Introduction In 2008, the Christian Essene Church, a new religious movement that origi- nated in France in the early 1990s, established its second religious commune in Quebec, Canada, which they called the ‘Maple Village.’ The community had experienced discrimination from French authorities in the wake of the Order of the Solar Temple massacre, which resulted in a government-spon- sored ‘war on sects’ (Palmer 2011). The establishment of a new commune came at the request of their religious leader, Olivier Manitara (1964–2020). 1 However, shortly after the Maple Village was inaugurated, the community once again found themselves at odds with the state over property taxes and their violation of municipal zoning by-laws. Despite having always been guided by the same leader and the long-term retention of group members, the Essenes’ responded quite differently to their legal issues in Canada than they had in France. In France, their responses to state authority were pri- marily passive – they kept to themselves and limited their engagement with the state, while refusing to comply with the law. In contrast, the Essenes in Canada have been assertive with the state – outwardly defending their practices – while demonstrating a willingness to comply with Canadian law and interest in using the court system to defend their rights. This chapter compares the Essenes responses in France and in Canada. We argue that both context and collective history matter when trying to make sense of a religious minority’s attitudes towards the law and the strategies they adopt to deal with the state’s regulation of religion. Based on interviews with individual members conducted in 2018–2019, we re- construct a case history of the Essenes’ legal issues in the two countries, analysed through an original typology that classifes the responses of NRMs to the state and its laws into four distinct categories. In the frst section of the paper, we introduce this typology and explain how it can be applied to better clarify different NRMs’ responses. Drawing on this ty- pology, we then describe and analyse how the Essenes reacted to the state and its laws, which reveals that past experiences and current perceptions of the state jointly inform the decision-making process of NRMs. 9 Strategies in context The Essenes in France and Canada Marie-Ève Melanson and Jennifer Guyver