"I kept shopping until I found one that fitted my criteria." "But we are delighted with the final result."Ĭooke grew up Anglican but was a seeker, looking into, in his words, "gurus and swamis." "Having our status as a religion challenged was not something we expected," he says. RSSB's head in Australia is Michael Cooke, a retired corporate lawyer from Perth. Instead, the tribunal concluded that RSSB only cobbled together their beliefs from mainstream religions and that their weekly Sunday service lacked depth. She said VCAT did not think RSSB had the three main criteria of a religion defined in the Scientology decision: having beliefs providing answers to ultimate questions having ideas related to formal ceremonies and services and a quest to persuade worshippers that those ideas represent "true faith" or "true answers". And in doing so, Supreme Court justice Karin Emerton found, it used only a narrow definition. ![]() He also argued that VCAT's decision was skewed because rather than ask whether the proposed chapel was a place of worship, it asked whether the organisation itself was a religion. Lawyer Stuart Morris, QC, in part used a landmark 1983 court decision deeming Scientology a religion. So RSSB went to the Supreme Court to get VCAT's decision overturned and this week, they won. ![]() Baba Gurinder Singh, leader of the group Radha Soami Satsang Beas as pictured on the group's website.
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