Swiss ban appeal
Luke Randall
The Swiss Evangelical Alliance (SEA) has expressed support for three evangelicals who are appealing new restrictions on the wearing of religious symbols for lawmakers in Geneva, stating that such measures effectively see their religious beliefs “banished”.
Despite a 2019 ban on such symbols in the Grand Council – Geneva’s cantonal parliament – being reversed in the courts, a new version of the ban has narrowly passed with slim majorities in parliament and the public vote. However, Markus Hofer, Joseph Kabongo and Michael Mutzner have appealed the ban, believing it to be unlawful.
There’s snow discouragement… ski church growing
Luke Randall
A skiing ministry in a village in the Swiss Alps is continuing to grow after almost 40 years, having developed from a small chaplaincy programme into a thriving church.
Verbier, a small village 1,500 metres above sea-level with a population of about 3,000 permanent residents, is a top ski and summer resort which hosts many English-speaking residents and holidaymakers, in which a small-scale winter chaplaincy programme was formed in 1986.
Swiss free evangelicalism bucks trend
Luke Randall
Free evangelicalism has remained at a similar level over the last 13 years in Switzerland, defying a sharp decline in mainstream Protestant evangelicalism and Catholicism, new data shows.
New statistics released by the Federal Statistics Office in Switzerland show that while only one in every five people in the central European nation identified with the Protestant Swiss Evangelical Church (SEK) in 2023, decreasing to 19% from 34% in 2000, the number of free evangelicals remained at 5%.