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

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[h2]4) There are weird allegations of a disturbing amount of violence among the leadership[/h2]

Tom Cruise

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If accounts are true, and there are so many varied stories from defectors chronicling a seriously messed up culture of violence all the way up the church’s hierarchy, this is one of the most disturbing details of an organization still largely shrouded in mystery. There have been numerous reports featured on CNN and other media outlets reporting on the troubling allegations that leaders in the Church of Scientology use physical violence as a form of punishment. These allegations extend all the way to David Miscavige himself, whom most point to as the source of this strange culture of seemingly random violence towards subordinates.

It’s one area where for all the open-mindedness one can show towards the Church’s methods for self-improvement and general teachings, keeping members in line with the organization’s authoritative structure through the use of physical enforcement is just wrong. If it were operating the same way as a really intense, lifelong self-help course, liberating people from their neuroses as well as their cash, it would be one thing, but efforts to control and intimidate through threats against a person’s body crosses the line between ordinary financial villainy and gruesome sociopathic supervillainy. Ethan Hunt would have no part of such a corrupt institution.

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