Open Faith in the Digital Age

Seventy-five million years ago, Xenu, the wicked ruler of the Galactic Federation, drugged billions of his (remarkably earth-like 1950's era) people and shipped them on a spacecraft to earth, where they were stacked around volcanoes and blown up with hydrogen bombs. The tormented spirits of these aliens remain on earth, coalescing around people and causing them grave spiritual harm that must be exorcised with expensive spiritual technologies.

Such is the story revealed to advanced level members of the Church of Scientology, leading many to decry the religion as simply bad, mail-order science fiction for the rich and famous. As creation myths go, the story of Xenu is no more absurd, and just as reflexive of its socio-cultural milieu, as the creation mythologies of the majority of the world's religions (keeping in mind that instead of tribal priests, its founder was a 20th Century sci-fi author). What strikes me, however, is the exorbitant fees paid by members of the Church of Scientology to have this doctrine revealed to them, or to even join the cult in the first place. But even this isn't new. The Vedic religion of ancient India, one of the world's oldest ritual cults that laid the foundation for Hinduism, was primarily written by the priest-poet caste for payment by the warrior-king caste. The religion reflected the monied desires and glories with little interest in or from the commoners, whose own gods got no sacrifices and were often picked as the demonic enemies of the gods of the ruling class.

Thankfully we live in a much more advanced age, in which religious freedom both allows anyone to practice whatever kind of faith they choose, and the rest of us to practice our own faiths (while simultaneously suffering the other guy with some level of curiosity and/or amusement). At least that's the theory anyways. Questions of the insidious involvement of the Christian right in U.S. governmental policy aside, the Church of Scientology has created somewhat of a stir over the years with their vehement refusal to let anyone else see, use, or much less critique their material. Recently, an indoctrination video starring the renowned Scientologist Tom Cruise was leaked onto the internet, and then swiftly suppressed by the religion, with the threat of lawsuits if it was not taken down. Which of course backfired, and led a group of hackers, named Anonymous, to declare an open war on the CoS.

I first became aware of this interesting religious battle several days ago, when Anonymous released a mass of secret Scientology documents, which were posted on a site that has now (for some odd reason) been unfortunately deleted. It seems that much of the reasons behind this war deal with the aforementioned accusations of suppression of information, assertions that the church has killed several people over the years, and that the Anonymous hackers may be a gang of teenage kids out for laughs. While a handful dead do not rival the wake of countless bodies many religions have left behind, and while I generally practice a respectful tolerance for any belief that does not threaten a person or people who have not willingly joined that cult, something that significantly sets the Church of Scientology apart is that their faith is not free. I don't believe there is a single other set of religious texts that is not open to the public, at all, which in this age of information freedom (whether you like it or not) seems to be an attitude of almost medieval occultism. Of course so is assailing someone else's faith just because you think it would be a fun thing to do. Even all the old occult manuscripts are online, somewhere.

Though judging from the sheer incomprehensibility of the deleted, leaked documents (as mildly attested to by this guide of Scientologist terminology), it doesn't seem certain that having their religious texts open to the public would make the Church of Scientology any more endearing to the public eye.