This banner ran under South Park’s portrayal of Scientology’s creation myth in the episode “Trapped in the Closet.” While cultural reverberations would later spin off into resignations, allegations, threats and counterthreats, at the time, the method was clear: creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone didn’t have to make anything up about Scientology, Xenu, and the galactic holocaust, free to mine the comedy gold just as it was.
“Trapped in the Closet” is indicative of the threat the Internet poses to a religion organized into a hierarchy of learning called “Operating Thetan levels.” It used to be that a Scientologist only learned the legend of Xenu after reaching a fairly advanced OT level, due to threats that a thetan—or-spirit—who read the story before it was fully prepared would be severely damaged. Now Xenu is on Comedy Central.
The church repeatedly files U.S. court orders to seize computers of those who publish information protected under the U.S. Uniform Trade Secrets Act. The act is designed to stop the spread of material that has “independent economic value, actual or potential, from being generally known to the public.” And yet, through sites such as Operation Clambake and alt.religion.scientology, as well as YouTube and Wikipedia, the Internet has served as a breeding ground for skeptics.
Observe the running commentary penciled into the margins of books donated to the Robarts Library by the Dianetics Information Centre. (Dianetics is the original “science” later developed by its creator, L. Ron Hubbard.) While critics should be heard, counter-conspiracy theories vary greatly. On the subject of organization revenues, for example, claims of the church’s yearly revenue, and where that money goes, widely differ— perhaps between $200 million and $400 million? Between the secretive structure of the church and the hyperbole of its detractors, truth is faced by a double blind.
“It’s not a message. The workability of Scientology is what we’re talking about. When we say ‘find out for yourself and apply it to your own life to see if it works,’ we’re saying that because we know it does,” says Pat Felske, director of public affairs for the Church of Scientology of Toronto. She quickly adds, “but only if you apply it as written…[One has] to make sure that the works that you’re studying and applying are the words of Mr. Hubbard, not some altered version… We want to make sure of the purity of the technology. When there’s been a change, it’s not workable any more.”
Scientology is defined by its proponents as the science of knowing how to know answers. Based entirely on the writings of L. Ron Hubbard, an American science fiction writer and millionaire, it places great emphasis on self-actualization through what it calls the “Bridge to Total Freedom,” comprised of pastoral counseling—a process called “auditing”—and study of the scriptures. Scientologists believe that people are immortal beings who have lived many lives, including on other planets, before Xenu, the dictator of the Galactic Confederacy, banished billions of souls to Earth 75 million years ago. It is through understanding of such past traumas that one comes to understand the self and find God—not vice versa. An auditing session is a confession- like experience with an auditor, or “one who listens,” who helps pinpoint traumas experienced in this and other lives through measurements by an E-Meter, often dubbed a “stress test” to outsiders. Scientologists learn to be active rather than reactive by relearning how to communicate, mastering the material universe. According to Felske, a Scientologist will spend, on average, $1,000 a year on classes and donations to the church.
Scientology is the only religion in Canada to have been found guilty of breaching the public trust. Walking into the small, marble-walled lobby of the unimposing office building at Yonge and Charles, we are greeted by a security guard at a desk neatly arranged with various books by Hubbard, or LRH as he is more affectionately known. Just off the lobby is a room where visitors can take a stress test or watch a Scientology DVD. Looking out the window, I can see the Coffee Time across the street.
But in the early ’80s, this was the scene of a major police raid where thousands of church documents were confiscated. After a four-year OPP anti-racket investigation, confidential documents from Ontario public agencies became evidence in a U.S. trial of prominent members, including Hubbard’s wife, later indicted. The public soon learned that two Toronto members had infiltrated the OPP, collecting confidential information for the church’s use. In the late ’70s, newspapers depicted hordes of young people running off to cults: Hare Krishna, the Moonies, Children of God, Church of the Millennium, Divine Light, and Scientology among them. A new profession, the “deprogrammer,” reversed the work of brainwashed teens at their parent’s request. Scientology’s indictment reflected widely held fears of the religious group.
In 1980, SAC distributed a pamphlet by the anti-cult organization Council on Mind Abuse. “A serious mental health problem has been created in Canada,” it reads, “by the emergence of cults using psychologically coercive methods to ensnare members. Association with these predatory groups can be disastrous for members, their families and friends.”
Charged with promoting religious intolerance, SAC then-president Peter Galway argued that this literature was preventative medicine, stating, “U of T is a natural place for cultists to work.” COMA member Ian Hawarth claimed that many cults were at work on campus, including followers of Sun Myung Moon.
Kathleen Kerr, a medical doctor, U of T grad, and prominent Scientologist countered that the pamphlet’s criticisms “could apply to any religion and also to organizations such as the Salvation Army and Alcoholics Anonymous.”
Kerr has a point. According to David Reed, Anglican priest and professor emeritus of pastoral theology at U of T, there’s little that differentiates a cult from a religion other than public perception. In a recent article published in The Anglican Planet, Reed argued that the word cult “spread[s] fear and smear among a religiously skeptical but uninformed public.”
“Cults” today are often new religious movements that seem threatening because they draw from sources outside the dominant religion. Adds Reed, “the issue to address is abuse and corruption, not identity labeling.” While the story of Xenu might sound kooky, is it necessarily more so than that of a virgin birth or the parting of the Red Sea?
Rarely do we ask what constitutes religious freedom, though new social movements interpreted by law shed light to the extent Canadians are willing to stretch their preconceptions in the name of human rights.
Where Scientology is persecuted, religious freedoms, especially those of other religious minorities, also suffer. In 2001, France’s National Assembly passed a law “to reinforce the prevention and repression of groups of a sect-like character.” As Le Figaro noted, this definition could be used to prosecute the lifestyle of a Carmelite nun.
Said French parliamentarian Catherine Picard, a co-author, “We don’t care about religion, that’s not our problem. You can worship an orange in your kitchen as long as you don’t disturb public order, as long as you don’t force people and act in illegal ways.” Many of the sects targeted are American, and Washington has criticized the bill as promoting religious persecution.
Belgium keeps a list of designated cults. Scientology is listed, but so are the Amish and Jehovah’s Witnesses, groups that mainstream Canada might consider outlandish, but hardly a threat. Belgium officially recognized only six religions. Buddhism and Hinduism aren’t there.
Russia’s Religion Law stipulates that to be registered, an organization must have operated in Russia for 15 years. This law has been used to harass Scientology missions, but has also been condemned by the Union of Councils of Soviet Jews as a “hunting license” to liquidate minority faiths.
Scientology’s biggest state opponent, however, is Germany, home to 30,000 believers. In the preface to a 1997 government-published booklet attacking the church as a criminal organization, German labour minister Norbert Bluem writes, “An organization that manipulates people’s psyches and transforms them into powerless tools for their own criminal aims is not a church and not a religious community.” This argument has turned incredibly ugly, with each side—government and church—comparing the other to Nazis. Some German Scientologists claim they are spat at in public and are refused service at restaurants. Government agencies that have monitored Scientology for unconstitutional activities have drawn criticism from the Berlin Administrative Court, the U.S. State Department, and the United Nations Human Rights Committee.
In Canada’s secularized society, scientology is the definition of a political hot potato—nobody wants to touch it. Unlike Spain where the National Court can register an organization on the Registry of Religious Entities, Canadian government does not define religion. That may seem like an ideal separation of church and state, until you realize how vital religion is to public services. Recognition has fallen to government agencies outside of the public limelight, such as the Canada Revenue Agency, which administers the Income Tax Act. Currently, Scientology is defined as a religious non-profit organization, whose ministers can perform marriages. Scientologist public servants are given time off work for Scientologist holidays. For a new religion in Canada, these represent steps on the road to legitimacy.
Tellingly, when Heber C. Jentzsh, international president of the Church of Scientology, wrote an editorial for the Globe and Mail in 1998 defending Scientology, he made a spiritual argument—Scientology is “concerned with no less than the full rehabilitation of man’s innate spiritual self.” In response to court rulings, “even more significant was the U.S. Internal Revenue Service’s recognition of the Church in October, 1993.”
The taxman defining religion? Not exactly. Under Canadian law, non-profit organizations are exempt from paying income tax, as are charities, who can offer tax receipts for donations once registered with the CRA. They must meet a “public benefit test”—proof that the organization provides a tangible advantage to society. It must also fall into one of four categories, one of which is “the advancement of religion.” According to the CRA, 41 per cent of charities registered in Canada in 1998 were religious.
While the law defines the advancement of religion—“promoting the spiritual teachings of a religious body, and maintaining the doctrines and spiritual observances on which those teachings are based… [with] an element of theistic worship”—it’s up to the CRA to make that definition workable, turning to the courts and their application of common law.
“The CRA’s definition is a little outdated for a pluralistic society, because it does invalidate faiths that have been around for thousands of years,” says Felske. The definition of religion as the worship of a deity “would rule out all of Buddhism, which is only 2,000 years old.”
‘A VIRTUAL MONOPOLY OF THE MEANS OF REVELATION’
With little to differentiate itself, other than its relative newness and its different source of scripture, from more mainstream Canadian religions, Scientology’s belief structure may gain greater recognition with time. In 1982, judges in Australia’s High Court defined a religion by individual belief. The protection of religious rights should have a stronger foundation than public opinion, but Scientology is perceived as South Park fodder, not a viable threat, and arguably deserves the same respect as any other organized religion. The Toronto Church has not been indicted since that breach of public trust in R. v. Church of Scientology Toronto.
And it isn’t simply a case of other countries’ intolerance of religious minorities. A 2001 French poll showed that 73 per cent of respondents believed that cults are a danger to democracy, and 88 per cent believed they should be banned. Perhaps this relates to the late ’90s sentencing of a former French Scientology president for manslaughter and fraud. Hamburg hasn’t set up a task force to help Scientologists who want to exit the group just for the hell of it. When a person is declared “Fair Game,” the Scientology Code of Ethics no longer applies in their dealings. While the organization claims the principle was cancelled in the late ’60s, many detractors say that they have experienced what amounts to emotional and psychological jihad. Other countries seem to be experiencing the same growing pains that Canada went through in the ’70s and ’80s.
The church’s historical development explains this time lag. In The Road to Total Freedom, Roy Wallis argues that the activities that mar the group in a politician’s mind—the Fair Game rule, an anti-psychiatry, anti-government, and anti-press stance, the special operations to infiltrate public agencies, the control the organization has over its adherents—are hostile responses to what has become a smoother organizational structure. To Wallis, Scientology is more than additional theology applied to an individual life, but an alternative to the common belief that constitutes reality for the majority. Scientology is also primarily an urban phenomenon, as members of the Toronto church can’t seclude themselves like the Hutterites and Doukhobors once did. “As sections of the public became increasingly hostile toward Scientology,” says Wallis, “increased involvement by various means appears to have been seen as a method of control.”
Scientology began with “Dianetics,” an article first published in a 1950 issue of Astounding Science Fiction and a pseudoscience developed by Hubbard. When a U.S. federal court ruled that auditing using the E-Meter could not be considered scientific treatment in 1971 (as Hubbard had proposed), he responded by turning science into a religion, controlled by himself as the sole author of its scriptures. As a result, says Wallis, “Scientology is a movement with some totalitarian features.”
Even after his death, the only source of authority in the church remains L. Ron Hubbard. While Hubbard is not its God, he is comparable to a prophet, perhaps most akin to Buddha. His name is inscribed on all scripture, and his image is in the lobby of the Toronto church. In a 2007 DVD, the current head of Scientology, David Miscavige, blames the conflicting aspects of Hubbard’s writing on, of all things, transcriptionists.
Felske states that a core tenet of Scientology is personal integrity: “If it’s not true by your own estimation, it’s not true. We will not ask you to believe anything other than what you have found for yourself to believe.” While this is permissible, a strict ethics code, a church that keeps records on personal secrets, invention of what amounts to a Scientology language (complete with a coded dictionary), and the complicated series of OT Levels (what Wallis calls a “hierarchy of sanctification”) dissuade alternative interpretations and changes allowed for in other faiths. The choice is ultimately whether to stay with Scientology or to go, but authority flows downwards.
Scientologists are not antidemocratic, but in the face of insecurity, the organization exhibits extreme control over its followers. Not surprisingly, corporations have taken note. In the early 1990s, Allstate Insurance Co. applied Scientology management principles. Scientology’s Sea Org, an elite group of followers that lived with Hubbard on a ship, is possibly one of the best examples of a transnational corporation, responsible to no one but itself.
