Church of Scientology Celebrates 50th!

Now, Religion in the News, a report and comment on religious trends and events being covered by the media. This week’s item is from the Dallas Morning News, September 18^th, 2004 with a headline, “Church of Scientology is Fifty Years Old.”

The Church of Scientology is fifty years old this year having survived it’s skeptics and detractors and investigation by the Internal Revenue Service and John Travolta’s box office flop, Battlefield Earth, based on the science fiction novel by the church’s founder, L. Ron Hubbard.

The church’s fiftieth anniversary makes it a young religion as far as religions go, but also attests to it’s staying power. According to Scientology headquarters in Los Angeles, the church now claims more than eight million members in 159 countries. The current president of the Church of Scientology International is a former Utahan, Heber C. Jentzsch who grew up as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and attended the University of Utah. The Salt Lake City Church of Scientology numbers between 200 and 300 parishioners. It operates out of a two story office building that includes auditing rooms, a sauna, and a small chapel where services are held on Sunday mornings.

The service begins with a reading of the Creed of the Church of Scientology written by Hubbard. A short treatise on integrity, written by Hubbard and a sermon from a large gold leaf copy of The Background Ministry Ceremonies and Sermons of the Scientology Religion, also written by Hubbard. Before he died in 1986 at age 74, he had written not only more than 200 science fiction novels, but 31 church related books.

Hubbard claims that Scientology is the one religion to have figured out the real truth. Man’s self is neither body nor mind, but spirit. And if that sounds a lot like what other religions might call a “soul,” Hubbard explained his difference. A “thetan,” the scientology term for the spiritual essence that is each person, survives not in some nebulous after life, but again and again on earth. Not reincarnated as another person or another life form, but coming back as itself in a different body. “Scientology is the first religion to understand death,” Hubbard said.

Tom:  Dave, this is interesting. We got this article from the Deseret Morning News, and of course that’s a Mormon…

Dave:  Right.

Tom:  …owned publishing entity. And although they’re taking Scientology to task here a bit, they are pointing out that the president of Scientology is a former Mormon. There are some things to be compared here. Certainly L. Ron Hubbard, one individual, starts his own religion. Sounds like Joseph Smith to me. Starting his own religion. Much of it fiction with parts that are not fiction where he took from (I’m talking about Joseph Smith) took from the Bible and…

Dave:  Yeah.

Tom:  …tried to incorporate some things.

Dave:  Well also, Joseph Smith declared in his famous sermon that the whole idea is for us to become gods. Now L. Ron Hubbard was a little beyond him. L. Ron Hubbard said we ARE gods. We all begin as thetans, that’s what it said here. Uncreated, eternal beings. We’ve been here forever. Well we created the universe, we thetans. And the creatures in it and then we became so fascinated with these little critters that we inhabited them. And as they evolved, died and evolved and evolved, they got farther and farther away from our origin and finally we were so far from our origins as thetans we forgot who we were and so of course, that’s like Yoga, the New Age. You just need to realize who you really are and they go through this auditing process. It’s like a tin can with wires to it. It’s nonsense, but it’s sort of a science fiction, psychotherapy, Eastern mysticism and you go back and like an onion you peel off these layers of the traumas that have developed. This is like psychotherapy.

Tom:  Yeah, I was going to say.

Dave:  And you find that you get back and you have cleared yourself of all these things. You have achieved clear and you realize you are an operating thetan god. Now you can create your own universe and reality and so forth. I don’t see any of these guys doing it. They still have to drive in cars. They still function like other human beings. What a delusion!  But it’s like Mormonism in that sense that we’re all going to become gods with our own little planet and so forth. I mean not “we”, the men become gods, the women become goddesses, the men are polygamists, they have many wives and a Mormon woman has the joy of looking forward to eternal pregnancy. Because she and her fellow wives of this man, this god, are going to people another earth. There will be another earth, another Lucifer, another Jesus, another fall, another redemption, and Tom, how people can believe such fantasies. Well they would rather—it’s like what Jesus said in John 8. I think it’s about verse 45 or thereabouts. He said, “Because I tell you the truth, you believe me not.” It’s one of the most horrible indictments of mankind. Jesus is saying, “You would believe any lie. The reason you won’t believe what I’m telling you now is because it is the truth. And the one thing you will not accept is the truth.” And so we’ve got all kinds of lies out there, Scientology is one of them along with Mormonism.

Tom:  Mmhmm. And Dave, the attraction here as you know, there are many people of wealth, many stars. They mentioned John Travolta, Tom Cruise, other stars who are attracted to this. And I also find it interesting about Scientology is that it is a form of psychotherapy. Yet they are one of the leading anti-psychology, psychiatry groups around. How does that fit?

Dave: Yeah, they put out some pretty good stuff actually. They do some good research showing the errors and evils of…

Tom:  But why don’t they take it back to their own therapies? You talk about peeling off the onion and looking within. I mean that’s all, as you said, it’s all psychotherapy.

Dave:  Because Tom, they can’t see the similarity. They can’t see that this is the same thing under different terminology. This is religion.  Psychotherapy, that’s humanistic you see? So that’s they way they would justify it. Incredible!