1. There are a small number of religious communities that object as a matter of conscience to the requirement of being chartered by the state. For example, the International Council of Churches of Evangelical Christians/Baptists objects to registration as a matter of principle. See Felix Corley, “Estonia: Registration Transferred from Interior Ministry to Courts,” Keston News Service, 4 July 2002, available at (last visited 11 November 2003). This religious organization was formed when a group of Baptists rejected compromises that the mainstream Union of Evangelical Christians-Baptists accepted in order to be registered in the Soviet regime. In 1961 these Baptists split from the mainstream Church and formed the International Council of Churches of Evangelical Christians-Baptists. Lawrence A. Uzzell, “Russian Baptists Being Punished for Independence,” The Moscow Times, 15 September 2003, available at (last visited 11 November 2003).
2. If recognition and registration laws are mandatory rather than permissive, such groups are faced with an immediate crisis of conscience. They cannot gather to worship legally and still follow their beliefs. Similar problems arise for others who, for a variety of practical reasons, decide as a matter of convenience or priority that the burdens of registration outweigh the benefits. Smaller groups may lack the legal and technical expertise necessary to craft a charter, or they may simply wish to worship together without going through extensive red tape. For them, mandatory registration entails an unwanted burden on the exercise of religious freedom rights that is not justified in terms of permissible grounds for limiting religious freedom rights. They are willing to forego the benefits of legal entity status and experience the requirement to seek such status as a religious freedom violation. This is even more clearly a problem where government officials deny the group the legal status required to carry out religious activities, or where the group has grounds to believe that initial or continuing efforts to acquire such status are likely to be unavailing. Problems associated with groups who object to state chartering, however, are relatively rare.
3. Various types of entity status are described briefly near the end of section I below, but as explained there, the primary focus of this chapter is “base-level” entities, rather than the upper-tier entities such as public corporations (Körperschaften des öffentlichen Rechts) in Germany or recognized churches (anerkannte Kirchen) in Austria and many other systems.
4. See, e.g., Lance Lehnhof, “Freedom of Religion Association: The Right of Religious Organizations to Obtain Legal Entity Status Under the European Convention,” BYU Law Review (2002): 561–609, 562.
5. The right to be sued would appear at first to be the antithesis of a privilege, but unless an organization can be sued, it may be difficult to obtain financing. Well-meaning legislatures sometimes immunize religious property from foreclosure actions, but this may in fact make it difficult for a religious group to obtain financing. See, e.g., Law on the Freedom of Conscience and Religious Associations, No. 125-FZ (1997) (amended 2000, 2002) [Russia] (hereinafter “Russian Law”), art. 21(3). Moreover, the fact that a religious organization can be sued in its own capacity may protect individual members from becoming personally liable for activities of the religious organization.