Church of Scientology

headquarters	6331 Hollywood Blvd, Los Angeles, California

region served	Worldwide

key people	David Miscavige

website	scientology.org

The Church of Scientology was started in 1953 by L. Ron Hubbard to promote and practice his Scientology theories and techniques. The term 'Church of Scientology' (abbreviated 'the Church') does not refer to any one corporate entity, but instead serves as a collective label for a network of privately‑held organizations, unified under the direction of its leader David Miscavige who serves as the central authority. Most of the top-level management divisions are located at 6331 Hollywood Blvd, Los Angeles, California, or the building's side entrance 1710 Ivar Avenue. The Church of Scientology International (CSI) is officially the "mother church" responsible for guiding the other public-facing Scientology centers, which are called "orgs". Management and advanced orgs are staffed exclusively by members of the Sea Org, which is a strict organization for the most dedicated core of Scientologists.

The Church has been the subject of a number of controversies. While in some countries it has attained legal recognition as a religious, a charitable, or a tax-exempt organization, it has also been described as a dangerous cult and a manipulative profit-making business in government inquiries,[1][2] media investigative reports, superior court judgements[3][4] and parliamentary debates.[5][6][7]

History

In 1950, L. Ron Hubbard established organizations to manage activities related to his invention of Dianetics; the organizations went bankrupt and Hubbard moved to Arizona where he started Scientology. In 1952, Hubbard established the Hubbard Association of Scientologists (HAS), a secular organization, and in 1953 the first Church of Scientology organization was incorporated in Camden, New Jersey. The HAS was dissolved and the Hubbard Association of Scientologists International (HASI), a religious fellowship, was established to be the managing umbrella organization over all other organizations. In late 1954, Hubbard made the official announcement that Scientology was a religion. In 1954, the first Church of Scientology was incorporated in California, which in 1956 was renamed to the Church of Scientology of California. That organization was to become the 'mother church' over hundreds of smaller churches and missions of Scientology until 1981 when that status was passed to the Church of Scientology International.

Hubbard had official control of the organizations until 1966 when he publicly resigned, though he continued to give orders to executives, secretly running the organizations. Although Hubbard maintained no formal position within Scientology's management structure, he remained firmly in control of the organization and its affiliated organizations, often using code names and code words to obscure his involvement.[8] When some of the top ranking staff, including Hubbard's wife, were indicted for infiltrating the US government in their actions of Operation Snow White, Hubbard went into deep hiding though continued to manage control over the organizations but this time through intermediaries—predominantly Pat Broeker

Hierarchy of organizations

The Church of Scientology network operates as a multinational conglomerate of companies with personnel, executives, organizational charts, chains of command, policies and orders:

"Today, what we call 'Scientology' is in reality a remarkably complex network of ostensibly independent but clearly interconnected corporate entities. ... with a centralized bureaucracy and hierarchical structure. ... [Religious Technology Center] is the most powerful executive organization within the Scientology empire, and its current chairman, David Miscavige, is widely recognized as the effective head of the church."

The main types of organizations within the Scientology network are:

Service organizations are the public-facing organizations
Management organizations
Publishing and media organizations
Dissemination organizations such as marketing and outreach.

Service organizations

Church of Scientology organizations that are public-facing are called "service orgs". The two main types of services offered to the public are auditing and auditor training. Auditing is the 'counseling', and training teaches how to audit. The levels of auditing and training are charted and described on The Bridge to Total Freedom. All service organizations are separate corporate entities, are licensed as franchises, and pay a percentage of their gross revenues to International Management. Hubbard's image and writing are ubiquitous in service orgs, and each maintains a corporate-style office set aside for Hubbard's reincarnation, with a plaque on the desk bearing his name, and a pad of paper with a pen for him to continue writing.[9]

Missions of Scientology
Business-wise, missions operate like franchises. They are independently owned by a "mission holder" and licensed to operate by the Church of Scientology. These offer beginning services to newcomers to Scientology, then push their clients to higher level service orgs. Missions are managed by Scientology Missions International.

Scientology Life Improvement Centers and Dianetics Centers
These centers are operated by a local Church of Scientology and are small "store front" locations with the purpose of selling books and offering very basic services to get people interested in Scientology.

Management organizations

All Scientology management organizations are controlled exclusively by members of the Sea Org — which is not a corporation — consisting of the most dedicated core of Scientologists. David Miscavige is described as the highest-ranking Sea Org officer.

The Church of Scientology International (CSI) is officially the "mother church", and is responsible for guiding the other Scientology centers.

The Church of Spiritual Technology (CST) is the organization that owns all the copyrights of the estate of L. Ron Hubbard.

There are numerous other management organizations, including the Commodore's Messenger Organization, Watchdog Committee, Continental Liaison Offices, and the organizations that manage the dissemination and outreach activities.

In the 1950s and 1960s, management was operated from the Hubbard Association of Scientologists International (HASI), and from 1966 until the 1980s it was the Church of Scientology of California (CSC).

Sea Org

Religious Technology Center (RTC)

Publishing and media organizations

Golden Era Productions

Golden Era Productions is a 500+ acre property in California also known as Gold Base, occupied by the Church of Scientology since 1979. It is where they make Scientology films, reproduce audio recordings of Hubbard's lectures, and assemble E-meters.

Scientology Media Productions and Scientology Network

In 2011, the Church of Scientology purchased KCET-TV's studio facilities.[15] After five years of renovations and upgrades, the 4.5-acre property was reopened in 2016 as "Scientology Media Productions".[16] The facilities included "three soundstages, postproduction tools, control rooms, music studios, mixing rooms, art departments, scene shops, radio booths, screening rooms, a magazine production space, a live-events hub" and 136,000 square feet of space.[17]

Dissemination organizations

There are many independently chartered organizations and groups which are staffed by Scientologists, and pay license fees for the use of Scientology technology and trademarks under the control of Scientology management. In some cases, these organizations do not publicize their affiliation with Scientology and operate as front groups.[25][26]

Association for Better Living and Education (ABLE)

Founded in 1989, the Association for Better Living and Education (ABLE) is an umbrella organization that administers six of Scientology's social programs:

Applied Scholastics, educational programs based on Hubbard's "Study Tech".
Criminon prisoner rehabilitation programs.
International Foundation for Human Rights and Tolerance, which has a particular interest in religious freedom.

Bases and campuses

"The church owns a staggering array of properties, from a college on 55 acres in England to a luxury cruise ship. The church often buys historic buildings and refurbishes them in grand fashion. —St. Petersburg Times, 2009[35]"

Saint Hill, England

Hubbard moved to England shortly after founding Scientology, where he oversaw its worldwide development from an office in London for most of the 1950s. In 1959, he bought Saint Hill Manor, a Georgian manor house near the Sussex town of East Grinstead. During Hubbard's years at Saint Hill, he traveled extensively, providing lectures and training in Australia, South Africa in the United States, and developing materials that would eventually become Scientology's "core systematic theology and praxis".[36] While in Saint Hill, Hubbard worked with a staff of nineteen and urged others to join. On September 14, 1959, he wrote: "Here, on half a hundred acres of lovely grounds in a mansion where we have not yet found all the bedrooms, we are handling the problems of administration and service for the world of Scientology. We are not very many here and as the sun never sets on Scientology we are very busy thetans."[36]

Finances

In 2008, the Church of Scientology and its large network of corporations, nonprofits and other legal entities were estimated to bring in around 500 million US dollars in annual revenue.[57] Scientologists can attend classes, exercises or counseling sessions for a set range of "fixed donations"; however, membership without courses or auditing is possible. According to a sociological report entitled "Scientology: To Be Perfectly Clear", progression between levels above "clear" status cost $15,760.03 in 1980 .[58] Scientologists can reduce their costs by co-auditing with another student.[59]

Critics say it is improper to fix a donation for religious service; therefore the activity is non-religious. Scientology points out many classes, exercises and counseling may also be traded for "in kind" or performed cooperatively by students for no cost, and members of its most devoted orders can make use of services without any donations bar that of their time. A central tenet of Scientology is its doctrine of exchange, which dictates that each time a person receives something, he or she must give something back. By doing so, a Scientologist maintains "inflow" and "outflow", avoiding spiritual decline.[60]

Ideal Orgs

Starting in 2003 Miscavige began pressuring local Churches of Scientology to purchase larger facilities to use as Scientology centers which would be renovated to become "Ideal Orgs".[61] The theory was "If you build it they will come." This push has included the acquisition of many historic buildings, a plan which professor of religious studies Hugh Urban believes has been pursued to imbue the Church with historical significance and distract from its controversies.[62] For renovations of these buildings, the Church of Scientology has relied heavily on manual labor from Sea Org members in the organization's Rehabilitation Project Force.[62] As of 2018, the Church of Scientology claims it had purchased 70 buildings and opened 60 Ideal Orgs around the globe.[63]

With its membership numbers dwindling, Scientology's ideal org campaign has been called "a real estate scam", a "money-making scam", and "Scientology's principle cash cow".[64]

Membership statistics

Celebrities

In order to facilitate the continued expansion of Scientology, the organization has made efforts to win allies in the form of powerful or respected people.[71] Scientology has had a written program governing celebrity recruitment since at least 1955, when L. Ron Hubbard created "Project Celebrity", offering rewards to Scientologists who recruited targeted celebrities, and another church document pointed to the importance of "using Scientology celebrities to mold the opinions of their publics." According to Robert Vaughn Young, "one of my jobs was to get celebrities active, to convince them to hustle and promote Scientology."[72] The Church of Scientology operates Celebrity Centres for the use of artists, politicians, leaders of industry, sports figures, and other prominent individuals.[73]

Controversy

Though it has attained some credibility as a religion in many countries, Scientology has also been described as both a cult and a commercial enterprise. Some of the organization's actions also brought scrutiny from the press and law enforcement. For example, it has been noted to engage in harassment and abuse of civil courts to silence its critics, by identifying as fair game people it perceives as its enemies.[74]

In 1979, several Scientology members were convicted for their involvement in the organization's Operation Snow White, the largest theft of government documents in U.S. history.[75] Scientologists were also convicted of fraud, manslaughter and tampering with witnesses in French cases,[76][77] malicious libel against lawyer Casey Hill and espionage in Canada.[78][79]

Licensing

The Church of Scientology denies the legitimacy of any splinter groups and factions outside the official organization, and has tried to prevent independent Scientologists from using officially trademarked Scientology materials. Independent Scientologists, also known collectively as the "Free Zone" are referred to as squirrels within the organization. They are also classified by the Church of Scientology as suppressive persons ("SPs")—opponents or enemies of Scientology. Hubbard himself stated in Ron's Journal '67 "That there were only seven or eight Suppressive Persons on the planet".

In 2010, an exception to the rule was made specifically for the Nation of Islam, which is the only officially sanctioned external Dianetics organization and the first official non-Scientology Dianetics org since 1953. Minister Louis Farrakhan publicly announced his embracement of Dianetics, and has been actively promoting Dianetics, while stating he has not become a Scientologist. He has courted a relationship with the Church of Scientology, and materials and certifications are still required to be purchased from the organization, and are not independently produced.[107][108][109]

External links

Satellite Image of the Gold Base

References

. Alternative link Kevin Victor Anderson. Report of the Board of Enquiry into Scientology State of Victoria, Australia, 1965, retrieved June 30, 2019^
Peter W. Edge. Religion and law: an introduction Ashgate Publishing, 2006, retrieved July 3, 2020^

Classification

From 1952 until 1966, Scientology was administered by an organization called the Hubbard Association of Scientologists (HAS), established in Arizona on September 10, 1952. In 1954, the HAS became the HASI (HAS International). The Church of Scientology was incorporated in California on February 18, 1954, changing its name to "The Church of Scientology of California" (CSC) in 1956. In 1966, Hubbard transferred all HASI assets to CSC, thus gathering Scientology under one tax-exempt roof. In 1967, the IRS stripped all US-based Scientology entities of their tax exemption, declaring the organization's activities were commercial and operated for the benefit of Hubbard. Controversy followed the organization in those years, but its growth continued in the 1960s. New facilities were formed in Paris (1959), Denmark (1968), Sweden (1969), and Germany (1970). In the 1970s the religion spread through Europe: in Austria (1971), Holland (1972), Italy (1978), and Switzerland (1978). Centers of Scientology were in 52 countries by the time the 80s came in and grew to 74 by 1992.[84]

The organization sued and lost repeatedly for 26 years trying to regain its tax-exempt status. The case was eventually settled in 1993, at which time the organization paid $12.5 million to the IRS—greatly less than IRS had initially demanded—and the IRS recognized the organization as a tax-exempt nonprofit organization.[85] In addition, Scientology also dropped more than fifty lawsuits against the IRS when this settlement was reached. Scientology cites its tax exemption as proof the United States government accepts it as a religion.[86] In January 2009, removal of the tax exemption was rated as number 9 in items for the incoming Barack Obama administration to investigate, as determined in an internet poll run by the presidential transition team soliciting public input for the incoming administration.[87] The U.S. State Department has criticized Western European nations for discrimination against Scientologists in its published annual International Religious Freedom report, based on the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998.[88][89][90]

In some countries, such as Israel, Scientology is treated legally as a commercial enterprise, and not as a religion or charitable organization. In early 2003, in Germany, The Church of Scientology was granted a tax-exemption for the 10% license fees sent to the US. This exemption, however, is related to a German-American double-taxation agreement, and is unrelated to tax-exemption in the context of charities law. Unlike many well-established religious organizations, Scientology maintains strict control over its names, symbols, religious works and other writings. The word Scientology (and many related terms, including L. Ron Hubbard) is a registered trademark. Religious Technology Center, the owner of the trademarks and copyrights, takes a hard line on people and groups who attempt to use it in ways unaffiliated with the Church of Scientology (see Scientology and the legal system).

Illegal activities

L. Ron Hubbard appointed Mary Sue Hubbard to take control of certain aspects of legal protection for the organization in 1968, and the Office of The Guardian was created with its head office situated at Saint Hill Manor. Under The Guardian's Office (later renamed the Office of Special Affairs or OSA), organization members and contracted staff later organized and committed one of the largest penetrations of United States federal agencies ever perpetrated by an organization not affiliated with a foreign government (that is, one such as the KGB). This operation was named Operation Snow White by Hubbard. In the trial which followed the discovery of these activities the prosecution described their actions as such: "The crime committed by these defendants is of a breadth and scope previously unheard of. No building, office, desk, or file was safe from their snooping and prying. No individual or organization was free from their despicable conspiratorial minds. The tools of their trade were miniature transmitters, lock picks, secret codes, forged credentials and any other device they found necessary to carry out their conspiratorial schemes.[91]"

The organization has also in the past made use of aggressive tactics in addressing those it sees as trying to suppress them, known as Suppressive Persons (SPs) first outlined by Hubbard as part of a policy called fair game. It was under this policy that Paulette Cooper was targeted for having authored The Scandal of Scientology, a 1970 exposé book about the organization and its founder. This action was known as Operation Freakout. Using blank paper known to have been handled by Cooper, Scientologists forged bomb threats in her name.[91]

Members' health and safety

The deaths of some Scientologists have brought attention to the organization, both due to the circumstances of their demises and their relationship with Scientology being a factor. In 1995, Lisa McPherson was involved in a minor automobile accident while driving on a Clearwater street. Following the collision, she exited her vehicle, stripped naked and showed further signs of mental instability, as noted by a nearby ambulance crew that subsequently transported her to a nearby hospital. Hospital staff decided that she had not been injured in the accident, but recommended keeping her overnight for observation. Following intervention by fellow Scientologists, McPherson refused psychiatric observation or admission at the hospital and checked herself out against medical advice after a short evaluation.

She was taken to the Fort Harrison Hotel, a Scientology retreat, to receive a treatment sanctioned by the organization called Introspection Rundown. She had previously received the Introspection Rundown in June of that year. She was locked in a room for 17 days, where she died. Her appearance after death was that of someone who had been denied water and food for quite some time, being both underweight and severely dehydrated. Additionally, her skin was covered with over one hundred insect bites, presumably from cockroaches. The state of Florida pursued criminal charges against the Church of Scientology. The organization has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, and now makes members sign a waiver before Introspection Rundown specifically stating that they (or anyone on their behalf) will not bring any legal action against the organization over injury or death.[98]

These charges attracted press coverage and sparked lawsuits. Eight years later, Elli Perkins

Dissemination and recruiting practices

Members of the public entering a Scientology center or mission are offered a "free personality test" called the Oxford Capacity Analysis by Scientology literature. The test, despite its name and the claims of Scientology literature, has no connection to Oxford University or any other research body. Scientific research into three test results came to the conclusion that "we are forced to a position of skepticism about the test's status as a reliable psychometric device" and called its scientific value "negligible".[103]

Further recruitment practices — called dissemination in Scientology – include information booths, flyers and advertisement for free seminars and Sunday Services in regular newspapers and magazines, personal contacts, sales of books, and acting classes.[104][17][105]

Legal waivers

"Working with lawyer Bill Drescher, we drafted and implemented one-sided agreements that everyone who partakes in scientology services is required to sign—forfeiting the right to sue and any rights to access the records of scientology services, and even giving scientology authorization to hold the signee against their will should they have a psychotic episode so they can participate in the Introspection Rundown."

Due to previous litigation against the Church of Scientology, and particularly the civil and criminal cases surrounding the death of Lisa McPherson, COS drafted several contracts, releases and waivers which all individuals must sign in order to start any service with COS, no matter how small or introductory. They must be signed again before any major service, and new contracts signed for each Scientology corporate entity the individual visits. One particular waiver—called the "Lisa Clause" by critics of Scientology—states that a member will not seek any psychiatric treatment, and gives permission for the Church of Scientology to detain any member suspected of a psychotic break or other serious mental breakdown. Such detention is to provide the Introspection Rundown, a procedure where an individual is kept isolated from everyone, with no communication. This controversial procedure was considered to be the cause of McPherson's death and, in order to prevent future lawsuits, the Church of Scientology compiled these one-sided contracts. The contracts also prohibit the individual from obtaining any copies of records related to them while granting COS the exclusive right to retain the documents. Individuals waive the right to sue COS in a court of law, and instead they must use Scientology's version of an arbitration (which L. Ron Hubbard never wrote about).[106]

Church of Scientology

History

Hierarchy of organizations

Service organizations

Management organizations

Sea Org

Religious Technology Center (RTC)

Publishing and media organizations

Golden Era Productions

Scientology Media Productions and Scientology Network

Dissemination organizations

Association for Better Living and Education (ABLE)

Bases and campuses

Saint Hill, England

Finances

Ideal Orgs

Membership statistics

Celebrities

Controversy

Licensing

See also

Further reading

External links

References

Scientology Missions International

Bridge Publications and New Era Publications

Author Services Inc. and Galaxy Press

Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR)

Volunteer Ministers

World Institute of Scientology Enterprises (WISE)

Front groups

Flag Land Base, Clearwater, Florida

PAC Base and Hollywood, California

Gold Base, Riverside County, California

Trementina Base, New Mexico