There have been court cases involving Scientology, which must mark some sense of having "arrived" as a religion. I studied these cases in college and I've always maintained a certain unexplored interest in Scientology because it is relatively new. So, when I encountered Brian Wenger here at this site, commenting about his religion, and since he seemed able to cogently express himself, I sought an interview.
As we talked / typed for over three hours I discovered Brian is an auditor, a Scientology counselor, which he explains in the interview. He likens it, but not exactly, to clergy in a Christian Church. I also found out, in a coincidence that I still find wild, that the day I interviewed Brian - July 3 - it was, not only his 40th birthday but Tom Cruise's 43rd birthday.
NOTE: As this was an Instant Messenger (AOL) conversation we both saved it. Because many of the issues were so complex I invited him to look it over and if he had anything to add, to please do so. If what he wanted to add changed and went beyond simple clarification I have included it in as "FURTHER THOUGHTS." I did not make all the changes. There are also many icons and smiles because the interview was not face to face and they substitute for visual clues. They do not only denote humor, but also a wryness or that an understanding or fait accompli has been reached.
A conversation: Interview with a Scientologist
Temple Stark: : Have you got your music down low and your cup of liquid nearby and ready to go. Thank you again for the interview. Have you been interviewed before?
Brian Wenger: Haha ... Yup all set here. No, not on Scientology. I mean I've answered friends' questions and all that. But no, haven't been interviewed before ... particularly not over IM! It's kind of a cool idea.
TS: Well I've always wondered about Scientology - as I have about anything that seems different from society as a whole. To me that's lots of things. I wondered how you heard about it and whether it was on your mind a while before you became a Scientologist.
BW: I heard about Scientology through my Mom.
TS: Ah. Grew up with it?
BW: Well, sort of. She had been in TM (transcendental meditation) and B'ahai and a couple other things. She'd always bring the stuff home, and I'd usually kind of look at them weird, though curious. She and my dad had been raised Mennonite so there was always this religious thing around.
TS: Was your mom a bit of hippy like mine? I say that fondly.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Eric Olsen
fascinating! thanks
2 - Aaron, Duke De Mondo
Temple, that was fantastic. excellent, excellent work sir. i ain't got nothin to add to it, since i know less than nothin bout the subject, but i know a bit more now, thanks to yourself and your interviewee.
3 - Aaman
Since this is a thinly-veiled version of Buddhism, from the responses, why not go to the source, and study Mahayana Buddhism - there's much less baggage, I guess.
4 - andy marsh
Covered that pretty well TS. thanks, I feel...somewhat...enlightened!
5 - chelly
nice to see this conversation going on. Scientology is indeed a subject one should study for oneself and see if it works!
6 - Rodney Welch
Another view.
7 - Tilman
Brian Wenger is lying that there are no aliens in scientology. Scientology has sued a dutch woman who put parts of the "alien" text (OT3) on the net - for copyright violation. So it is real.
Plus, I'd like to point out that Brian Wenger is one of scientology's people for for the "dirty work" in scientology. In 1994, he published data from the confidential folders of a former scientologist on the net, in order to silence him.
8 - Geek's Girl
That was a really good piece Temple, informative and interesting. And it was really nice that Brian didn't shy away from the tough questions.
What was really surprising, for me, was that there were parts where I was nodding my head in agreement. I think of religion as a guidance system, a way for an individual to make it through life when times are tough and to be a better person, a good person (definitions of good may vary and I can't find a more apt word to say what I mean). And it seems to me that in that respect Scientology is right up there with the rest of them.
I know there is more to it than that in any religion but for me this is the important bit. I should add that I've not studied religions seriously and I'm basing my opinion on what I've read, heard and experienced in my own life.
This article gave me something more to think about it - thanks to Temple and Brian.
9 - Val
Likening L. Ron Hubbard to the Buddha? First of all in Buddhism we are taught to take a critical look at our teachers to see if they reach the standards that are needed to teach the Dharma (buddhist teachings). L. Ron Hubbard lied about being a physicist, lied about being a civil ingineer ( he dropped out of school after two years with a D average). He lied about being a war hero. L. Ron was a fanatical, Buddha stressed the "middle way" . L. Ron did not behave in a way that was ethical, the Buddha stressed ethics. In Scientology's "fair game policy" they clearly don't understand the idea of karma. There are many criminal acts associated with Scientology (the largest breakin of fbi documents in fbi history in clearwater), that is claerly not ethical. The way in which ex scientology members have been threatened and harassed is clearly not ethical, what happed to Lisa McPhearson was clearly not ethical. Fanaticism and compassion don"t appear to be compatible. Taking advantage of Tsunami victims in Sri Lanka is highly unethical. To compare the long tradition of Buddhism to scientology and L. Ron to the historical Siddartha Buddha is just wrong. L. Ron did have an interest in Buddhism, but scholars have stated that he had little true understanding of it.
10 - Val
My previous link to the Sri Lanken article was incorrect, you can reach it here.
11 - Matthew T. Sussman
Now Scientology sounds like Unitarianism.
12 - hank berlo
This guy is clearly lying.
Lying through his teeth.
Aliens are very much the CORE belief of Scientology, not something that has to do with it on the side, or anything...
It is the CORE of their faith.
visit www.xenu.net for all the info you may want on
these nuts.
13 - Nancy
My negative impressions of Scientology arise from the business about large amounts of money being required to 'progress' from level to level, as well as the group's general extremely unsavory history of violence against anyone who questioned or challenged them. Why were these not addressed as issues?
14 - Lucie
Stumbled on your site and found the piece on Scientology interesting, since I have known nothing about it.
As you mention, it does get confused in the public mind with Christian Science--and as a Christian Scientist I am always asked if CS is the same as Scientology. At least now I have a better basis for saying no.
Christian Science--as a Christian religion--makes a clear separation between Jesus, the human man, and the Christ as the aspect of God (the Truth)that operates in the human experience.
In fully unifying the two aspects, Jesus was an example of what each and every individual can attain--and that's a bad word, because it's already true!
It just needs revealing--and that's what study and prayer are about. Prayer is communion--not ritual. Spiritual refers to the connection with the divine, not to the human mentality.
Christian Science is NOT trinitarian, for which many orthodox Christian churches consider it non-Christian.
The founder of the church, Mary Baker Eddy, grew up as a Congregationalist and remained in that church until her 50's when she founded the Christian Science church. And she never intended to found a church.
After a life of illnesses which no medical or alternative system could permanently cure (she was a qualified homeopathic practitioner), she found the path to physical health in Jesus' healings--not as miracles, but as examples of spiritual power available to all--as a healing system anyone could learn.
Eddy also found that even atheists could be healed--especially when medical science offered no hope. But to be able to heal requires a bit more!
Her book, "Science & Health with Key to the Scriptures" is an exposition of the nature of God as Spirit--non-personal, non-physical--and of man as expressing or reflecting God's nature. It is a study in a logic based on a different premise--that God is Good, the man is created good, and that evil is a mistaken concept. The reasoning from this premise is consistent.
Those who disagree with that premise, quite naturally disagree with the conclusions.
Again, some orthodox Christians also find this closer to "orientalism," than post- Nicene Christianity. (325 AD was when the Emperor Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire; Jesus was declared God, his healings miracles, and healing became the sole prerogative of doctors as agents of God.)
If I've lost you here, I suggest picking up a copy of "Science & Health." The book was intended to instruct any reader--without any connection to the church--in how to heal and be healed.
The church (religion/ denomination) was never intended, but became necessary when the book was being plagiarized and students started mixing Christian Science with hypnotism--control of other people's thinking. Mental control of others is strictly forbidden.
Hope this is useful. I'm a lifelong Christian Scientist. It's always worked for me. I've worked in various areas at the Church Center in Boston. I'm now a Christian Science practitioner healing others.
Any individual can take a course to become a practitioner and a member can become a teacher. There is no church hierarchy--the top managment level (Board of Directors) is attainable by practitioners and teachers. I wouldn't say by all - it's a matter of individual growth.
[Ed. Note price listing edited out of comment]
15 - Temple Stark
Price listing was removed from above post. Otherwise, pretty interesting information, as well.
16 - Phillip Winn
I think the point of the price listing was to contrast the three-digit numbers in CS with the 5-6 digit numbers in S.
So yeah, you can trip off a different deep end at a fraction of the cost! :-)
17 - td
Scientology is all well and good for the upper-middle class in the first world who have the luxury of spending their free time focusing on how to be at peace with their plasma tv, and want to validate the process by calling the Tony Robbins Personal Power series a religion.
But what are the poor in the third world suppost to do with it. How does Scientology help the single mother with aids explain to her soon to be orphan children that they are going to have to make it on their own.
WHat does she say, "Life is not fair, and I'm going to die. But if you audit yourselfs every day everything will be all right".
The problem with scientology is that it provides no hope beyond your everyday existence.
Know i'm not a huge fan of organized religion, but i can understand why many people need to believe that existence has purpose.
All I see in scientology is an athiest striving to achieve common sense, yet failing. I say failing because if they had common sense, they'd realise it doesn't require scientology.
18 - dee
Not for me but whatever floats your boat. Or spaceship.
19 - HW Saxton
I just can't find any common ground with
Scientology.None.It just comes across as
bad Sci Fi to me at best.I've taken one
of their free personality profiles once
in Hollywood at the center on Hollywood
Blvd. After they figured out that I was
not serious about their "thing" and was
not going to be donating(as they not too
subtly were suggesting that I should),
they gave me what is called in 9 out of
10 bars the "Bum's Rush" out the door.
I'll give anything one chance but these
guys gave me the serious creeps.And I've
been to Pentecostal tent services down
in the boondocks of central Louisiana
where they baptized the faithful in a
river where Water Moccasins were very
visible along the reeds on the bank.And
that seemed innocuous compared to these
C.O.S types.My own personal experience
with them was not interesting or fun.It
was just rather rude. Should any of you
check it out I hope your experience is
better than mine was.
20 - Bennett
Interesting interview Temple. Funny that several of the commenters are pretty damn certain that aliens play a bigger part in Scientology than "long ago, many lives in the past".
td - really great comment.
Harold - I'll take the Water Moccasins.
21 - HW Saxton
LOL,Yeah Bennett me too. At least there
is an antidote for their poison!
22 - Bennett
Heh! I still tend to go with the tale that Heinlein and ElRon were drinking and made a bet about creating a new religion. RAH wrote Stranger In A Strange Land. ElRon wrote Dianetics.
Is that how it's spelled? Diane-tics?
23 - carmine
Wonderful post; wonderful comments. Around the first century AD, many similar mystery cults began to pick up traction in pre-Constantine Rome, and all required enormous expenditures by the novitiates who hoped to join. One of the most curious was the Cult of the Magna Mater. The highest priests had to castrate themselves and perform the taurobolium, bathing in the blood of the bull, after thirty years the cultist then had to bath in the blood of the... you guessed it, the Lamb. This was a Criobolium. All of the various Mystery Cultists were required to donate vast sums of money. The mystery they all wanted was Eternal Life in some fashion. Christianity made use of much of their rituals. Other cults of the time included the cult of Isis. A great book written during the period is The Golden Ass by Apuleius. He was a member of the cult of Isis, and has some quite apt criticism of some the competing cults of the time, in particular the Cult of Palestine, we know that one as Christianity. Scientology, like all those quirky self abnegating of the ancients is the sort of pseudo-religion that is born when civilizations become extremely cosmopolitan and suddenly their old religions no longer seem to work.
24 - HW Saxton
I'd be all for Diane-Ladd-anetics!
25 - Phillip Winn
I checked with an ex-scientologist friend of mine, and the nonsense about aliens is very much a part of scientology, though it isn't allowed to be shared with non-scientologists. Sorry, bud, but it appears that this is deliberate misinformation.