Swiss Reformed Church Questions Proportionality of Anti-Burqa Initiative

The EERS Council issued an argument on 26 January 2021 expressing scepticism about the proportionality of a proposed legislative amendment on covering the face. It cited aspects relating to democracy, individual freedoms and gender equality.

The council said that participation in public life and democracy rests on the same right of everyone to see and be seen, and to hear and be heard. It described this as in line with the Protestant vision of the human being, and said the Reformation had made a significant contribution to the current conception of liberal democracy.

The council also stated that “it is not possible to impose a general requirement for participation in recognizable, public and open-faced social life.”

The Reformed church, according to the statement, insists on equal treatment of the sexes and on the absence of coercion. The council noted that it is not possible at first sight to tell whether concealing the face expresses a religious conviction or results from constraint. Its text said that imposing unveiling does not free the women concerned, and that unveiling must be done voluntarily. For this reason, the council said, a constitutional amendment does not solve the problem.

The council held that fundamental rights must be lived out, negotiated and claimed by society, and that individual freedoms stop only when the State and society as a whole are threatened. It added that “the respect for the scrupulous piety of a believer must resist the surprise that foreign forms of expression of faith can give rise to,” and that in plural societies, members of all religious communities owe each other this respect (Romans 12:18).

Source: Read the original report (translated from French)