PUBLISHED: 2011
GENRE: Non-Fiction
I was, initially, a little reluctant to do this review. I feel like if Miss Manners were here, she'd be telling me that one does not discuss two things in polite company: religion and politics. After all, when it comes to salvation - heavenly or political - people tend to get a little heated.
Well, I apparently don't consider you all polite company.1 Because we're about to get all up in some religious business.
Scientology is unlike anything else I've ever researched.2 And yes, I know the Egyptians probably said the same things about the Jews lo those many thousand years ago - and the Romans about the Christians, and the Catholics about the Protestants, and so on. The difference, though, is that, from all accounts, all those religions began as religions - groups of people whose primary and original purpose was to congregate together and worship at a particular altar of faith, and in doing so, save one's soul for eternity. Scientology didn't. Scientology started out as a self-help movement, one that actively separated itself from religion by its lack of ceremony or dogma or focus on a deity. By auditing - going through a series of interviews to pinpoint past traumas, and then reviewing those past traumas in an attempt to neutralize their latent effects - one could overcome the mental blocks holding one back from achieving full potential. It was all up to the individual to do the hard work and figure it out, more Weight Watchers than holy communion. It wasn't all that unlike many of the self-help fads that exploded and then died away in the 1950s and 60s.
That is, if not for her infamous founder, L. Ron Hubbard.
Hubbard is, of course, the primary focus of part one of Reitman's tale. From the beginning, L. Ron told his own story. But as is often the case with such individuals, he was also very charismatic, able to win over others with his ideas and his enthusiasm, able to distract from the holes in the tale. He was charismatic enough that to convince thousands of the power of Dianetics, Scientology's forerunner. When Dianetics went bankrupt, his followers stayed with him as he reinvented himself and Scientology from a individual endeavor to a centralized bureaucracy and later, to an organized religion.3 They stayed with him when he ran to England to avoid government investigation, and when he bought a fleet of ships and founded the Sea Organization, and when he started asking their pre-teen children to sign billion-year contracts to serve as his Messengers.4 They stayed with him when he abandoned his wife to a 5-year prison sentence5, and when he went into hiding, communicating ever-increasingly paranoid missives through a very select few aides.
They stayed with him, for the most part, until David Miscavige. Or rather: they would have stayed with him forever, if not for David Miscavige.
Miscavige controls the second part of Reitman's story. If the name sounds familiar, it's probably from all those gossip mag stories about Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, which rarely fail to mention Miscavige as Cruise's best friend and, oh, yeah, a high-ranking Scientology official. Except Miscavige isn't some "high-ranking official". He is THE high-ranking official. He is the Pope of Scientology. And he got there by systematically weeding out any one he viewed as a threat, especially those who had served with Hubbard aboard the original Sea Org ships, right down to the couple who had lived with Hubbard in seclusion for years and had acted as his only representatives. It's under Miscavige's reign that the stories of abuse and mistreatment start to really pour out, aided by the newly-formed Internet. The forced abortions and divorces, the beatings, the slave-like conditions of those who required "fixing" - suddenly the stories were everywhere. More troubling was what seemed to be an epidemic of psychological breakdowns - and sometimes, suicides - brought on by the church's ever-intensifying demand on auditing.6 For all of people's focus on Hubbard, it's Miscavige, in my opinion, that people need to be worried about.
Part Three of the tale focuses on what we all love to hear about - celebrities. Getting celebrities to join the Church has been a Scientology aim since Hubbard wrote the first words. Reitman limits this section to what is truly applicable to the development of the Church, so we never learn what Nicole Kidman really thought about it all.7 Instead, she uses John Travolta and Tom Cruise to highlight how the Church - well, Miscavige - has used certain individuals to promote the aims of the Church, and how those who view themselves as "true" Scientologists have been slighted in the process.8 It's almost enough to make you feel bad for the most famous couch-jumper on Earth.
If this seems like a lot, let me assure you that all this is but a percentage of the ground covered. Reitman's research was extremely extensive, and Inside Scientology is being hailed as one of the most unbiased views of the Church ever written. As noted earlier, she stays away from the celebrity gossip angle. She also refrains from delving much into the stories of Xenu, intergalactic war, and body-jumping thetons; fascinating as it is, it's just not important what she's trying to say. She actively keeps the focus on what she has been told and what her research has shown. However, large parts of the testimony do come from former members, many of whom left the Church under very bad circumstances, and it is not unreasonable to think that someone who has had a bad experience might want to lash out with a story that was less than truthful.
That being said, even if only half of what Reitman was told is true... well, that's pretty horrifying. This is not to say that other religions are free of controversy or fault - we Catholics know this better than most. But - to return to the beginning of this all - whether you believe or not, Catholicism and its fellow world religions have the benefit of a higher deity, of a greater faith to follow. They also have the benefit of thousands of years of belief behind them. To have the entire history of the organization laid out before you - to know absolutely from whence it came, and where it is going; to know the doctrines and the source that wrote them; to know its benefits and its sins definitively; most importantly, to know that it is an entirely human creation, flawed in all the ways humans are flawed? It's enough to make you really wonder about how anyone could believe.
LENGTH: 464 pages
MAINSTREAM OR NOT: No, if only because it's a lot of information about a specific subject, and most people aren't interested in getting in that deep.
SO, SHOULD I READ IT OR NOT?: Yes. Good, bad, or indifferent to Scientology, this is a fascinating story about human behavior and our innate instinct to be part of a community.
1Which is probably a compliment.
2I'm trying very hard to be correct about all this, and not say my first reaction, which was holy (beep), this is NUTS. I guess Reitman, who manages to keep her opinions to herself, is just a better person than me.
3A decision that many maintain was based on finances rather than any spiritual motivation. Hubbard has been quoted as saying that the real way to get rich was to start a religion, with a primary benefit begin tax exemption from the IRS. Scientology got this exemption in 1993, after much debate and much controversy, including accusations that David Miscavige basically blackmailed the IRS into it.
4Sea Org members were required to resign and take up lesser positions when they had children. These same children, however, were often then sent to live on these ships, without their parents, where they served as Hubbard's Messenger Corps. The billion-year contract was necessary as Scientologists believe this life is just one in the many we will experience through the millennia. Thus, parents were essentially signing over their children for all eternity.
5Mary Sue Hubbard, as well as numerous other high-ranking Scientologists, were convicted as a result of Operation Snow White, during which the Church infiltrated multiple government agencies and made copies of thousands of classified documents, which were then used to blackmail various parties. Hubbard was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the case. Poor Mary Sue got a small settlement and a church-enforced gag order for her troubles, and was never spoken to by her husband ever again.
6Because every time you audit, you pay, although the church would of course argue that this is not the point. The point, rather, is self-improvement and a higher level of 'clear'. But here's the rub: you audit to improve yourself, only to be told you did something wrong and need to do it again, maybe even go to the rehabilitation center to be fixed. Now, it's not the technology at fault - the tech is never wrong - so when something doesn't work, it must be you that's busted. Do this often enough, and it becomes enough to, quite literally, drive some people crazy.
7Which may make you say, why should we suffer because she wants to be an ethical journalist. But it is a testimony to Reitman that she is able to resist the sensational and stick to the research, especially since we all know the sensational sells a lot more books.
8I've really tried to resist making snarky comments, but: It's claimed Miscavige made up the International Association of Scientogist's Freedom Medal of Valor just for Cruise. This, of course, immediately made me think of the First Annual
Montgomery Burns Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence. But anyway.
