The largest secondary school in my home town Ängelholm, in southern Sweden, has for 4 years running arranged a 'Day of Religions' for the 18-year old students. Representatives for several different religious faiths or philosophies are invited. They each get to hold three 45-minute presentations in the morning, and the students can choose to attend presentations from three different groups. After lunch break, there is a panel debate in the main hall with all the groups on stage and the students free to ask questions. The debate is led by a religious historian from the University of Lund, Ylva Vramming.

This year, there were representatives for the Swedish Lutheran Church, Islam (I'm sorry I don't recall what particular congregation but seemed like a moderate, main-stream one), Zen Buddhism, Latter Day Saints, Jehova's Witnesses, "Word of Life" (charismatic evangelism), Spiritualism (what some call Spiritism) and New Age. Not represented by practitioners but presented by scholars were Orthodox Judaism and Nordic Heathens. Ake Wiman presented some cult critical and skeptic viewpoints (not representing any particular organization). And - lo and behold! - there was also one representative from the Church of Scientology. In previous years, they have declined to participate when they heard that Ake would be there. From last year I missed the Hare Krishnas, who were supposed to come, but they have gone down in numbers in Sweden and may not have people to send anymore.

Myself, I assisted Ake. (Yes, we're yet another pair of happy customers of the superior ARSCC(wdne) Love Match Services, Inc.) I wish I would have had the opportunity to visit all the presentations, but at least we had some nice talks with different people at lunch time.

I'm pleasantly surprised to be able to say that the CoS rep did not exhibit any rude or mad-dog behavior. When we introduced ourselves at the start of day, it was obvious that she didn't know who Ake or I were. It also turned out later that she was not OSA, but from the job description she gave the students (I didn't ask for her post title) probably the FBO (Flag Banking Officer) of the small - 15 staff - org in Malmo.

For the first two lectures, I assisted Ake, but when the third round was about to start one of the arranging teachers asked me if I wanted to sit in on the CoS presentation. I said I didn't want to cause any disruption, but he insisted so I thought ok, I'll just keep a low profile.

The presentation was mostly standard fare - the 8 dynamics, the tone scale, dianetics auditing, the e-meter, the goal to become Clear. The CoS rep said she had been a member for 6 years and soon after joining had found that she was Clear from a past life. Then the students could ask questions. They mostly kept a reasonably respectful attitude (- Why do you like Scientology?), although many had pointed questions (- You don't seem to have any religious message, so why do you call yourself a religion?) and a few didn't bother to conceal their amusement (Student: - This guy Hubbard who wrote the Dianetics book, wasn't he a science fiction writer?

CoS rep: - Yes, he wrote some science fiction to finance his research...

Student: - So a science fiction writer writes a book and you folks BELIEVE in it? Bwahahaha!) When the discussion turned to the cost of courses, and the CoS rep started the "there are 4 dollar courses" spin, I finally gave in to the temptation to open my mouth and said: - If anyone wants to know what the courses cost in reality, then I have an official CoS price list upstairs. A few minutes later, one student asked me who I was, and I replied that I was a former scientologist. Then I got a bunch of questions from the students which took up most of the remaining time. The CoS rep seemed unprepared for how to deal with this, but only asked me a few civil questions about when and where I had been involved, and didn't cut me off. No silly OSA antics, but then I suppose she wasn't OSA trained. I kind of liked her.

At the end, one guy who had been listening introduced himself as a reporter for the local newpaper, and asked to talk to me and two of the students. See article at the end of this post.

After the interview, I joined the rest of the lecturers and teachers in the dining hall. The CoS rep was there so I went over to her and apologized for stealing her show, which she accepted.

The panel debate after lunch was fairly uneventful. The CoS rep stayed in the background.

So what was the number one Scientology topic that interested the students?

X-E-N-U! During Ake's presentations, during the CoS presentation I attended, and during the conversations I got into with students in the hallways, they wanted to talk about Xenu. Why did the CoS want to keep this story secret?

What did the CoS rep think of the story? Did she really think that it was dangerous for people to read it? The CoS rep said - probably truthfully - that she had not done the course yet and didn't know what to think about it.

But this dodging the question clearly failed to impress the students.

Remember, these were not ex-scientologists or anti-CoS net activists, but pretty average 18-year olds in a small Swedish town. The following are a few of the things, not that I told them, but that some of these kids *told me* about the Church of Scientology:

- the Xenu story, in great detail - the founder was a science fiction writer who wanted to get rich - to do all the courses will cost about 3 million SEK (300,000 dollars) - their Europe center is in Copenhagen, and it's like a military-style community - Hubbard made it a religion because religions don't need to pay taxes in the US - they give you personality tests but it's phony, because they always say you have bad problems and need to join Scientology When one girl asked me where you could read the secret texts of Scientology, I didn't have time to answer before her fellow students chimed in:

- It's on the internet!

Xenu has landed in Sweden.

Netizens, take a bow!
Catarina ******* Summary of article from Nordvastra Skanes Tidningar, 21 April 2001 (not available on the web):

"_What does God want?_ "The theme day about religions was, for the fourth year in a row, arranged for the final year students. This year, it was dominated by the smaller congregations. The basic idea of the day of religion is to give the students a good opportunity to practise critical thinking.

"- It's all about realizing the importance of tolerance and understanding for the various ways of looking at the world. This is a good way to try to instill democratic values in young people, says one of the religion teachers at the school, Markus Eek.

"Jacob Jorlen and Jacob Sodermark are students on the science program and they appreciate the theme day.

- I learnt something totally new today, says Jacob Jorlen. It seems I had completely misunderstood Islam and what the Quoran says.

Jacob Sodermark thinks it's good to hear believers talk about their own religion rather than teachers.

- A teacher can only study up on the subject - it's a different thing to listen to someone who practices it.

The last lecturer the two listened to was a scientologist. They thought she was bad, and the risk that anyone would be convinced they considered to be practically non-existant.

- Clearly, the positive outweighs the negative with these lectures. Perhaps one person is convinced to join the Church of Scientology, but 100 realize that they should not do it, so it's a good thing, says Jacob Jorlen.

They get agreement from Catarina Pamnell, who is a former scientologist:

- If this had been allowed to stand alone, out of context and without counter-arguments - then it could have been dangerous. But the students are well prepared and there is also the panel debate this afternoon.

"There is a wide variety of opinions among the panel members. The representative of Word of Life starts by claiming that God didn't create the cucumber in his image, but Man. Genetically speaking, we're cousins of the trees, counters a New Age proponent.

After also listening to nine different descriptions from the different congregations on their view of homosexuality, one girl in the audience stands up and asks:

- Do you really think that God wants us to have a panel debate about what beliefs are right or wrong?

"A quote from Ylva Vramming, religious scholar, on religion:

- All that religion is, could be summed up as a stick. You either use it as support when your leg hurts. Or you grab it and hit your fellow man. But the choice is not the stick's. It's yours.

Gothenburg, Stockholm and Malmo. They are still the only orgs here.

From what I have heard, the Malmo org now has 15 staff members. Bid says that about 20 years ago that org had around 50 staff. The Stockholm org is now supposed to have about 30 staff. It had 100+ staff 20 years ago, when I joined. (The Gothenburg org I don't have fresh data on, but it's probably similar to Stockholm and certainly smaller than 20 years ago. ) The official membership claim 20 years ago was 10,000. Today, it's 3,000-3,500.

This suggests an approximate expansion rate of the CoS in Sweden of minus 70 percent per the last 20 years.
Catarina

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