5 Messed Up Things About Scientology

Scientology has become a bit of a punching bag over the last decade, thanks largely to lampooners like the South Park guys and numerous damning accounts of defectors from the church, including Academy Award-winning writer-director Paul Haggis. It has become one of those eccentric communities people assume Hollywood is full of, with some high-profile celebrity involvement and the assumption that most movie stars have at least dabbled in the self-help religion Scientology promotes itself as. It’s understandable that in a world plagued by epistemic closure like Hollywood is, it’s as if there’s a bubble around Los Angeles that surprisingly few celebrities venture outside of, something that seems bizarre to the rest of us would seem normal and enticing. Even hearing stars in interviews talk about Scientology, a sizeable number will treat it as if it was something they considered but ultimately had no use for, rather than speaking of it as a harmful cult.

Darren Ruecker

Published: Jun 2, 2013 09:52 pm

This article is over 12 years old and may contain outdated information

[h2]2) Its recruitment of celebrities is not new[/h2]

John Travolta

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It may seem like the Church only relatively recently gained a significant presence among many in the Hollywood elite, not only Tom Cruise but also the likes of John Travolta, Elisabeth Moss, Jason Lee, and others who seem like their best days were in the 90s. With the exception of Moss, who is seeing her career at its highest point yet it would seem, the majority of the stars with public knowledge of their membership in the church came up in the 80s and flowered in the 90s.

That seems to be when the religion started to take hold in the industry, but efforts to nab a major celebrity in hopes of using their influence to expand the church dates back as early as the 1950s, with L. Ron Hubbard himself creating an effort titled “Project Celebrity,” where the goal was to woo the likes of Marlon Brando, Greta Garbo, Groucho Marx, even folks like Walt Disney and Ernest Hemingway reportedly listed among those targeted by the Church. It’s unclear why this mission did not come to fruition until decades later, but it has now become one of the religion’s defining features, even if its membership lists are starting to seem rather dated. One has to wonder what current recruitment efforts must be like if the Church has any interest in updating its demographics in the future.

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