 In that case Romilly
MR pointed out that a bequest to a sect which inculcated doctrines ‗adverse to the very
foundations of all religion, and … are subversive of all morality‘, would render the bequest
void, presumably due to lack of public benefit or alternative grounds of public policy.27 It
should also be noted that by applying an inclusive, liberal definition of religion to the
eccentric sect involved in that case, Romilly MR ensured that the bequest was ‗brought
within the clutches of the Mortmain and Charitable Uses Act 1736,28 so that it was held to
be invalid‘ in any event.29 Hence a wide definition of religion was used in that case to the
detriment of the religion.30
The Convenience of an Ethically Neutral, Inclusive Prima Facie Classification
A cursory examination of the quite different contexts in which the word religion is utilized as
a protective or privileging definition, reveals that the word is used with quite different
emphasis in different contexts. Therefore, in the context of military conscription it seems
that it is the sincerity of the conscientious objector that is the relevant issue. In such cases
the relative merits of the ‗religious‘ philosophy believed in is not in issue. Hence the US