'Going Clear' By Lawrence Wright: The Book We're Talking About
Posted: 01/21/2013 10:01 am EST | Updated: 01/22/2013 8:44 am EST
Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, & the Prison of Belief
by Lawrence Wright
Knopf, $28.95
Published on January 17th.
by Lawrence Wright
Knopf, $28.95
Published on January 17th.
What is it about?
Wright delves into Scientology's past and present, coming up with a lot of sketchy things about the religion. The story focuses on screenwriter Paul Haggis, but Wright has loads of information about other former Scientologists as well.
Wright delves into Scientology's past and present, coming up with a lot of sketchy things about the religion. The story focuses on screenwriter Paul Haggis, but Wright has loads of information about other former Scientologists as well.
Why are we talking about it?
After we read Lawrence Wright's 2012 New Yorker article exposing many the many eccentricities of Scientology, we couldn't wait to read the full book.
After we read Lawrence Wright's 2012 New Yorker article exposing many the many eccentricities of Scientology, we couldn't wait to read the full book.
Who wrote it?
Lawrence Wright won the Pulitzer Prize for his non-fiction book The Looming Tower, which examined al-Qaeda's 9/11 attack. He has also written five other non-fiction books. Wright is currently a staff writer at The New Yorker.
Lawrence Wright won the Pulitzer Prize for his non-fiction book The Looming Tower, which examined al-Qaeda's 9/11 attack. He has also written five other non-fiction books. Wright is currently a staff writer at The New Yorker.
Who will read it?
People who are dying to know more about the secretive religion, residents of Los Angeles and New York, people who want to know what exactly is going on with Tom Cruise.
People who are dying to know more about the secretive religion, residents of Los Angeles and New York, people who want to know what exactly is going on with Tom Cruise.
What do the reviewers say?
New York Times: "Going Clear is essential reading for thetans of all lifetimes."
Los Angeles Times: "Who'd have thought a history of a religion would offer so many guilty pleasures?"
Washington Post: "...the result is a rollicking, if deeply creepy, narrative ride, evidence that truth can be stranger even than science fiction."
Impress your friends:
According to Wright's book, the Church of Scientology hired a Scientologist chef to cater Tom Cruise's wedding (stating that he'd be reimbursed for time and materials bought) and then never paid him.
According to Wright's book, the Church of Scientology hired a Scientologist chef to cater Tom Cruise's wedding (stating that he'd be reimbursed for time and materials bought) and then never paid him.
Opening line:
"London, Ontario, is a middling manufacturing town halfway between Toronto and Detroit, once known for its cigars and breweries."
"London, Ontario, is a middling manufacturing town halfway between Toronto and Detroit, once known for its cigars and breweries."
Typical passage:
"In 1955, a year after the church's founding, an editorial in Ability, a publication affiliated with the church, urged Scientologists to recruit celebrities. A long list of desirable prospects followed, including Marlene Dietrich, Walt Disney, Jackie Gleason, John Ford, Bob Hope, and Howard Hughes. 'If you want one of these celebrities as your game, write us at once so the notable will be yours to hunt without interference,' the editorial promised. 'If you bring one of them home you will get a small plaque as your reward.'"
"In 1955, a year after the church's founding, an editorial in Ability, a publication affiliated with the church, urged Scientologists to recruit celebrities. A long list of desirable prospects followed, including Marlene Dietrich, Walt Disney, Jackie Gleason, John Ford, Bob Hope, and Howard Hughes. 'If you want one of these celebrities as your game, write us at once so the notable will be yours to hunt without interference,' the editorial promised. 'If you bring one of them home you will get a small plaque as your reward.'"
On Thursday 17 January, the US reading public will be able to purchase what could be the most damning exposé ever written on the inner workings of the Church of Scientology. And although the “religion” has tried to use its muscle and resources to fight back, the onslaught is coming from all sides. Could this be the beginning of Scientology’s end? By KEVIN BLOOM.
It can’t be a good time to be a Scientologist. For one thing, Lawrence Wright’s book is coming out this week. Entitled Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief , it’s advertised as an “evenhanded” answer to the question of whether Scientology can, in fact, be defined as a religion. But the title is only the most visible clue that the book’s not going to turn out a tenth as anodyne as that. A little digging reveals that Wright is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist, that he interviewed dozens of Scientology defectors during the course of his research, that he got access to reams of previously unpublished archival material, and that he’s done some damning writing on the subject in the past.
Remember Paul Haggis? He’s the Hollywood director who resigned from the Church of Scientology a few years ago, thereby becoming the central subject of a 25,000-word profile piece written by Wright for the New Yorker. Among the revelations that appeared in the article, via Harris’s testimony, was the allegation that children who’re drafted into the Church of Scientology are barred from getting a formal education. The article also alleged that illegal child labour akin to Haiti’s “child slavery” is practiced in secret Scientology camps, and that the church’s leader, David Miscavige, kicks and hits his staff members in the face and stomach for minor infractions.
What are the chances that Going Clear, essentially a book-length follow-up to that New Yorker exposé, is going to focus exclusively on whether Scientology qualifies for the constitutional protection afforded religions in the United States?
Basically zero, which brings up another reason it’s a really bad time to be a Scientologist. Twenty-two years ago, when Richard Behar published an article in Time magazine under the header “Scientology: The Cult of Greed”, the church had the energy and the focus to take him and his editors on. The dismissal of the defamation suit in a district court saw the case go to a federal appellate court, and although it was dismissed there too, at least the church had made its point in the eyes of its acolytes: it strongly disagreed with Behar’s portrayal of it as “a hugely profitable global racket that survives by intimidating members and critics in a Mafia-like manner.”
Nowadays, the Internet has made strategies of that sort impossible. A Google search for “Scientology scams” returns over 1.7 million results, and the most vocal of the scam-busting online projects, xenu.net, offers everything from a “leaving Scientology” resource guide to T-shirts that read, “Scientology is a UFO cult earning millions each year and all I got was this lousy T-shirt!” With the hatred having gone viral, there appears little that Miscavige and his cohorts can do.
And, would you believe, there has recently surfaced one more reason for Scientologists to feel bummed about their lot: as of Tuesday this week, it seems that not even the church’s paid-for advertising messages can get through without causing a backlash.
The story, by all accounts, has no precedents. At about midday on Monday 14 January, The Atlantic magazine published a web page labeled at the top “Sponsored Content” and titled “David Miscavige Leads Scientology to Milestone Year”. The page’s lead included the information that the religion had expanded to 10,000 churches, missions and affiliated groups across 167 nations in 2012, representing a growth rate 20 times that of 2002. The URL was ridiculed, lambasted, and linked to more than 3,500 times on Twitter and Facebook, by which point the “chatter” came to the attention of The Atlantic’s president, M Scott Havens. At 11.30pm on Monday night, the page was taken down.
On Tuesday, The Atlantic released the following statement: “We screwed up. It shouldn’t have taken a wave of constructive criticism – but it has – to alert us that we’ve made a mistake, possibly several mistakes. We now realise that as we explored new forms of digital advertising, we failed to update the policies that must govern the decisions we make along the way. It’s safe to say that we are thinking a lot more about these policies after running this ad than we did beforehand. In the meantime, we have decided to withdraw the ad until we figure all of this out. We remain committed to and enthusiastic about innovation in digital advertising, but acknowledge – sheepishly – that we got ahead of ourselves. We are sorry, and we’re working very hard to put things right.”
Helping them put things right, of course, was Poynter.org—“standing for journalism, strengthening democracy.” The resource centre and training institute observed that journalists initially became concerned with how comments below the sponsored page were being moderated. Soon after posting, almost every comment appeared to be supportive of Scientology, and a spokesperson for The Atlantic later admitted to The Washington Post that the marketing team was doing the moderating instead of the editorial team. This led to the following question in a list of “ethical challenges” Poynter compiled regarding the new form of digital advertising: “How is the process for commenting on sponsored content similar to or different than the process for commenting on other content?”
Here’s an idea that might bring a stop to all the hand-wringing: simply don’t include a comments section below sponsored content. Still, Poynter did at least come up with a more relevant ethical question. At the top of its list, it asked this: “What standards are applied to the process of accepting sponsors?” In other words, should the Church of Scientology even be allowed to advertise on a platform as respected as The Atlantic?
In a post that went live on the Atlantic website mere hours before the offending page was taken down, senior staffer Jeffrey Goldberg was praising Lawrence Wright and telling readers how he couldn’t wait to read Going Clear. “A Wonderful New Book About Scientology, by a Wonderful Writer,” proclaimed the post’s headline. No doubt, it was exactly this sort of hype that Scientology’s publicity department was trying to offset with the ad buy.
But they’re clearly fighting a losing battle. In an article published on Tuesday in BuzzFeed, Alex Klein revealed that while Miscavige is trumpeting his church's “milestone year,” the religion is alienating scores of its most faithful followers with what they call a “real estate scam”. Klein interviewed dozens from the latest crop of defectors, and concluded that far from being a fleeting crisis, this may be a symptom of an institution in decline.
Wrote Klein: “In 2008, there were 25,000 self-identifying American Scientologists, down by over a half from 55,000 in 2001, according to the American Religious Identification Survey. (Over the same time period, the number of Wiccans more than doubled from 134,000 to 342,000.) The 2011 British census showed a total of 2,418 Scientologists across England and Wales; about 73 times as many Brits identified themselves as ‘Jedi’.”
Come Thursday and the US release of Going Clear, there could be a whole lot of Scientologists buying up Lightsabers. Because then, according to the Daily Beast, we’ll be able to read how the religion’s founder L Ron Hubbard possibly forged his war documents, and how the church incarcerated hundreds of its members in a pitch-black basement. DM
Read more:
Remember Paul Haggis? He’s the Hollywood director who resigned from the Church of Scientology a few years ago, thereby becoming the central subject of a 25,000-word profile piece written by Wright for the New Yorker. Among the revelations that appeared in the article, via Harris’s testimony, was the allegation that children who’re drafted into the Church of Scientology are barred from getting a formal education. The article also alleged that illegal child labour akin to Haiti’s “child slavery” is practiced in secret Scientology camps, and that the church’s leader, David Miscavige, kicks and hits his staff members in the face and stomach for minor infractions.
What are the chances that Going Clear, essentially a book-length follow-up to that New Yorker exposé, is going to focus exclusively on whether Scientology qualifies for the constitutional protection afforded religions in the United States?
Basically zero, which brings up another reason it’s a really bad time to be a Scientologist. Twenty-two years ago, when Richard Behar published an article in Time magazine under the header “Scientology: The Cult of Greed”, the church had the energy and the focus to take him and his editors on. The dismissal of the defamation suit in a district court saw the case go to a federal appellate court, and although it was dismissed there too, at least the church had made its point in the eyes of its acolytes: it strongly disagreed with Behar’s portrayal of it as “a hugely profitable global racket that survives by intimidating members and critics in a Mafia-like manner.”
Nowadays, the Internet has made strategies of that sort impossible. A Google search for “Scientology scams” returns over 1.7 million results, and the most vocal of the scam-busting online projects, xenu.net, offers everything from a “leaving Scientology” resource guide to T-shirts that read, “Scientology is a UFO cult earning millions each year and all I got was this lousy T-shirt!” With the hatred having gone viral, there appears little that Miscavige and his cohorts can do.
And, would you believe, there has recently surfaced one more reason for Scientologists to feel bummed about their lot: as of Tuesday this week, it seems that not even the church’s paid-for advertising messages can get through without causing a backlash.
The story, by all accounts, has no precedents. At about midday on Monday 14 January, The Atlantic magazine published a web page labeled at the top “Sponsored Content” and titled “David Miscavige Leads Scientology to Milestone Year”. The page’s lead included the information that the religion had expanded to 10,000 churches, missions and affiliated groups across 167 nations in 2012, representing a growth rate 20 times that of 2002. The URL was ridiculed, lambasted, and linked to more than 3,500 times on Twitter and Facebook, by which point the “chatter” came to the attention of The Atlantic’s president, M Scott Havens. At 11.30pm on Monday night, the page was taken down.
On Tuesday, The Atlantic released the following statement: “We screwed up. It shouldn’t have taken a wave of constructive criticism – but it has – to alert us that we’ve made a mistake, possibly several mistakes. We now realise that as we explored new forms of digital advertising, we failed to update the policies that must govern the decisions we make along the way. It’s safe to say that we are thinking a lot more about these policies after running this ad than we did beforehand. In the meantime, we have decided to withdraw the ad until we figure all of this out. We remain committed to and enthusiastic about innovation in digital advertising, but acknowledge – sheepishly – that we got ahead of ourselves. We are sorry, and we’re working very hard to put things right.”
Helping them put things right, of course, was Poynter.org—“standing for journalism, strengthening democracy.” The resource centre and training institute observed that journalists initially became concerned with how comments below the sponsored page were being moderated. Soon after posting, almost every comment appeared to be supportive of Scientology, and a spokesperson for The Atlantic later admitted to The Washington Post that the marketing team was doing the moderating instead of the editorial team. This led to the following question in a list of “ethical challenges” Poynter compiled regarding the new form of digital advertising: “How is the process for commenting on sponsored content similar to or different than the process for commenting on other content?”
Here’s an idea that might bring a stop to all the hand-wringing: simply don’t include a comments section below sponsored content. Still, Poynter did at least come up with a more relevant ethical question. At the top of its list, it asked this: “What standards are applied to the process of accepting sponsors?” In other words, should the Church of Scientology even be allowed to advertise on a platform as respected as The Atlantic?
In a post that went live on the Atlantic website mere hours before the offending page was taken down, senior staffer Jeffrey Goldberg was praising Lawrence Wright and telling readers how he couldn’t wait to read Going Clear. “A Wonderful New Book About Scientology, by a Wonderful Writer,” proclaimed the post’s headline. No doubt, it was exactly this sort of hype that Scientology’s publicity department was trying to offset with the ad buy.
But they’re clearly fighting a losing battle. In an article published on Tuesday in BuzzFeed, Alex Klein revealed that while Miscavige is trumpeting his church's “milestone year,” the religion is alienating scores of its most faithful followers with what they call a “real estate scam”. Klein interviewed dozens from the latest crop of defectors, and concluded that far from being a fleeting crisis, this may be a symptom of an institution in decline.
Wrote Klein: “In 2008, there were 25,000 self-identifying American Scientologists, down by over a half from 55,000 in 2001, according to the American Religious Identification Survey. (Over the same time period, the number of Wiccans more than doubled from 134,000 to 342,000.) The 2011 British census showed a total of 2,418 Scientologists across England and Wales; about 73 times as many Brits identified themselves as ‘Jedi’.”
Come Thursday and the US release of Going Clear, there could be a whole lot of Scientologists buying up Lightsabers. Because then, according to the Daily Beast, we’ll be able to read how the religion’s founder L Ron Hubbard possibly forged his war documents, and how the church incarcerated hundreds of its members in a pitch-black basement. DM
Read more:
- “The Atlantic publishes then pulls sponsored content from Church of Scientology,” on Poynter.org
- “Is Scientology Self-Destructing?” on BuzzFeed
- “15 Scientology Revelations From Lawrence Wright’s Going Clear,” in the Daily Beast
Beilue: Scientology is out there ... way out there
Posted: January 22, 2013 - 9:46pm
Beilue
Dr. Jim Denison threw out a caveat Sunday night to the congregation at First Baptist Church.
What he was going to share for the next 35 minutes, he admitted, would be hard to grasp.
“You’re probably not going to believe me when I tell you what they believe,” he said.
“You’ll probably think no one will believe that, but they do.”
Denison, keynote speaker at the Amarillo Community Prayer Breakfast in 2011, is one of the most learned men I’ve heard.
He’s a former pastor of four churches.
He’s a seminary professor who has taught, among many courses, world religions for 25 years.
He’s the author of seven books and comments daily through his blog and email devotionals on contemporary issues from a Biblical viewpoint.
But in trying to describe the Church of Scientology, and what it says about our culture, Denison sounded much like Dr. Spock on the Starship Enterprise.
“It’s complex, convoluted and conflicted,” Denison said.
And thrust into the news again.
Coincidentally, three days before Denison spoke, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Lawrence Wright’s new book on Scientology, “Going Clear; Scientology, Hollywood and the Prison of Belief,” was released.
The next night, noted Hollywood director Paul Haggis appeared on NBC’s “Rock Center.”
He’s a former member now, but has broken away from a group that, according to numerous allegations, takes such things seriously.
He called Scientology a cult, that leaving would be seen by church leaders as a “treasonous act,” and admitted to being nervous about the interview. The Church of Scientology has been critical of the book and the Rock Center’s piece.
Denison wove a fantastic tale. Much of it sounded like a plot line from “Plan 9 from Outer Space.” Instead, it came from the mind of founder L. Ron Hubbard, who he said was given insight into the true nature of the universe in 1939 while receiving anesthesia for a dental procedure.
In the study of truth, it’s a belief that we are “body thetans,” spirits that have gone to live in previous lives for 4 quadrillion years. When a body dies, most thetans go to Mars where they prepare for their next incarnation. A thetan will enter its next life when a baby cries, or an impatient thetan will follow a pregnant woman until she gives birth.
“I warned you,” Denison said.
There are “engrams,” the barnacles of the thetan that must be purged.
That’s done through going “clear,” a process to remove the unwanted engrams, or negative influences. “Auditing,” which involves Hubbard’s electropsychometer, can take years to remove the engrams, costing more than $100,000 in the process. But in the end, you’re an Operating Thetan ready to attain different levels of enlightenment.
Many Scientologists are at OT 3. Hubbard, who died in 1986 but could come back at any time, is at OT 8, the highest level of a spiritual state above clear.
Denison noted the Church of Scientology thinks Jesus Christ never attained status above “clear.”
Then there’s the warlord Xenu, who 75 million years ago brought billions of enemies to earth, known then as Teegeeack, and killed them with hydrogen bombs.
Did I mention princess Empress? That was some powerful gas in the dentist chair.
High-profile celebs like Tom Cruise, John Travolta, Anne Archer, Kirstie Alley and Kelly Preston are Scientologists. Go back to its roots in the 1950s, Denison said, when Hubbard decided attracting celebrities would give Scientology credibility and prestige.
While the church claims 8 million members, reports put the number, Denison said, at closer to 25,000.
Still, Scientology owns more than $1 billion in liquid assets and more than 12 million square feet of real estate, 26 properties worth $400 million in Hollywood.
“You sit here thinking, ‘Why would anyone believe this?’” Denison said. “There’s not one shred of historical evidence for anything, not one piece of objective evidence exists for engrams or body thetans or the dianetic process that auditing helps beyond psychosomatic, or that thetans existed 4 quadrillion years ago.”
Putting it into cultural context, Denison said Scientology is an example of postmodernism, that there is no actual truth or objective reality. Any belief is good enough, any road will get you there. It’s also a lesson in what Denison calls the “will to power,” found in Genesis 3 where Satan tempts woman that she can be like God.
“It’s a variation of that theme, a temptation to be your own God, to be the one in charge,” Denison said. “The appeal of Scientology is the will to power, the belief of auditing and the process they offer is about attaining power. Listening to Cruise and Travolta, it’s all about power, the lure of that power.”
In a half-hour when little made sense, that was as close to the only thing that did.
Jon Mark Beilue is a columnist for the Globe-News. He can be reached atjon.beilue@amarillo.com or 806-345-3318. His blog appears on
amarillo.com. Follow him on Twitter: @jonmark
beilue.
amarillo.com. Follow him on Twitter: @jonmark
beilue.
