This is a reprint from eSkeptic magazine, Wednesday, April 10th, 2013.
It's a little long, but intriguing.
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Times are tough for the Church of Scientology. Since Skeptic’s Scientology cover issue went
to press near the end of 2011, the Church of Scientology has faced increasing
media attention on revelations from high-ranking defectors as well as internal
criticism over its strategy of continual fundraising to build “Ideal Orgs” (or,
as some wags have dubbed them, “Idle Morgues”). The latter spilled over into
public view as the result of an email sent to thousands of Scientologists on
December 31, 2011 which argued that this fundraising violates L. Ron Hubbard’s
policies, citing and quoting chapter and verse. The sender was (at the time) a
Scientologist in good standing who was well known to members of the Church—Debbie
Cook, former Flag Service Organization captain known as the “face of the Sea
Org” for her appearances in Sea Org recruiting videos. The Church of
Scientology sued her in January, but was embarrassed by her testimony in an
open court hearing in February about the abuses she witnessed at Scientology’s “Int
Base,” where executives were kept in prison-like conditions in a pair of
double-wide trailers known as “The Hole.” The case was quickly settled in
April, and Cook moved to the Caribbean and then to Mexico.
2013 is shaping up to be even worse for the Church. In just
the first six weeks of the year three major critical books have been published
and an hour-long critical documentary aired on cable television. On January 7,
BBC journalist John Sweeney’s The Church of Fear: Inside The Weird World of Scientology,
was published. On January 16, a documentary of Nancy Many’sMy Billion-Year Contract, about her time
in the Sea Org including her time in Scientology’s dirty tricks organization—the
Guardian Office—aired on the new Investigation Discovery channel. January 17
saw the publication of Lawrence Wright’s Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of
Belief, a book that grew out of his February 14, 2011 New
Yorker story, “The Apostate,” a profile of Oscar-winning film director
Paul Haggis’s noisy departure from Scientology. And last but not least, a
memoir from the niece of the head of the Church of Scientology, Jenna Miscavige
Hill’s Beyond Belief: My Secret Life Inside Scientology and My
Harrowing Escape, was published on February 5.
Timed to distract from the Many documentary and Wright book,
the Church of Scientology paid $50,000 for an “advertorial” on the website
ofThe Atlantic magazine on January 15. The piece, titled “David Miscavige
Leads Scientology to Milestone Year,” argued that Scientology is growing like
never before, citing the opening of numerous “Ideal Orgs.” The Atlantic’s “sponsored
content” prompted such a backlash that the article was pulled from the website
before the day was over. On February 3, perhaps in an attempt to garner some
distracting publicity from Jenna Miscavige Hill’s book, Scientology purchased
television advertising in several local markets during the Super Bowl’s half
time to air an advertisement, titled “Knowledge,” which it had already released
on YouTube on December 18.
Each of these books recounts a different slice of life
experience with Scientology. Sweeney’s book reports the experience of a
critical journalist as Scientology’s power to intimidate is beginning to
decline, Hill’s book is about growing up as a third-generation Scientologist
and family relation of the head of the Church, and Wright’s book focuses on
Scientology as seen by its senior executive clergy and celebrities.
Wright’s book, Going Clear, is a carefully researched,
detailed, and entertaining story that follows the life story of Paul Haggis
from his youth in London, Ontario where he was first recruited into
Scientology, to his successful career in Hollywood as a writer and director,
with side trips into the life of L. Ron Hubbard, current head of the church
David Miscavige, and other celebrities like Tom Cruise and John Travolta. In
the process, Wright explains much of Scientology doctrine and history, often
uncovering new facts not reported in previous books.
Wright begins with Haggis’ adoption of Scientology after
being handed a copy of L. Ron Hubbard’s Dianetics and being told, “You have
a mind. This is the owner’s manual. Give me two dollars” (p. 3). Haggis becomes
a representative of the typical public (and subsequently celebrity)
Scientologist for Wright, who notes in the book’s introduction that “Few
Scientologists have had a conversion experience—a sudden, radical reorientation
of one’s life; more common is a gradual, wholehearted acceptance of
propositions that might have been regarded as unacceptable or absurd at the
outset, as well as the incremental surrender of will on the part of people who
have been promised enhanced power and authority” (pp. xii–xiii). Haggis moved
to Hollywood, became “Clear” #5925, and then established himself as a
successful writer. Although he recognized that parts of Scientology seemed
absurd—including in particular Scientology’s origin myth about Xenu the
galactic warrior—Haggis has “no doubt…that he had gained some practical
benefits from his several years of auditing and that his communication skills
had improved” (p. 17). Because he was immersed in a community where Scientology
was prevalent, with his wife, sister, and circle of friends as adherents, he
came “to understand implicitly that those relationships would be jeopardized if
he chose to leave the church” (pp. 17–18). These become some of the bars of the
“Prison of Belief” of the book’s subtitle.
The event that ultimately led to Haggis’ departure from the
church was the apparent sponsorship of California’s Proposition 8 by the Church
of Scientology of San Diego. Tommy Davis, then still a spokesman for the
church, said that it wasn’t actually the San Diego church that had adopted a
position on the proposition, but “one guy who somehow got it in his head
it would be a neat idea [to] put Church of Scientology San Diego on the list.”
Davis got the church removed from the list (p. 310). Haggis, however, insisted
that the Church of Scientology should issue a public statement disclaiming
responsibility, while Davis declined, saying that a public statement would simply
give undeserved attention to the issue. While Davis thought the issue was
resolved since he heard nothing more from Haggis, Haggis began investigating
criticisms of Scientology on the Internet. In the process, he came across a
YouTube video in which Davis, acting as public spokesman for the church,
falsely denied the existence of the practice of “disconnection” from family
members or friends who are critical of the church. Haggis developed more
reasons to leave, culminating in writing and sending a letter of resignation to
Davis that used the church’s stance on homosexuality as the primary reason for
his departure. Davis tried to bring Haggis back in to the church, but when
Haggis gave permission for former #2 in the church, ex-member Marty Rathbun, to
post the resignation letter on his blog, Haggis became a lost cause.
Wright’s book is an excellent introduction to the Church of
Scientology, its history, and its doctrines, with a focus on the celebrity
experience from recruitment to disillusion, and on what keeps current celebrity
members involved. The odd experiences of Tom Cruise, who drifted away from the
church only to be pulled back in, illustrate life at the very top of
Scientology. David Miscavige, “chairman of the board” (“COB”) of the Religious
Technology Center, who runs the church, lives a lavish lifestyle which Wright
describes in detail, including his eating habits (dinner is a five-course meal,
with a choice from two prepared entrees), sleeping habits (he regularly starts
his day at noon, and ends at 3 or 4 a.m.), travel habits (he flies by Boeing
business jet, accompanied by his hairdresser and chiropractor) and his
acquisitions (he collects guns, motorcycles, automobiles, and expensive
clothing) (pp. 271–272). Meanwhile, many Scientology staff work long hours for
sub-minimum wage and dine on beans and rice.
The book is another damning critique of the Church of
Scientology’s corruption, deception, and extraction of money from its members
to build its “Super Power” building in Clearwater and its “Ideal Orgs.” Wright
estimates that it has $1 billion in liquid assets and 12 million square feet of
real estate worldwide, including 26 properties in Hollywood worth $400 million.
There’s a stark discrepancy between Scientology’s claims and reality, which was
presaged by Hubbard’s tall tales in his youth. While members think that
Scientology was the product of scientific research by Hubbard, Wright’s
re-examination of Hubbard’s life shows, once again, that Hubbard mixed his own
tall tales and subjective experience with things he picked up from others—Korzybski,
Parsons, Crowley, the U.S. Navy, and so on—to create the policies and doctrines
of Scientology.
Wright’s book, though lacking the daring escape stories or
depth of reporting on the Lisa McPherson case that are strengths in Janet
Reitman’sInside Scientology, seems to me to more
comprehensively describe Scientology doctrine and history than her account.
Scientology has responded to his book similar as it did to hers, by denying its
accuracy (resulting in numerous humorous footnotes in the book reporting
Scientology’s absurd denials of reports by multiple witnesses). The only error
I’ve seen noted in the book is his mistaken dating of Hubbard’s “tomato
auditing” photo to 1968 (instead of 1959 or 1960), an error which is widespread
apparently due to Life magazine’s attribution of the photo to
theEvening Standard, January 1, 1968.
Wright closes his book with a comparison to other religions—Islam,
Christianity, Amish and Mennonite communities, Christian Science, and
especially Mormonism, a religion whose early history seems to have many
parallels with Scientology. As Wright puts it, “Joseph Smith was plainly a liar”
(p. 355). But such observations are unlikely to get through to the prisoner of
belief, as Haggis found when he tried to persuade his friends in Scientology to
read material critical of Scientology in the St. Petersburg Times (now
the Tampa Bay Times), only to be told by composer Mark Isham that “it was
like reading Mein Kampf if you wanted to know something about the
Jewish religion” (p. 328). If a reputable newspaper criticizes your religion,
it must be equivalent to Nazi propaganda and therefore not worth reading. But
for those who do read the material, even if they first rationalize it away as
the false complaints of unethical apostates, as Scientology encourages its
members to believe, they often accumulate personal experiences confirming what
they’ve read, which helps them find their way out. I hope that Wright’s book
will help.
When investigative journalist John Sweeney set out to make a
segment of the BBC documentary seriesPanorama about Scientology in 2007,
he had some idea of the risks involved, but was unable to prepare sufficiently
to avoid famously losing his temper in response to prodding from Church of
Scientology spokesman Tommy Davis. The YouTube video of that outburst was
picked up by the mass media and seen by millions.
This book, the first of three major books about Scientology
published in the first six weeks of 2013, is narrowly focused on a specific set
of events in 2007, when Sweeney conducted his investigation and interviews for
what became Panorama’s “Scientology and Me.” What makes this
book remarkable is that it doesn’t just include Sweeney’s perspective, it
includes a Church of Scientology viewpoint, as revealed from recent leaks of
internal documents and interviews with high-level defectors who coordinated the
response to Sweeney’s investigation and who have now been speaking out. They
were monitoring his activities, having him followed, and periodically
confronting him, sometimes while he was in the middle of interviews with
Scientology critics and defectors. The inside information shows how the Church,
at a turning point in its history, dealt with a perceived threat.
While Sweeney received much less harassment than
investigators of prior decades (notably Paulette Cooper, Joel Sappell and
Robert Welkos of theLos Angeles Times, Richard Behar of Time magazine,
and Richard Leiby of the Washington Post), it was apparently much more
focused attention than recent investigators such as Janet Reitman and Lawrence
Wright (so far as we know to date, anyway). Then-church media spokesman Tommy
Davis and head of the Office of Special Affairs Mike Rinder were the key
players against Sweeney, along with a “Communicator” apparently being told what
to say by David Miscavige (like a Stanley Milgram “Cyranoid”). Though Rinder
was nominally the senior, Sweeney perceived him at the time to be of lesser
status—confirmed by the fact that Rinder had only been spending time in “The
Hole,” a sort of prison for out-of-favor senior executives, but had been
released to work against Sweeney. Rinder and Davis have now both left
Scientology, though only Rinder is speaking out publicly.
Also noteworthy in Sweeney’s book is the record he
establishes of Scientologists who have reached Operating Thetan III, yet are
perfectly willing to lie by issuing false denials of familiarity with the story
of the evil Galactic overlord Xenu found in that level of Scientology. Sweeney
states: “A ‘religion’ that hides its core belief from the world is not a
religion because a true religion must be open about itself to all.” But this is
a tendentious definition of “true religion” (Sweeney attributes it to the
Charity Commission in the UK) that excludes esoteric and occult traditions, as
well as the Druze faith. It is in fact not uncommon for religious traditions to
excuse both secrecy and lying to non-members about the secrets.
The book is somewhat marred by a number of errors including
repeated misspellings of the names of Kirstie Alley, Kendrick Moxon, and the
Kia Sedona minivan. More significant mistakes include an assertion that Hubbard
was a friend of Aleister Crowley (they never met, though Hubbard lived with
Crowley follower John Parsons in 1945–46 and borrowed elements of Scientology
from Crowley’s work), and a claim that in 1993 the “Inland [sic: Internal]
Revenue Service reversed its previous position and declared the Church a
religion” (the IRS doesn’t determine what counts as a religion).
Sweeney’s book doesn’t cover the broad ground of books like
Lawrence Wright’s Going Clear and Janet Reitman’s Inside
Scientology, but it is an entertaining and revealing look at the experiences of
a journalist investigating Scientology at a turning point in its history.
Jenna Miscavige Hill was a third-generation Scientologist.
Her maternal grandmother, Janna Blythe, started with Hubbard’s science fiction
in the 1950s, was an advocate ofDianetics by 1957, and joined Scientology
in 1969. Blythe and her husband and their nine children all joined the Sea Org
on the shipExcalibur, but most returned to being “public” Scientologists after
only a few months. Jenna’s mother, Elizabeth or “Bitty,” refused to leave the
ship even though she was still a minor. On her father’s side, her grandfather,
Ronald Miscavige Sr., also brought his whole family into Scientology when he
joined in the 1970s. His two sons, Ron Jr. and David, both joined the Sea Org
as teenagers. Jenna’s parents had been Scientologists for 15 years by the time
she was born, though they both left the Sea Org beforehand. But just before she
was two, they decided to rejoin the Sea Org, at about the same time her uncle
David was taking control of the entire Church of Scientology.
Beyond Belief tells Jenna Miscavige Hill’s story of
life growing up not only in Scientology, but in the Sea Org as a close relative
of the head of the church. While her name gave her some occasional benefits,
her family’s lifestyle was not like that of her uncle (described in Lawrence
Wright’s book). Her parents’ positions in the Sea Org meant that in her early
years she lived in a small two-bedroom apartment with another family, the
Rinders. She would go for months at a time without seeing her mother, and would
often see her father only once a week. She thought that joining the Sea Org
herself held the promise of seeing her parents more often, and she signed her
own billion-year contract at the age of 7. But the promise was a false one, and
she saw less of them rather than more. Her exposure to the world outside of
Scientology was virtually nil, and once she was in the Sea Org, even the life
of a public Scientologist became foreign to her.
As a child cadet in the Sea Org, Jenna lived at a
Scientology boarding school known as “The Ranch” in the California desert, not
far from Int Base at Gilman Hot Springs, where her father and uncle lived. Her
days would begin at 6:30 a.m. with cleaning, followed by morning muster, roll
call, and personal inspections at 7 a.m. This was followed by “Chinese school,”
where students would repetitively and in unison read aloud L. Ron Hubbard
quotations written on sheets of butcher paper. All cadets had assigned work
positions in a formal organizational structure with children as commanding
officers. Seven-year-old Jenna’s assigned post was Medical Liaison Officer
responsible for treating sick children (p. 55) and providing vitamins to the
healthy. While Scientology didn’t permit the use of medicine for the treatment
of pain or fever (“touch assists” were prescribed for such ailments), it did
allow for MMR vaccinations (p. 57). At 9:15 a.m. was second muster, followed by
“deck work” or labor intensive projects, which lasted until 12:45 p.m. on
weekdays and all day long on Saturdays. Projects included laundry, pool
cleaning, weeding, planting trees, digging trenches, and hauling rocks. Hard
labor in the “Heavy MEST [Scientology acronym for matter, energy, space, and
time] Work Unit” was assigned as punishment for underperformers (p. 61). After
deck work came lunch and cleanup, followed by academic course work from 1:45
p.m. to 6 p.m. Following Hubbard’s educational methods, there was no formal
instruction, but only self-directed study under the watchful eye of a “course
supervisor.” Dinner and more cleanup ran from 6–6:45 p.m., and the study of
Scientology until 9 p.m. Hubbard policy applied to all aspects of life, and
courses had to be taken and their prescriptions followed for everything—how to
clean a room, how to make a bed, and how to ride a bicycle (p. 80).
While Jenna found this environment unpleasant, she was
afraid to complain about it to her parents and instead decided to run away with
another unhappy cadet, stealing fresh eggs from a chicken coop that were
reserved for her uncle. They were quickly apprehended and assigned to “lower
conditions” as punishment, which forced them to work their way back into the
good graces of their fellow cadets. She notes that this was actually the second
time she had stolen her uncle’s eggs, having previously taken some and put them
into a dresser drawer hoping to hatch chicks. When she was caught at that, she
was forced to write a letter of confession to David Miscavige. Rather than
getting in trouble, he “wrote…back and explained that my drawer was probably
not warm enough for the eggs, and that I would need an incubator if I wanted to
succeed in hatching them” (pp. 83–84).
Several of Jenna’s early experiences with her uncle,
described in the book, depict him as a normal, kindly relative, even as she
started to accumulate evidence that her parents were hiding something from her.
For example, while living with her mother, who was a senior Sea Org executive
in Clearwater with a nice apartment to herself, she would occasionally visit
her mother’s office. Her mother told her not to be in the office when her Uncle
Dave was there. On one occasion she heard him coming down the hall and tried
unsuccessfully to hide, which he subsequently joked about with her (pp. 139–140).
Her father similarly escorted her out of a situation where Miscavige was about
to berate some staff over a sound system problem at a Scientology event (p.
141).
After her mother got caught having an affair and was put on
the Rehabilitation Project Force (RPF), Jenna started receiving “sec checks,”
E-meter sessions that were intended to uncover evidence of wrongdoing rather
than self-improvement (p. 185). Her brother was also put on the RPF, and ended
up leaving the church. In 1997, she saw people protesting the death of Lisa
McPherson at the Ft. Harrison Hotel building in downtown Clearwater. Some
picket signs made reference to Xenu, the Galactic overlord of OT III, which
Scientologists are not permitted to know about until they are properly trained.
Sea Org members were no longer permitted to walk between buildings, but instead
were shuttled in vans with contact paper over the windows to shield them from
seeing the dangerous material (pp. 221–222). The only error I noted in the book
was Hill’s statement that the Lisa McPherson Trust, which helped organize these
protests, had “a staff of five, four of whom were former Scientologists, the
fifth was [funder Bob] Minton” (p. 220); Jeff Jacobsen and Mark Bunker were two
LMT staff members who were never Scientologists.
The book continues with her life through the reconciliation
of her parents and their departure from the Church of Scientology, and her
decision to stay even though she was still under 18. The church remained
suspicious of her loyalties and controlling of her life, which caused further
friction when her love life was involved. An assignment to Canberra, Australia
with her new husband gave her a level of exposure to the world outside of
Scientology and a chance to examine information critical of Scientology online.
Ultimately, she departed the church, reunited with her family, and became a
co-founder of exscientologykids.org.
Beyond Belief is one of the better books by an
ex-member. While she suffered nothing like the abuses of members who were
assigned to the Rehabilitation Project Force (RPF), physically beaten by senior
executives, coerced to have abortions, and separated from their spouses, her
book is unique in a number of respects. I believe it is the only book by a
third-generation Scientologist that describes life as a child of parents in the
Sea Org, and certainly is the only book by someone in such a position who is
also a relative of the head of the Church of Scientology. Jenna Hill didn’t
advance very far “up the Bridge,” during her time in the church—she didn’t even
become clear, let alone achieve any of the OT levels, and, like most of the
general public who has heard of Xenu, she learned about OT III from the
animated television series South Park (p. 372). Her lack of progress in
Scientology and the occasional preferential treatment she received will likely
be used by Scientology as reasons why her book should be disregarded. But the
contrary lesson is probably the better one—her story shows that even members of
the head of the Church of Scientology’s own family get mistreated, which is why
David Miscavige’s brother, his brother’s family, and his own father have left.
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