Scientology Lies

by Bob Henderson

The close-up look at Scientology, featured first in Time magazine in the spring and then condensed for Reader's Digest subscribers around the world, has earned a mention in the latest issue of the Columbia Journalism Review.

This respected periodical, published under the auspices of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, features a "Darts and Laurels" column that dishes out praise and criticism for work in the world of journalism.

A laurel goes to "Time magazine and associate editor Richard Behar for a mind-chilling status report on the Church of Scientology and its continuing spread into the mainstream."

A dart goes to Al Neuharth, who once headed the Gannett newspaper empire and now writes a column for Gannett's USA Today, which recently ran a reported $3-million worth of Scientology advertising attacking Time.

The Columbia Journalism Review reports how Neuharth, in one of his columns, "told his readers how amused he was by the Time-Scientology `debate,' likening it to a fight between the pot and the kettle in which `neither is better than the other. . . . Just as the Church of Scientology is not really a religion - it's a cult or philosophy - Time really isn't a newsmagazine, it's a magazine of opinion and interpretation.' "

Now that the Scientologists have lost their fight to persuade the Food and Drug Administration to ban sales of the anti-depressant drug Prozac, they have turned their attention to a full-scale assault on the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) concerning their tax status.

Perhaps the only agency the Scientologists despise more than the IRS is the Cult Awareness Network (CAN), an organization devoted to "alerting the world to the dangers of destructive cults."

Can you imagine, then, how the Scientologists reacted when they read that Virginia Thomas, wife of new Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, is involved with CAN, has attended some of its conventions and has organized anti-cult workshops for congressional staffers?

Her anti-cult work, according to a Washington Post article we published last month, stems from her involvement in the early 1980s with a self-help program called Lifespring. "Most of the program's 300,000 graduates have found it to be a favorable experience," according to the article. But some, including Mrs. Thomas, were troubled by its intense emotional exercises.

And here's an interesting statement from a book titled Understanding the New Age by Russell Chandler, religion writer for the Los Angeles Times: "Other New Age human potential groups have borrowed heavily from Scientology concepts - notably est, Lifespring and MSIA (Church of the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness, pronounced Messiah)."