Thursday, January 10, 2008

Who runs the Church of Scientology?

The recent media feeding frenzy about the really badly written unauthorized biography on Tom Cruise has put attention on how the Church of Scientology is organized and run.

So to cut through the bull from the media I thought I'd tell you what I know. Scientology is made up of about 7,500 churches, missions and groups operating on all continents (except Antarctica J). Each continental area has one or more administrative churches that look after the others. For example, in the USA there is an East US church and a West US church, so the Church of Scientology Los Angeles is administered by the Church of Scientology Western United States.

The church itself is headed by the Church of Scientology Executive Director International, Guillaume Lesevre, who is an extremely busy guy. Heck, who wouldn't be, running 7,500+ church related entities. He has a huge staff to help him run things and they work hard keeping Scientology going and expanding. My son used to work at the International HQ of the Church in LA, so I know whereof I speak!

Another very important entity in the church is Religious Technology Center. They make sure that when something is called Scientology, then it really is. Scientology is different from many other religions in that it has a technology or methodology for handling situations in life and for bringing about spiritual improvement in individuals. The steps to carry out a Scientology process are very exact and must be followed exactly to get a result. You could think of it like a recipe: if you do it wrong the cake comes out tasting like cement. So RTC is there to make sure people do it right and to help them if they mess up.

The guy who is in-charge of RTC, David Miscavige, is looked upon by most Scientologists as the leader of the Church, because he's the guy who makes sure that what we are getting is Scientology.

So there you go. The truth about how the Church is run and who runs it. Just FYI, there are no actors in high positions in the Church J.

Some more links:

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