Photo/Illutration The Tokyo headquarters of the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, more commonly known as the Unification Church (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

About 70 percent of religious corporations said legal changes to prevent them from conducting dubious donation collections were appropriate or somewhat appropriate, according to an Asahi Shimbun survey.

Even the Unification Church, formally called the Federation for World Peace and Unification, whose actions led to the legal revisions, said the changes were appropriate.

The penal provisions that went into effect from April ban the collection of donations from followers and others who are in a “state of confusion.”

The health ministry in December also approved guidelines on what constitutes abuse by parents who force their religious practices on their children.

The Asahi Shimbun sent out questionnaires to 63 religious corporations and received responses from 33.

Twenty-four, including the Unification Church, said the new ban on questionable donations was appropriate or somewhat appropriate.

Twenty-two religious corporations, including the Unification Church, said the health ministry guidelines were appropriate or somewhat appropriate.

One religious corporation said that children should decide--based on their free will--whether to base their actions on a religious belief. Words and deeds that are threatening or stimulate worries and could affect such decisions should be restrained, the group said.

Another religious corporation said the donation ban was appropriate because of the need to eliminate scams hidden behind the guise of religion. Another said all victims of such large donations should be provided help.

But some religious corporations said the definition in the new law about using spiritual sales and other practices to confuse believers was too vague and could be used by government authorities to arbitrarily target certain religious groups.

Three corporations said the legal changes were somewhat inappropriate, citing the difficulty of finding evidence to determine illegal donation practices and the lack of clear definitions of what actions are meant to confuse believers.

Happy Science was the only religious corporation to say the change was inappropriate because it violated the constitutional principle of separation of politics and religion.

The group said it was a “bad law” that placed religions under state control.

Two religious corporations said the health ministry guidelines about parental abuse were inappropriate, and one called them somewhat inappropriate.

The Chisan School of Shingon Buddhism said the guidelines were inappropriate because the offensive acts applied to all actions by parents regarding their children and should not have been limited to religious practices.

Jehovah’s Witness, which has been accused of abuse by second-generation believers and their lawyers, did not respond to the question about the health ministry guidelines, but said it did not condone child abuse.

(This article was written by Amane Shimazaki, Taishi Sasayama and Ryujiro Komatsu.)

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