The question of listing religious affiliation in national censuses was raised today at the United Nations subcommission which is engaged in discussing a report on discrimination in religious rights and practices.
The report brought to the attention of the United Nations the fact that many states do not include information concerning religious affiliation in their official censuses. Mohammed Awad, of Egypt, chairman of the subcommission, criticized the United States for not including the question of religion in its official population census.
(Jewish organizations, as well as various non-Jewish groups, objected recently to the inclusion of a question on religion in the U.S. census on the ground that this would violate the separation of church and state principle of the American constitution. As a result, the Bureau of the Census decided to continue its long standing practice of not inserting the question of religious affiliation in the next–the 1960–census.)
Replying to the Egyptian delegate, Judge Theodore Spaulding of the United States told the subcommission that the Bill of Rights of the U. S. Constitution contained in the First Amendment a prohibition which restrained the government from passing any laws relating to the establishment of religion. It had been construed by the courts “very broadly because nothing has been permitted to enter in the situation which would affect the freedom of religion” guaranteed. It had been felt that “no official recognition should be given to any religion or any information relating to the census,” dodge Spaulding concluded.
A. Fomin of the USSR, said that Soviet legislation banned “asking the believer or the non-believer or anyone seeking a job” for information as to what religion such individual belonged. Therefore, in his country there were no statistics, it being considered that these might have “bad repercussions” for individuals. The desire was to avoid additional possible grounds for discrimination, he said.
Claude Chayet of France said that the Republic of France under its constitution prohibited any public document from recording the religion of anyone. The state would consider it discrimination vis-a-vis the individual to ask about his religious affiliation. Any attempt at a governmental census aimed at gathering official statistics on religion might violate the religious rights of the individual, in his view.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
