Column:

Scientologists are capitalists just like us

By Charles Austin

Published March 16, 2010

After work last Monday, I stopped by the Church of Scientology with a few co-workers to watch what was billed as a 15-minute informational video about the religion. It turns out Scientologists are more like you and I than expected, if only because their fringe lunacy is totally downplayed in favor of their devotion to good old-fashioned money.

The Scientology building itself looks exactly how a building only a few blocks from Times Square is supposed to look -- unassuming if not for the gigantic, stories-tall sign that reads, "SCIENTOLOGY," as well as the requisite massive LCD screen up top.

It should be obvious from the previous paragraph, but it's worth noting I'm doing an internship in New York right now. This building would look absolutely frightening if it were towering over downtown Columbia.

We met our guide downstairs, and she took us up to the second floor to watch the orientation video in a small screening room with two rows of empty seats. Our guide left my two co-workers and I alone in the room for the duration of the film. It's billed outside as running 15 minutes, but it's actually almost 40.

The video (which you can find bootlegged on YouTube, in four parts, if you're interested) is relentlessly defensive and full of odd contradictions.

For example, the film accuses the government of operating covert, conspiratorial mind-control schemes but then later uses court rulings and IRS audits of Scientology as proof that it's a legitimate organized religion. It also rails on materialists as the cause of many modern problems, but then it relentlessly suggests the viewer purchase book after book.

And it's this last contradiction that turns out to be the calling card of Scientology. After the video our guide comes into the room to talk with us. She hands us each a book, which after the video I'm surprised she would give out for free. But it isn't free. She expects us to pay $15 each for the book, and this is just one of many, many books. She also suggests we take classes, which cost just more than $60 each.

Coming into this, I had expected to hear the name Xenu uttered in straight-faced reverence. I had expected talk of Thetans and anachronistic tales of nuclear war. But the video contained, to my count, exactly two sentences of information about Scientology's belief system (a definition of "Dianetics," and a definition of "Scientology"). Our guide refused to explain anything about her beliefs beyond: "Just read the book. Read the book."

The Scientologist chapel looks almost exactly like a Christian one, down to the stained glass windows, wooden pews and, oddest of all, a golden cross, front and center of the painted stained glass windows. The cross does not hearken back to a crucifixion or any meaningful event within Scientology's canon. Although the cross represents Scientologist beliefs, there's no greater meaning behind its shape (i.e. the cross represents eight tenets of Scientology, but these could just as easily be represented by an octagon or other shape, whereas this is not true of Christianity).

And this is perhaps the best illustration of what Scientology is, when it comes down to it: a capitalist facsimile of a religion. The borrowed imagery, the espoused rejection of materialism juxtaposed with the massive LCD outside, the volumes and volumes of expensive books, the inescapable financial requirements in climbing the ranks of the church. It's not surprising the Kool-Aid exists. It's just that it costs so much to drink.