CT Classic: Scientology: Religion or Racket?
Christianity Today.
November 7, 1969
By Joseph Martin Hopkins
Offices of the American Psychiatric Association are located in the seventeen hundred block of Eighteenth Street Northwest, Washington, D.C.

The Founding Church of Scientology is at 1812 Nineteenth Street, one block farther out. Figuratively speaking, the world's largest mental-health organization is considerably farther out than that.

Even its members will concede that it is far out. After a hurried interview with Miss Anne Ursprung, top executive of the Founding Church, I managed an extension of time by driving her and fellow staff member Esther Mangold to the airport to pick up a couple of Scientologists, Leon and Mitch, who were arriving from New York. As we returned to the city, I asked if it were true that many hippies are interested in Scientology.

Leon explained that hippies, having been turned off by the churches, are drawn to Scientology because it represents a radical departure from tradition. Magazine articles denouncing Scientology have elicited an enthusiastic reaction from the hippie community. "If the establishment is against it, it must be good," they reason.

"Do hippies forsake drugs when they embrace Scientology?" I asked. "Yes, they do," replied Anne. "When Scientology turns them on, they no longer need drugs. In fact, you might call Scientology the 'turned-on religion.'"

But the Scientology bandwagon had started to roll long before the press denunciations began. A year ago Life estimated world membership at between two and three million, several hundred thousand of them in the United States. Not bad for an infant organization less than two decades old!

There are twenty-five Scientology centers throughout the world: one in England, one in Scotland, one in Denmark, one in Rhodesia, four in South Africa, three in Australia, one in New Zealand, one in Canada, and eleven in the United States (Washington, New York, Miami, Detroit, Minneapolis, Austin, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, and Honolulu).

The charismatic figure who began this mushrooming cult is Lafayette Ronald (L. Ron) Hubbard, millionaire science-fiction writer, explorer, and retired naval officer who claims to be the real life "Mr. Roberts" from the movie of that name. Hubbard was born in Nebraska in 1911, the son of a career officer in the U. S. Navy and the grandson of a wealthy Montana cattle-rancher. While the family lived in Washington, "Elron" became "the youngest Eagle Scout in America" and a fast friend of then-President Coolidge's son Calvin, Jr. It is thought that Calvin's premature death may have sparked Hubbard's quest for the secrets of mental and physical health.

During the late twenties Navy duty took the Hubbard family to the Far East, where L. Ron traveled widely and was exposed to a number of the influences that helped to shape his emerging philosophy. He returned to the States in 1930 to enter college. Until a few years ago, when the facts were openly challenged, Scientology literature listed Hubbard as a 1934 graduate of George Washington University with a B.S. in civil engineering, and the recipient of a Ph.D. degree from Sequoia University in 1950. However, George Washington denies ever having granted Hubbard a degree, affirming only that he matriculated as a freshman in 1930, flunked physics, was placed on probation, and dropped out at the end of his second year. As for the alleged Ph.D. degree, if an institution bearing the name of Sequoia University even exists, the burden of proof rests upon Hubbard and the Scientologists.

After college, Hubbard led several scientific expeditions into the primitive jungles of Central America, and in 1936, at the age of twenty-five, he joined the exclusive Explorer's Club in New York City.

During this period he flowered as a prolific writer of both fact and fiction, and was called to Hollywood to write the first of several scenarios.

After five years of naval service during World War II, Hubbard became critically ill. Crippled, blind, and twice declared dead by doctors, he rebounded to perfect health, he says, by applying the principles later described in his book Dianetics: The Modern Science Of Mental Health. This 435-page volume, the culmination of years of research, was written in the space of sixty days and sold 100,000 copies within three months of its publication in 1950. Its eclectic sources include, says Hubbard in the book, "the medicine man of the Goldi people of Manchuria, the shamans of North Borneo, Sioux medicine men, the cults of Los Angeles É modern psychology (Jung, Adler, Freud, Pavlov), a magician whose ancestors served in the court of Kublai Khan and a Hindu who could hypnotize cats" (p.

128). Buddhism seems to have played a prominent role; Hubbard describes it as "the only organization which has had the goal of Total Freedom."

Dianetics, he says, revived that search after a silence of nearly 2,500 years. Nuclear philosophy also was tapped. As Time describes it (August 23, 1968), the philosophy of Scientology "is billed as a sort of religion of religions, combining parts of Hindu Veda and Dharma, Taoism, Old Testament wisdom, Buddhist principles of brotherly love and compassion, the early Greeks, Lucretius, Spinoza, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Spencer, and Freud."

But the end is not yet. Hubbard's pursuit of a therapy capable of curing all human ills led him along the route of hypnotism, narco-synthesis ("the practice of inducing sleep with drugs and then talking to the patient to draw out buried thoughts"), amnesia sleep, automatic writing, clairvoyance, and exorcism. All were rejected. Then at last came the great enlightenment. The brain is the "electronic calculator"--a flawless computer that functions perfectly except when fouled up by "engross"

(traumatic memories that trigger pain). Get rid of these survival-threatening engrams and you have an optimum brain." Anxieties and illnesses promptly disappear.

The splash created by this do-it-yourself method of psychotherapy was enormous (approximately 500,000 followers) but short-lived. Overhead organization and professionally administered techniques were lacking. A new strategy was called for. Thus Scientology arose from the ashes of Dianetics in the Year of Our Lord 1952.

To replace the self-therapy of Dianetics, Hubbard devised the E-meter (Hubbard Electrometer) or "truth detectors battery-operated device consisting of two tin cans hooked up to a dial. The Scientology counterpart of Mark Hopkins and a student at opposite ends of a log is an "auditor" (Scientology expert) and a " preclear" (novice, seeker) on opposite sides of an E-meter. The auditor watches the dial as the preclear, holding the cans, replies to questions designed to bring to the surface hidden engrams. When the subject is able to identify and confront without fear all these malevolent gremlins (that is, when the E-meter needle ceases to fluctuate reflexively as the engrams are trotted out one by one), he is said to be a "clear."

Some engrams, according to Scientologists, are prenatal, even harking back to previous existences. Hubbard goes so far as to insist "that individuals cannot be rehabilitated unless the prenatal engrams are accepted"

(Dianetics, p. 102). In an article entitled "Scientology: Menace to Mental Health," Ralph Lee Smith cites a preclear who, upon ransacking his subconscious, allegedly discovered that:

His thetan [spirit] had inhabited the body of a doll on the planet Mars, 469,476,600 years ago. Martians seized the doll and took it to a temple, where it was zapped by a bishop's gun while the congregation chanted "God is Love." The thetan was then put into an ice cube, placed aboard a flying saucer, and dropped off at Planet ZX 432, where it was given a robot body, then put to work unloading flying saucers. Being a bit unruly, it zapped another robot to death and was shipped off in a flying saucer to be punished. But the saucer exploded, and the thetan fell into space [Today's Health, December, 1968].

Another preclear "recalled that he had been Marc Antony. He remembered Cleopatra, but she apparently had given him such a whopping engram that he couldn't recall the battles of Philippi and Actium."

The cover blurb on Scientology: The Fundamentals of Thought boasts: "No such knowledge has ever before existed and no such results have ever before been attainable by Man as those which can be reached by a study of this brief volume." Inside the 136-page paperback, the reader encounters a host of similar claims:

This book is a summation, in brief, of the results of 50,000 years of thinking men. É What has been attempted by a thousand universities and foundations at a cost of billions has been completed quietly here [p. 5].

Freedom from ignorance is at hand. Perhaps that was the Kingdom of Heaven [p. 9].

... Scientology established biophysics... Biophysics only became feasible when it was discovered in Scientology that a fixed electrical field existed surrounding a body entirely independent of, but influenceable by, the human mind [p. 70].

It is the only science or study known which is capable of uniformly producing marked and significant increases in intelligence and general ability. Scientolology processing among, other things can improve the intelligent quotient of an individual, his ability or desire to communicate, his social attitudes, his capability and domestic harmony, his fertility, his artistic creativity, his reaction time and his health [p. 98].

With Scientology man can prevent insanity, criminality and war. ... The only race that matters at this moment is the one being run between Scientology and the atomic bomb [p. 128].

But the description of the supernatural attainments of Scientology is not limited to generalities. Specific Miracles are claimed. Hubbard himself testifies that his thetan has visited Venus once and Heaven twice.

(Incidentally, the second of his three wives testified that he was "hopelessly insane.") "Tens of thousands of case histories" record miraculous hearings of mind and body through Scientology techniques. The claim is made that through the creation of "mental energy," up to thirty pounds have been added to or subtracted from a person's body weight.

Furthermore, Scientology can "raise the intelligence quotient of a person about one point per hour of processing" (A Brief Biography of L. Ron Hubbard, p. 10). At that astounding rate, the cost of producing an Einstein, at $30 per processing hour, would be relatively small. And to think that the ability to accomplish these miracles can be attained in a period of weeks and for only a few hundred dollars!

It is a curious thing that a great many intelligent, well educated, and apparently well-balanced people have flocked to this movement. Take Anne Ursprung, for example. Reared in Texas, she was active in Southern Baptist youth work and at one time wanted to become a Christian-education director. At Baylor University she majored in English and history, and after her graduation she accepted a job as an English teacher in the District of Columbia. Her active involvement in Scientology began in November 1967, when she began teaching evening classes at the Founding Church while continuing her daytime job in the Washington public-school system. The following February she became a full-time employee of the church, and in July she was elevated to the position of "assistant guardian," the local congregation's highest administrative office. Modest, poised, elegant in dress and manner, Miss Ursprung could easily pass for the Christian-education worker she once hoped to become.

Esther Mangold, another full-time employee of the Founding Church, is a graduate of the Westminster Choir College and once served as minister of music in a large mainline church in the Midwest.

Just recently, in response to punitive measures by the British Parliament, the organization published a pamphlet entitled A Report to Members of Parliament on Scientology. The booklet contains testimonies by an impressive list of Scientologists, among them a dental surgeon, two medical doctors, a former chemistry professor now devoting his life to Scientology, a Ph.D. professor of languages, and a mechanical engineer.

All laud Scientology as the panacea for all ills, individual and social.

According to Miss Ursprung, the Scientology ranks have been swelled by a considerable number of Protestant clergymen. Perhaps the best explanation for this incongruity is that most people consider Scientology not a religion but a school of psychotherapy, despite Scientology claims to the contrary. Although Miss Ursprung classified Dianetics, forerunner of Scientology, as a "science of mind," she insists that Scientology is "a religion, a religious philosophy, a way of life." The distinction is based on Scientology's "eight dynamics." The first four, which come under the purview of Dianetics, are the survival instincts of (1) self, (2) sex and family, (3) group (school, society, town, nation), and (4) mankind (all races and nations). The last four relate to man as a spiritual being: (5) the animal dynamic (the urge to preserve animal and vegetable life), (6) the MEST (matter, energy, space, time) dynamic (the urge to preserve the physical universe), (7) the spiritual dynamic (the urge to perpetuate spiritual existence in the here and now), and (8) the Infinity or God dynamic (the instinct relating to immortal existence beyond the earthly life). Oddly enough, the one area most directly involving religious experience is ruled out of bounds. Hubbard emphasizes, "It is carefully observed here that the science of Scientology does not intrude into the Dynamic of the Supreme Being" (Scientology, pp. 39, 40).

By what stretch of the imagination, then, can Scientology be classified as a religion? Miss Ursprung's answer is that a man's relation with the Supreme Being is an individual matter. Self-understanding is the primary goal of Scientology. A man cannot know his Maker until he first of all knows himself. But, she insists, reverential attitudes are definitely encouraged in the movement. She quoted from Hubbard's 1951 volume, Science of Survival: "No culture in the history of the world, save the thoroughly depraved and expiring one, has failed to affirm the existence of a Supreme Being. It is an empirical observation that men without a strong and lasting faith in a Supreme Being are less capable, less ethical, and less valuable to themselves and society."

I was still puzzled. How could an organization erected on a theistic foundation, calling itself a church, be utterly divorced from prayer, worship, the Scriptures, and the sacraments? In the booklet Ceremonies of the Founding Church of Scientology are found marriage, christening, and funeral liturgies, not one of which includes a single prayer or reference to the Deity. This "informal christening" service, actually performed by L. Ron Hubbard and. recommended as a guide, illustrates these omissions:

O.K. The parents of -these children will bring them front and center.

(Speaking to the child): This is Mr. and this is Mrs. I'm introducing to the audience right now. And ________ and ________ have decided to be godfather and godmother, so we're all set.

Here we go. (To the child): How are you? All right. Now your name is _________ You got that?

Good. There you are. Did that upset you? Now, do you realize that you're a member of the HASI (Hubbard Association of Scientologists, International)? Pretty good, huh?

All right. Now I want to introduce you to your father. This is Mr. (To the parent): Come over here. (To the child): And here's your mother.

And now, in case you get into trouble and want to borrow some quarters here's Mr. See him? He's your godfather. Now, take a look at him. That s right.

And here's in case you want some real good auditing: she's your godmother.

Got it?

Now you are suitably christened. Don't worry about it, it could be worse.

O.K. Thank you very much. They'll treat you all right.

In a Scientology church service, the booklet explains, "we do not use prayers, attitudes of piety, or threats of damnation. We use the facts, the truths, the understandings that have been discovered in the science of Scientology. We do not read from the Bible (or the Koran or the Torah or the Vedic Hymns, for that matter) and say to peopleÉ'Now this is something you have got to believe.'" Music is selected for the service to be "pleasant to listen to and not strongly associated with the wrath of the gods or the helpless dependence on the whim of an unknown being." The sermon "is ALWAYS on Scientology and how it can be of use to those present." A taped lecture by L. Ron Hubbard is suggested as appropriate for this purpose.

In the December 1968 issue of the New Zealand Methodist there appeared a discussion between Sir James Hort, a minister in the Church of Scientology, and three Protestant clergymen. The following excerpt is instructive:

Hort: The eighth dynamic is not inquired into. It is left to individual people to understand for themselves in time.

Ramage [the Reverend I.C.E.]: Before you reach the eighth dynamic, you wouldn't feel that God has any part in your progress through the other stages?

Hort: I think the answer is no. This is somewhere where the Christian religion and ours would differ.

In an earlier comment, Hort had observed (regarding Scientology church services), "if an atheist or agnostic comes into Scientology, then our service is there for him."

Scientology: Religion or Racket?
Christianity Today
Part 2
November 21, 1969
The Founding Church of Scientology in Washington, D.C., is in a rather shabby row house. The living room has been converted into an office and bookstore, the double size dining room into a lecture hall, and upstairs bedrooms into offices and classrooms. But despite the architectural nonconformity, to say nothing of its utter rejection of theological considerations, Scientology insists on calling itself a church. Moreover, it makes a special pitch to Christians by attempting to harmonize the teachings of founder L. Ron Hubbard with Scripture. Forty-four pages of the booklet Scientology and the Bible are set up in parallel columns with this objective. That often there is not the remotest correspondence between the Hubbard passages and the accompanying biblical quotations may be seen in the following examples:

SCIENTOLOGY THE FACTORS. 3. The first action of beingness is to assume a viewpoint.

GIC 18. A POSTULATE IS AS VALUABLE AS IT IS WORKABLE Axiom 1. LIFE IS BASICALLY A STATIC. Definition: A Life Static has no mass, no motion, no wavelength, no location in space or in time. It has the ability to postulate and to perceive.

Axiom 16. COMPLETE DE STRUCTION IS ACCOMPLISHED BY THE POSTULATION OF THE AS-IS-NESS OF ANY EXISTENCE AND THE PARTS THEREOF.

Axiom 54. A TOLERANCE OF CONFUSION AND AN AGREED-UPON STABLE DATUM ON WHICH TO ALIGN THE DATA IN A CONFUSION ARE AT ONCE NECESSARY FOR A SANE REACTION ON THE EIGHT DYNAMICS. THIS DEFINES SANITY.

THE HOLY SCRIPTURES St. John 1:5 Ñ And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.

St. John 5:17 Ñ But Jesus answered them, My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.

St. John 10:28 Ñ And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.

Luke 4:32-37 (in which Jesus exorcises a demon from a man in the synagogue).

St. John 19:5-11 (Jesus before Pilate).

Although all these examples are from the New Testament, numerous comparisons from the Old Testament are given as well, the vast majority of them from the Book of Proverbs.

Absent from Scientology practice are the basic constituents of the Christian religion: reverent faith, prayer, worship, reading of and preaching from the Christian Scriptures, observance of the sacraments as instituted and explained in the New Testament.

But if Scientology is not a bona fide religion, what is it? An organization of quack psychologists who are exploiting the emotionally and mentally distraught for financial gain? This appears to be the consensus of the critics. When Scientology was banned in the province of Victoria in Australia, a government report described it as "the world's largest organization of unqualified persons engaged in the practice of dangerous techniques which masquerade as mental therapy." The report continues:

"The theories of Scientology are fantastic and impossible, the principles perverted and ill-founded, and the techniques debased and harmful." In an article in Today's Health, Ralph Lee Smith concurs:

Couched in pseudoscientific terms and rites, this dangerous cult claims to help mentally or emotionally disturbed persons, for sizable fees.

Scientology has grown into a very profitable worldwide enterprise ... and a serious threat to health. É Scientology is a cult which thrives on glowing promises that are heady stuff for the lonely, the weak, the confused, the ineffectual, and the mentally or emotionally ill [Today's Health, December, 1968].

In 1963 the Food and Drug Administration raided the Founding Church and impounded 100 E-meters and books labeled with "therapeutic claims charged to be false." In February, 1969, the U. S. Court of Appeals overturned a Federal Court ruling supporting the Food and Drug Administration "until the Government can refute the claim that Scientology is a religion É protected by the right of freedom of worship." Judge J. Skelly Wright ruled, that until proven otherwise, the Scientology practice of "auditing"

must be assumed to be comparable to the Roman Catholic confession, and Scientology literature comparable to Holy Scripture.

Articles exposing Scientology as a dangerous fraud relate numerous examples of persons who claim they were swindled by unscrupulous Scientologists. The Saturday Evening Post tells of a Florida millionaire who was fleeced out of $28,000 in processing fees in less than two years.

According to Today's Health, a Los Angeles housewife marched angrily into court with the charge that she had spent $4,000 for Scientology processing "on assurance that it would help her overcome frigidity." The ironical outcome of her investment was that her husband divorced her. And Alan Levy, in the November 15, 1968, issue of Life, tells of his reportorial pilgrimage to Saint Hill (a sprawling English manor, thirty-one miles from London, that became Scientology's international headquarters in 1959) to enroll in an advanced course advertised at $390. Upon arrival he was informed that the cost of tuition alone would be $3,150, "plus living expenses, payable in advance." (Had the Scientologists smelled a rat?) Founder L. Ron Hubbard's financial relationship to the Scientology enterprise has come under investigation. When world headquarters were moved to Saint Hill ten years ago, Hubbard imposed a 10 per cent assessment on all fees collected by Scientology centers across the world, payable to him. At that time the annual take by the Founding Church alone reportedly approached $200,000. In 1966 Hubbard received a $240,000 fee from the movement for "the good will of his name" (Time, August 23, 1968).

Two years later he "forgave" the organization a $13 million debt for "services rendered," a move described by Time as an "understandable act of' charity considering that he has boasted to friends of having $7,000,000 stashed away in two numbered Swiss bank accounts." When the organization ran into stormy weather in the British Parliament, Hubbard bailed out and headed for the Mediterranean on his 3,300-ton yacht, with its blue-uniformed crew of 200 sailors and students. There he dabbles in oceanographic research while the furor created by his controversial brainchild continues unabated. In August, 1968, he cabled Saint Hill, "I have finished my Work. Now it's up to others."

Even if we assume complete honesty and sincerity on the part of its practitioners and promoters, Scientology must be viewed as a dangerous and menacing cult psychologically, socially, physically, and spiritually.

Psychologically Submitting to dianetic processing for the treatment of deep-seated anxiety or emotional disturbance is like going to the village butcher for a gall bladder operation. Psychologists have condemned the technique as "amateurish and potentially dangerous meddling with serious mental problems" (Today's Health, December, 1968). Just how "auditing" endangers mental health may be seen from this description in the article in Today's Health:

Instead of discussing present reality, the auditor wishes to push the preclear into a world of fantasy. É When the preclear is eager to cooperate, is fully under the sway of the auditor's will and the apparently scientific verdict of the E-meter, he accepts the auditor's statement that he is suppressing something, even if he can't remember anything. Sooner or later he begins to exhibit symptoms resembling those of schizophrenia. These symptoms are encouraged; the preclear is given to believe that the hallucinations he is experiencing are factual incidents of the thetan's past, and that his discovery of them is the high road to health and freedom.

Socially British Health Minister Kenneth Robinson warned that Scientology is "socially harmful." It has been so judged because it was formerly the practice of Scientology auditors to counsel "disconnection" in cases of "familial suppression." In my interview with Miss Anne Ursprung, head executive of the Founding Church, she assured me that the church, evidently bowing to criticism, no longer advises this. But Scientology is socially harmful for other reasons. Through the combination of interior group loyalty and exterior rejection, Scientologists have developed the self-image of a persecuted messiah sect. This has resulted in hostility toward those who find fault with their beliefs and practices. Four of the ten resolves in "The Code of a Scientologist" stress this sensitivity.

Perhaps the tenth, "To engage in no unseemly disputes with the uninformed on the subject of my profession," explains why Miss Ursprung, subsequent to our interview, has refused to respond to my repeated efforts to contact her by mail and by telephone to obtain further information. During the interview, I asked her reaction to the numerous attacks on Scientology in the press. She observed that Scientology, like Christianity in Roman times, is a new religion-radically different, often misunderstood, and therefore persecuted.

Another liability of Scientology is its utter lack of social concern. It could hardly be criticized for this omission were it to abandon the pretense of being a religion. But to pose as a church, while neglecting the responsibilities of a church in the community, nation, and world, is reprehensible. Scientology offers society nothing except an expensive and highly dubious method of psychotherapy, the goal of which is self-improvement, self-mastery, personal happiness. The door to salvation is shut to those who cannot afford to pay the price of processing. Nothing is said about the plight of the poor, the sick, the homeless, the oppressed.

Also socially harmful is Scientology's unscriptural law of retaliation.

"Never fear to hurt another in a just cause," admonishes the Code of Honour. And the Scientology code contains the pledge, "To punish to the fullest extent of my power anyone misusing or degrading Scientology to harmful ends." Apparently the Scientologist is to be his own judge, jury, and policeman.

Physically According to Hubbard's "non-germ theory of disease," most of the diseases that plague mankind, including arthritis, allergies, sinus infection, ulcers, tuberculosis, cancer, and even the common cold, are psychosomatic and can be cured through Scientology. The subtle deception of Scientology is that there is just enough truth in it to make it work in many cases.

If, as one of the Doctors Mayo once said, 70 per cent of our ills are mentally induced, then any method by which afflicted persons can be persuaded that they are being helped or cured will prove effective. This, of course, is the key to the success of Christian Science, Unity, hypnotism, and even much healing that takes place through orthodox Christian channels. The danger in these approaches to physical disability is that the afflicted person will abandon professional medical treatment in favor of mental therapy and thus expose himself to the possibility of disastrous physical and mental consequences.

Spiritually Scientologists' veneration of Hubbard approaches Christians' veneration of Jesus Christ. Pictures of him and quotations from his writings adorn the walls of the various classrooms and offices of the Founding Church. A sculptured bust of Hubbard is displayed prominently at the front of the lecture hall. Hubbard evidently is considered infallible in matters of Scientology belief and practice. Answering the charge that the sect is therefore authoritarian, Sir James Hort replied, "You're free to disagree with him, and if you do that's fineÑScientology is not for you." With such an authority, who needs the Bible? Scientology further asserts that only it can rescue man and the world from the predicaments in which they find themselves. With such a savior, who needs Christ? Scientology inculcates the notion that man is the master of his own destinyÑthat the engram-erased brain is capable of overcoming all obstacles and solving all problems. With such a mechanism, who needs God? Scientology offers gnosticism as a substitute for the Gospel.

As Paul deplored the legalism that diverted the Galatian Christians from the doctrine of salvation by faith alone, so evangelicals must deplore those false premises that divert Scientologists from God's grace in Christ: the naive assumption that our human nature is untainted with evil, that man's computer-brain is capable of errorless understanding and judgment, that perfect knowledge automatically produces perfect behavior, that human repentance and divine grace are unnecessary, and above all that God (most Scientologists will grant his existence) is really irrelevant to the human situation.

Scientology: religion or racket? Or is there a third option? Is it instead an organization of theologically disoriented persons who, in the absence of intelligent understanding of and commitment to Jesus Christ and his Gospel, have fallen prey to a false gospel of spurious knowledge and vain methods of self-improvement? Our churches must assume a share of responsibility for the situation that has given rise to this and indeed all other heretical deviations of our time. For the cults, as J. K. Van Baalen has said, are "the unpaid bills of the churches."

It is doubtless true that many of Christianity's dropouts are turned off by the Gospel itself and not merely by the churches. But it is also true that the standard denominations, generally speaking, have been guilty of promoting a crossless churchianity that demands practically nothing of its members. Is it possible for a person to unite with the church and remain a church member for many years without knowing Christ, Christian doctrine, the Bible, and the true meaning of Christian discipleship? Tragically, the answer is yes.

I asked Anne Ursprung whether the transition from Christianity to Scientology had involved much shifting of gears on her part. She replied that it had not, that even as a Southern Baptist she had always been convinced that man's nature is basically good. What is the answer? A tightening up of church discipline? An educational campaign to combat biblical ignorance and doctrinal confusion? A return to fundamentals in home training, pulpit utterances, youth programs, and community and world outreach? All these. But above all, exercise of extreme care that those inducted into church membership, particularly young people, have a genuine experience of Christian conversionÑand that beyond their initial commitment they are nurtured into maturity of Christian faith and life. In these waysÑand only in these waysÑthe churches can help to prevent the erosion of their membership by Scientology and other misguided and misguiding cults.

http://www.christianityonline.com/ct/2000/136/54.0.html

Go Back