To me, the US is a secular country. England is a secular country. That means you can live your faith freely wherever you are. Whether you’re a Hindu, a Muslim or a Christian, you can even display outward religious symbols. But in France, no way, you have to hide everything. You mustn’t have any… we must all be the same. And you can’t talk about religion at work. You almost can’t talk about Christmas anymore, because there’s something… I think it’s false secularism that we have in France. But… I feel good about being a member of the Church. To me, it’s not an American Church, it’s just that it was… restored by an American. That is, Joseph Smith is American, but God is international, even universal, you could say. So it wouldn’t surprise me if… but here we’re getting into something…
I wouldn’t be surprised if there were extraterrestrial members of the Church![laughs] I’d never asked myself that question, I’m just thinking of it now, as I’m saying it… So no, it’s not an American religion to me.
I can understand it being perceived as such, as the top leaders are based in the United States and the headquarters of the Church are in Utah. But it’s the same religion everywhere.
…Nowadays, less so. Speaking of religious symbols, in the Church, we don’t have any outward religious symbol, but we wear these undergarments. And there are a few times when I’ve had to… try on clothes. I was invited to a friend’s house for something like a Tupperware party, but with clothes. And this girl, she wanted me to try on all sorts of things, with low-cut necklines or with buttock-level hemlines, so I was like “I can’t” -I cannot and do not want to wear that. She thought it was out of prudishness, but I told her: no, it’s out of religious principle. Well, that eased all the tension, because she really didn’t understand, she wanted me to show my bottom for some reason… I told her: no, it’s a religious principle, which really calmed things down. Then she made the effort to look for clothes that matched the criteria I was asking her for. That’s when I realized that, in a way, there’s more tolerance nowadays. Though to me the French state is no longer secular, some people show more tolerance.