Adrienn Szlapak

Religions Born in the U.S.

Prof. Ryan James

Spring 2013

Church of Scientology Szlapak

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The first time I have ever read more deeply about Scientology was when one of my ex-classmates from high school decided to leave everything behind and went to work for the Org. Before that I did not even know she was religious. All I knew was that she was a bright and talented young woman who majored in interior design at university, a course of study that I thought suited her. She was the flat mate of a close friend of mine and she went out with another ex-classmate. Their relationship seemed quite serious and not long before she decided to leave the country to pursue Scientology, they even got engaged.

The whole story seemed fake at first and

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when I found out that it was all true, I was shocked. I could not comprehend how a smart, nice girl can be as naïve as to join an organization with such an evil reputation. When I found out what had happened, I called my friend who had lived with the girl to ask her about the circumstances. She told me she had not expected any of this to happen. She knew the girl went to the Dianetics Center regularly, as did her fiancé where they got help from the trainers with their university studies. At least that was the official story.

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Research Questions

Why is Scientology so appealing to young people?

What is unique about the way the Church of Scientology communicates?

The Communication of the Church of Scientology

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One day a group of people accompanied the girl to her apartment and helped her pack up all of her stuff. She was not allowed to stay alone with my friend, they could not even say goodbye properly. All she said was that she was going to drop out of university in order to be able to work in the Org. She was scheduled to fly at the end of the week and before that she went home to visit her parents (long-time Scientologists as we later learned). She said her fiancé was going with her as well. Five minutes later she was gone and none of us

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have seen her since. The next thing we learned was that the fiancé did not go with her in the end as his mother forced him to stay. He saw her off at the airport and tried to persuade her to stay, but she broke off the engagement and left regardless. The finance was heartbroken for a long time and he started a crusade against the Church of Scientology together with his mother. They launched a website where they blogged about what had happened and how they were proceeding with trying to find the girl.

Rehabilitation Project Force members in 2010

The Church of Scientology International Website

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For months I followed their story online. More and more people commented on their posts every day. They were mostly ex-Scientologists and people who also lost someone because of it. Each and every one of the stories seemed like a nightmare to me. After approximately a year the posts became less and less frequent and the boy started a new life. When that happened I also stopped reading about Scientology, but the uneasy feeling I had regarding the organization stayed with me for years. I refused to have anything to do with any organization or workplace that had any ties to Scientology and I also advised my friends against ever coming into contact with it.

I can see now how very biased I was. For one, I did not know any of the people involved in the story beyond going to the same class for 5 years, I just assumed that

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what I saw when I looked at them was the truth. Moreover, the information I had about the Church of Scientology was limited and channeled. I only read articles and testimonies that criticized the Church, I never once looked at the official website.

I decided to tell this story for two reasons. First of all, I believe that almost everyone has heard at least one similar story in connection to the Church of Scientology and I assume they mostly had the same reaction as I did. Secondly, my attitude towards Scientology has changed a lot since. When I actually started reading about the organization from its own point of view and from objective sources as well, my opinion became more nuanced. Furthermore, I got to know several people who are Scientologists.

Church of Scientology building in Los Angeles

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Now I believe that Scientology is not the evil monster of all religions, as most people believe it to be. It is just another form of belief system that should be accepted exactly the same way as we accept that Christianity co-exists with Islam and Buddhism, for instance. I find myself having a hard time understanding some aspects of this religion as I come from a Christian background; nevertheless, I try to be as objective as I can when I think or talk about it.

When doing research on the Church of Scientology, I still had my bias against it. Nevertheless, I had a number of questions that I wished to answer. For example, I was curious about what makes it an appealing religion to so many people in my generation and how they recruited their members. In order to find out more information about it, I spent a lot of time watching videos and reading articles on their website and I realized that their target audience is the younger generations of society. The way the Church of Scientology communicates with their targeted audience is what makes it a highly successful religion in the 21st century. In this paper I intend to look at some of the factors that make the communication of the Church unique and successful.

Every religion has a way of communicating its message; they talk to their members and also to people outside their circles. There is an obvious difference between these two ways of communication, though. When members of a church talk about their religion among themselves, they all share a deeper understanding of the basics of their faith. However, when representatives or members of a church talk to non-members about their religion, they need to explain even the most basic aspects of that system of beliefs.

“Hubbard Professional Mark VI” E-Meter used

by Scientology personnel at the 2011 Capitol Hill People’s Fair in Civic

Center Park in Denver.

“Free Stress Test” administered by a

member of the Church of Scientology

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Within the Church of Scientology communication among members happens through ‘auditing’. According to Schaefer and Zellner, auditing is a kind of personal counseling and is the first step towards becoming a Scientologist. The auditor is always a church member, who helps the ‘Preclear’ to become a ‘Clear’. The recipient of the counseling is called the ‘Preclear’, and ‘Clear’ is the state they would like to achieve. Auditing has another important element, the so-called Electropsychometer, or E-Meter, which device was developed by L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of the Church of Scientology. This equipment helps the auditor measure the emotional state of the Preclear by sensing skin conductivity (288).

David Cheal calls auditing a ritualistic procedure, the purpose of which is to make the subject more self-aware and to clear their minds. He claims rituals to be an effective means of communication in social and religious life (371). This way of communication within a church, however, is quite unique. Being a form of personal counseling, auditing is focused on the Preclear and their problems. It is the recipient who determines the pace and the subject of auditing. Moreover, the auditor, although he or she is already a Clear, is not a church official in the sense a priest is one in the Catholic Church. They are regular church members, who are at a certain stage that is available to the Preclear as well.

In comparison, in Christian churches there is always a figure of authority, a priest, a pastor, or a preacher, who serves as a mediator between church members and the deity. Furthermore, in these types of religions the community is more important than the individual; therefore, most of the time the church members pray together.

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They have the option to see their priests in private; however, that is not typical or frequent. Catholics have regular Confessions, and even though they are private, they are also anonymous and happen according to the dogma of the Church.

Another great difference between Scientology and other religions is that there is no deity recognized by Scientology. As one of my Scientologist acquaintances put it, it is a form of belief based on scientific truth, instead of on stories about a godly figure. Scientologists believe that the ‘Thetan’, the equivalent of the soul in Christianity, is independent of the body. The Thetan is believed to have existed before the life in its current body and it will reoccur in a different body after the death of this one (Schaefer and Zellner 290). They also believe in the spirit of collective Thetans or the MEST, which acronym stands for matter, energy, space, and time (Schaefer and Zellner 292). Nevertheless, none of these notions resemble the God concepts of other religions.

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The way Scientology communicates with non-members is also unique. They have a state-of-the-art homepage that is very informative and educational. The website contains both texts and videos; however, most of the information is in video format. These videos are of good quality and are only a few minutes long each. The whole website is user-friendly and interactive. Looking at their website one has the feeling that the Church is very open about their concepts; nevertheless, when trying to find actual data, problems arise. For instance, there is no information available on how many members the Church has. All in all, it is a good experience to look for information there as long as one is interested in the basics but is not looking for anything concrete.

The homepage seems to be useful both to non-member and members. There is a lot of information on the Church itself and on L. Ron Hubbard that is of interest to people who would like to know more about Scientology. Also, there is a section titled ‘Online Courses’ that is dedicated to both members and non-members. Here one can find short videos on the basic principles Hubbard laid down; the topics include communication, existence, marriage, and children, to mention a few. Watching these is also informative for outsiders and can well serve as revision for members, who do not have time or do not want to reread Hubbard’s works. The principles are explained in basic terms and they are also put into casual contexts with the help of the actors (Scientology). Moreover, besides their central website, they maintain separate sites

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for their related programs, such as Narconon.

It is easy to guess who the target audience of Scientology is: younger generations who use technology. Although they have a lot of print materials that they sell and circulate, the fact that they spend so much on their website and that they maintain and update it regularly shows that the Church realized that the Internet is a useful tool in both recruiting new members and keeping old ones. Schaefer and Zellner also argue that the website plays a significant role in recruitment (287).

The videos themselves also mostly target younger audiences as the language that is used in them proves. Most of the people interviewed and chosen to act in them are young and the register they use is also a characteristic of younger generations. For instance, in the video titled “The Emotional Tone Scale” two employees in a surf shop talk to each other and one of them says: “Yo, could’ya come here real quick?”, an expression that elderly people would rarely use.

Furthermore, it has to be mentioned that since Scientology is a religion that is non-discriminative and the videos serve as recruitment tools, we can see interviewees from different ethnic backgrounds in them. You can see whites, blacks, Asians, for example; however, every person in the video is well-dressed and seem to belong to the middle or the upper-middle class.

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Deana Hall in her paper describes another way the Church of Scientology communicates with non-members. She claims that medical professionals are often recruited by Scientology through introductory seminars, where Hubbard’s management principles are presented to the participants. These seminars are followed by pre-scheduled personal practice analyses that seem to be analogous to auditing. During these sessions personal profiles of the participants are put together for further use. They are required to give information about their finances, the number of their patients, and also about themselves. At the end of the process medical practitioners usually end up entering the Church besides using Hubbard’s management techniques in their practices. Moreover, they are not allowed to employ anyone who objects to going through a similar interview (395-397).

All of these different communication techniques are unique among religious groups; nevertheless, they resemble the techniques applied by multilevel sales organizations, such as Amway. Preclears pay for their auditing sessions and later on they become practitioners themselves (Schaefer and Zellner 289). Furthermore, just like workers in MLM companies, Scientologists also believe they help people with their services. The same thing happens in the case of medical practitioners. Scientology contacts them through practice management companies. The initial introductory seminars are free and they serve as marketing tools. The organization does charge for the actual consulting services and the practice analyses (Hall 394-395).

Based on the above, we have to state that the Church of Scientology, being a young religion, has made good use of the

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technological advancement of the 20th and the 21st centuries. This fact might be behind the uneasy feeling some people have regarding the Church as Scientology can use and is artfully using the Web. Their website and the interactive material on it is mainly targeted towards younger generations who use technology. The way the Church communicates with its members and with non-members makes it distinct from other religions, as every service it offers is personalized. However, their communication techniques are highly similar to those of multilevel sales organizations. Nonetheless, their unique way of communication makes them an appealing religion to many people; and this rate of growth ensures that their numbers will not decline in the foreseeable future.

L. Ron Hubbard in Los Angeles, California, 1950

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Works cited

Cheal, David. “Communication in Action.” Sociological Analysis 53.4 (1992): 363- 374. Print.

Hall, Deana. “Managing to Recruit: Religious Conversion in the Workplace.” Sociology of Religion 59.4 (1998): 393-410. Print.

Schaefer, Richard T. and William W. Zellner. Extraordinary Groups: An Examination of Unconventional Lifestyles. New York: Worth Publishers, 2001. Print.

Scientology. Church of Scientology International, 2013. Web. 8 April 2013.

“The Emotional Tone Scale.” Scientology. Church of Scientology International, n.d. Web. 8 April 2013.