This article on the ABC news website, http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory?id=8969696, discusses the problems the Church of Scientology has been facing, including fraud allegations and the loss of many prominent members.
The article includes certain things to make it seem like this church is a scam. One example is that they mention that the church was founded by a science fantasy author. Another example is that they end the article with mentioning that there is a website taking bets for the next celebrity who is going to leave the church.
According to the article, certain knowledge about scientology is only available to certain people and some knowledge has to be bought. I don’t really know a lot about scientology, but it seems like a scam if these people who have gone up the ranks eventually after they pay and receive the information. It’s possible that they suddenly realized how far fetched the teachings were when they got a hold of the information.
But there are certain things in the article that made it seem like a regular religion. The article quotes a religious professor saying that Scientology is like Mormonism or Jehovah’s Witness and will be accepted in the end. And there is also a quote from a former scientology member who says that even though she doesn’t believe in the church, she believes in the tenets. So this also opens up the possibility of different denominations in case people actually believe the teachings and just don’t agree with the church.
Different denomniations of Scientology already exist. The umbrella term used for protestant Scientologists is 'Freezone'. But it really is an umbrella term, since it involves many splinter groups (the largest of whichs is called Ron´s Org) and many individual Scientologists generally calling themselved independants.
ReplyDeleteIf viewed as a single group, they are larger than the official church (or should I say, cult).
I doubt very much whether the official Church of Scientology will be capable of (much needed) reform, as it is a fundamentalist religion by decree of the founder.